Choosing Beverage for Health

Choosing Beverage for Health
People have a surprisingly accurate ability to regulate the amount of food they eat day to day.

If we can eat a very large meal, for instance, we tend to make up for it by eating a little less at the next meal.

But sweetened beverages seem to throw this natural ability out of whack. Different mechanisms control thirst and huger in the brain; we wired to think of solids as food and liquid as water.

When we take in a liquid that’s full of calories, we don’t seem to register those calories in the same way as if they were solid food.

Instead, may people can easily guzzle twenty-four ounces of a sweetened beverage as if it were water.

The frightening rise in obesity among children stems from a lot of different factors. But one of the likely culprits is the trends toward drinking larger and larger quantities of beverage, especially sweetened one.

Many parents allow their kids to drink sweetened beverage throughout the day as a substitute for water or as a way to pacify them with something sweet-tasting.

When we start to think of caloric beverages as food, we can realize how allowing a child to idly sip on a beverage throughout the day can really throw an otherwise healthy diet out of balance, loading it with extra sugars and unneeded calories.

Children do need water to dehydrate them throughout the day. Make water the beverage of choice to quench a child’s thirst.

Other beverages should contribute to a child’s overall diet by providing nutrients – a small glass of 100 percent juice will add vitamins and minerals, while a glass of milk with meals or in cereal will help ensure that our child is consuming enough protein and calcium.

Add these drinks to help balance other foods in the diet, but not simply as a thirst-quencher.

In general, the more we can avoid sweetened beverages, the better.
Choosing Beverage for Health