It’s a drink you can make in three minutes or even less. You can go ahead and make this refreshing orange soda right now, or you can read on before you hit the kitchen.
Soda. Soft drink. Fizzy pop. Did I make the last one up? Who doesn’t love the fizz it makes in your mouth followed by a burst of flavor that coats your tongue with sugar that won’t come off unless you brush it like crazy?
I used to really like soft drinks. As a kid, it was a part of most of our meals, and we regularly had five meals a day; six if you include midnight snacks. Allow me to refresh your memory: breakfast, mid-morning snacks (also called recess in school), lunch, mid-afternoon snacks (merienda), dinner and midnight snack -- just in case you think I’m going bonkers with the number of meals I just mentioned.
I have fond memories of all of those years of sugary (mis)adventures especially that our paternal grandmother baked the yummiest goodies day in, day out. My mother also filled our fridge with leche flan, sweet fruit salads and cakes. And, we had an entire fridge dedicated to soft drinks alone, and no, none of those were for sale. I cower in fear whenever I think about it.The sweet reminiscence will stay locked away forever as I’m not repeating that kind of diet with my family today. There is so much scientific and medical evidence pointing to sugar, and its other forms hiding in many different names, as human’s number one killer. Thank goodness mainstream media is picking these studies up and are beginning to talk about them. I hope they really pound on this one so that more and more people will listen.
If you think about it, a lot of the people you know may have religiously avoided fats, but not sugar, in their diets yet still suffered from diseases known to be “caused by fats”. I have lost family and friends mostly to heart disease, different types of cancer and complications caused by Type 2 Diabetes. My father suffered from diabetic retinopathy and went through six years of dialysis because of acute renal failure, secondary to diabetes. Most of them avoided fats, but were not wary of the sugar hiding in their favorite food and drinks such as powdered juices, ready-mixed coffee (the 3-in-1 variants), “juices” in tetra packs, ready-made iced “tea”, powdered milk and even “health drinks”, soft drinks, sugar-free drinks, just to name a few.
Some of the well-known effects of too much sugar in the body include obesity, diabetes, heart disease, accelerated ageing {yes, those wrinkles you see are not only from the sun}, disruption in the process of cognition in children and heightened stress and its symptoms. Sugar feeds cancer cells, too, according to studies. This is only a short list.
Good Health is a Choice You Make for Your Kids, Too!
But like I always tell people: your health, your choice. Your kids’ health? Still your choice, so why not make better choices for them? Nothing makes me cringe more than the sight of moms in restaurants drinking fresh fruit juices while the kids are given soda. Doesn’t that make you go whaaaat?!
No, kids can’t have as much sugar as they want just because they’re kids. Kids are human beings who acquire taste and develop diseases if we don’t train them early enough to stick to healthy options in food and drinks.
I know people who can’t live without soft drinks while also admitting that they know how dangerous these drinks are. A 12-ounce can of regular Coke, for example, has 39 grams of sugar -- that’s equivalent to 9 ⅓ teaspoons of sugar. You can ignore that, but consider also that that is way, way more sugar than you need for a day.
I admittedly have moments when I crave for a can of soda. It is, after all a taste I got accustomed to growing up. But ever since reducing our sugar intake at home for almost a year now, it has become so much easier to avoid sugary stuff. Our kids have never liked sweets, so when I came home with cupcakes one time, both kids took a nibble and said, “Sorry mommy, it’s too sweet.” Guess who finished all the cupcakes?
My cravings for sweet food and drinks have significantly decreased over the last few months. I now enjoy the natural sweetness of fruits, so the fizz and the burst of orange in this drink is truly heaven sent!
