Bursting bubbles

I admit that there are a few stray cans of soda lurking around my house. We had some on hand for a holiday party we threw back in December and, inevitably, there were a couple of leftovers. Since my husband and I don’t drink soda ourselves, I haven’t really thought much about them. Until I came across an article the other day that prompted me to toss the leftover cans directly into the garbage rather than putting our guests in harm’s way.

According to a study by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, sugary drinks like soda may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. And that’s just the grand finale: They wreak a lot of harmful havoc along the way.

The researchers set out to determine whether beverages that are high in sugar impact Alzheimer’s risk when they’re included in an otherwise normal diet. They fed one group of mice a 10-percent sugar solution along with their feed, which is roughly the human equivalent of five cans of soda per day (possibly less, as the researchers noted that mice have a faster metabolism than humans). Another group of mice was given plain water with theirs.

Over the course of 25 weeks, the mice drinking the sugar water had gained 17 percent more weight than the regular-water mice. They also had higher cholesterol levels and had all developed insulin resistance.

And, by the end of the study, the sugar-fed group had much worse memory retention and more than twice as many amyloid plaque deposits in their brains as the plain-water-fed mice. Amyloid plaque deposits are one of the hallmark characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease.

Granted, Alzheimer’s has already been strongly linked to obesity. And the researchers admitted that they can’t be absolutely certain if the sugar solution itself caused the memory deficits and quicker, more severe onset of Alzheimer’s, or if it was a result of the increased calorie intake and increased weight brought on by the sugar water. But this is one instance where it really doesn’t matter which one is the chicken and which is the egg — the end result is the same either way: increased risk of, as Dr. Wright put it last month, “losing your marbles.” Not to mention being fat and unhealthy in the meantime.

There’s no soda on earth that’s worth all that. And it’s not just soda you have to watch out for. The mice in the study were fed water laced with sugar, which is all that many so- called “fruit juices” sold in supermarkets amount to anyway.

While pure, filtered water is your best bet, I’m not sentencing you to a life of boring beverages. Adding a spritz of lemon, lime, or orange juice adds more flavor than you might imagine. There’s also tea and coffee (sweetened with stevia if you like), which are great hot or iced. And for the truly adventurous among you, investing in a juicer to create your own fruit and vegetable juices will leave you with more options than you might know what to do with. Add some sparkling water to your juice creations and you’ve got “soda” that will blow any commercial brands lurking in your house away — if you haven’t tossed them already.

Source:
“Sugary drinks linked to Alzheimer’s, says study,” FoodNavigator (www.foodnavigator.com), 12/10/07