Empy Calories
Anyone trying to lose weight can attest to one single fact: to lose weight you have to watch what you
eat. But what about what you drink? “What about it?” you may ask. Well, you might be surprised at
how much your success, or failure, with your diet hinges on what you are drinking on a daily basis!
In today’s world, the average American consumes 21% of their daily calories in the form of beverages.
That’s nearly 500 calories per day for the standard 2,000 calorie diet. Or, in other words, that’s:
- 5 Apples
- 5 Tbsp Butter
- 15 3" Tomatoes
- 1 McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese
The thing about calories from drinks is that they’re considered empty calories, meaning that
they do not register with our appetite controls and do not help satisfy our hunger. Don’t believe me?
Try this at home: The next time you go to eat your bowl of cereal in the morning just leave out the
cereal and “eat” only the milk. I bet you’re still hungry!
Where do these calories come from?
In the last 30 years, total caloric intake from drinks has risen between 150 - 300 calories per day,
for all age groups. Can you guess what the number one culprit is? Soft drinks and fruit drinks!
In a stunning example of coincidence, as the per capita intake of these sweetened beverages went up,
serving sizes have gone up (can you say ‘Big-Gulp’), and the percentage of people drinking these
beverages has increased as well.
So what should, and shouldn't, we be drinking?
The guidance on what constitutes a healthy drink is really quite simple. More than half of the human
body is made up of water and water should be the number one liquid we consume each day. Alcoholic
beverages, when drunk in moderation have been found to reduce certain ailments. Soft drinks,
fruit drinks, and sports drinks, on the other hand are really nothing more than sugary water with a
few vitamins & minerals added; the benefit of which, does not negate the calorie surplus.
The following are some basic guidelines on what you should and shouldn’t drink:
Water
We could all get by on drinking water alone. It was only about 2,000 years ago that we started to
consume beer. Around two-hundred years ago we started to add sugar to our tea / coffee and it wasn’t
until after World War II that soft drinks / fruit drinks were introduced.
Some of the benefits of water that are still being researched include its ability to help people
with diabetes and helping to prevent kidney stones. Chronic dehydration increases the chances of
acquiring bladder cancer as well.
The quantity of water needed each day varies from person to person. Some people may need 15 glasses a
day while others need only 5. It is dependent on age, gender, metabolism and diet. For example,
vegans typically get a lot of water from the fruits and vegetables they eat while meat eaters will
not get the same from meat.
Tea & Coffee
Tea and coffee are both good water replacements, assuming they are unsweetened, as neither have many
calories. So does this mean you can’t add any sugar to your favorite hot or iced beverage? No. A
teaspoon or two of sugar will only add between 16 and 32 calories, still a negligible amount. It’s
only when you reach the levels of Starbuck’s lattes or Snapple Iced Teas that you are officially bumped
up to calorie heaven.
You see the claims all the time; Herbal Teas, Green Teas, and Wellness Teas all provide valuable
antioxidants or help prevent disease. However, there is no scientific evidence that fully supports
these claims. While recent research has provided some interesting findings (women who drank 4 or
more cups a day of black tea lowered their risk of heart disease or a study that found that tea
helps arteries dilate), there is still not enough research available to put a guarantee on drinking
tea and healthy living.
The good news for coffee drinkers, though, is that research has found that drinking coffee helps
lower the risk of diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. But women should be careful, as research has
also found that increased intakes of caffeine (over 300 milligrams per day) increases the risk of
a miscarriage or low birth weight.
Caffeine does have benefits when intakes are below the 300 mg per day level: including increasing
your mental acuity, reaction time, physical performance, visual processing and even your mood.
However, consuming more than 300 mg can have the opposite impact on your performance and mood.
The bottom line: As with anything else in life, moderation is always the way to go.
Milk
Milk is the top drink recommendation that includes a wide variety of vitamins and minerals. This
assumes that you are drinking the fat free and low-fat versions. Milk is especially important
because it provides a few key nutrients, like Vitamin D and Calcium, that you don’t get a whole
lot of from other foods. For those who can’t drink milk, fortified soy milk is the best substitute.
There is a lot of confusion about the benefits of milk; here is where the research currenty stands:
- Milk prevents weight gain: no strong evidence exists to prove this claim.
- Milk protects bones: In children, there is a direct correlation between heavy milk consumption
and higher bone density. In adults, this correlation did not exist, probably because adults don’t
drink nearly as much milk as children.
- Experts recommend 2 cups of skim or 1% fat milk each day, the Dietary Guidelines Committee
recommends 3 cups.
You should also consider staying away from whole and 2% milk as these are both high in saturated fats,
a fat that we already get too much of.
Fruit Juice & Fruit Drinks
Fruit juice is the double-edged sword of the drink world. While many have various vitamins and
minerals they also contain as nearly as much sugar as a soft drink or fruit drink. The recommendation
for consuming fruit juice is currently at about one 8oz. serving or 1/3 of your total intake of
fruits each day.
Speaking of fruits, you will only be doing good if you skip the juice and eat the fruit instead.
Fruit juice is processed, meaning that it has lost the original fruits fiber and some of the
vitamins and minerals. Also, a serving of fruit juice has more calories than a serving of fruit.
Eating the fruit will not only provide the full range of fiber, vitamins and minerals, it will also
reduce your calorie intake and help satisfy your appetite.
Fruit drinks should be avoided entirely. Fruit drinks are simply flavored water packed with a ton of
sugar and associated calories. To put it bluntly, fruit drinks take two good things (water and fruit)
and give you a fruity flavored soft drink!
Soft Drinks
Soft drinks provide absolutely no nutritional value (other than calories and sugar) to your diet and
should be avoided entirely. Even drinking diet soda is of no real benefit and scientific evidence
has not proved whether or not drinking diet cola helps a person maintain or lose weight. Recent
research has even suggested that the artificial sweeteners found in diet drinks may actually cause
weight gain. We’ll leave that subject for another time but I would like to add one observation:
how many skinny people do you see drinking diet soft drinks?
Wrapping It Up
In conclusion, it’s important to understand where all the calories in your diet are coming from, not
just the ones from the foods you eat. We all struggle with calorie control and understanding that
nearly a quarter of our daily calories come from the drinks we choose to consume can help us a great
deal. Simply cutting out the sweetened soft drinks and fruit juices can go a long ways towards
helping us reach our goals. Sometimes it’s better to just go back to the basics, the drink basics
that is.
