You鈥檝e been drinking a lot of sodas and eating more candy than usual, thanks to job stress, family stress and traffic stress. Now you鈥檙e looking at the scale and not liking the message it鈥檚 sending you. It鈥檚 time to shape up, lose weight and get back into the bikini or shorts before anyone notices those extra bits of flab here, and especially there, on your body.
You resolve to stop by the health food store and stock up on diet drink powder and a six-pack of canned diet formula on the way to work. Before you make that investment, though, you may want to consider just what you鈥檙e getting in that barrel of powder or those cans of tasty liquid.
鈥淚f you look at the various weight-loss products offered in health food stores, they are mostly sugar, $16 or so for a big can of sugar and vitamins,鈥� says Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the Nutritional Sciences Program in the 91探花School of Public Health and Community Medicine and member at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. 鈥淲hen you decide to buy a product for weight loss, check the label!鈥�
Just what is the difference between soft drinks and candy, which cause weight gain, and diet drinks, which supposedly cause weight loss? The main issue seems to be price, as well as the amount of sugar and the way it is packaged and marketed.
鈥淚n a bottle of soft drink there are 225 grams of sugar for about 89 cents. In a serving of a diet powder-based drink, 267 grams of sugar, at a much higher price,鈥� Drewnowski says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 interesting that we behave as if cheap sugar makes us fat, but expensive sugar in a diet drink makes us slim. How come? It鈥檚 still sugar, with a small amount of fiber.鈥�
This doesn鈥檛 mean that all sugar is bad. Sugar is vital for the proper functioning of the body: food is processed into sugar by the body to nourish cells so that they can perform properly. Too much sugar is converted to fat. Drewnowski says that we have a physiological drive to consume sugar that goes all the way back to our caveman ancestors. They knew that the denser the calories, the easier it was to fuel up for those long hunts, even if they weren鈥檛 able to put the concept into words. We鈥檝e kept the craving for sweets and fats, but discarded the rugged lifestyle that hard-wired that need for calories into our bodies.
The answer for weight maintenance is moderation, while the answer for weight loss is cutting back slightly on calories while adding moderate exercise to your day. Dropping as few as 500 calories a day and walking for as little as 10 minutes three times a day can make a gradual and important difference in your life and in your total health picture, without completely giving up everything that you like to eat, including smaller servings of candy or soft drinks.