People food for thought Part V: Sodas
When you go for grocery shopping, other than "Milk", what drinks are always in your grocery list? Sodas? Fruits Juice? Tea?
For us, depending on which store to go grocery shopping for, we buy a couple of Pomegranate tea sometimes. When you look the ingredient list, the first ingredient is tea, and second ingredient is pomegranate juice concentrate, and it looks good drink but since 3rd ingredient is fructose (sugar), I do not think it is best choice of the drink, and it is our occasional drink. If we do not go to store that carry my favorite Pomegranate tea, we get different kinds of tea. So, tea is our staple drink at our house.
For some, the answer might be sodas. Because I see many shopping carts loaded with many packs of sodas.
In Japan, staple drink for many is tea. You can get packaged loose tea leaves, you can get pre measured tea leaves packets, or you can get bottled tea. Bottled green tea at stores is simply brewed tea without fructose. Bottled tea here in the states seem to have more than brewed tea and almost always sweetened tea and nothing like real tea you would taste in Japan. Popular bottled tea brand in Japan is called "Oi Ocha" by Ito En. So, our family had occasional sodas now and then, but most of the times we drank tea. We brew our tea by ourselves.
Regular green tea is a little different from tea at tea ceremony in taste and appearance. Green tea at tea ceremony is green powdered tea. New green tea leaves are made into powder form. The green tea for tea ceremony is called "matcha" in Japanese and, matcha tea is made by adding hot water to the powder and mix well with whisker made with bamboo to proper consistency.
Match tea is very bitter and amount served in the cup is much less than you would drink in tea in the glass. You would find that if you attend at tea ceremony, you will be tasting bitter matcha tea along with very sweet sweets to balance out bitterness and sweetness.
Recently, I came across an article in local newspaper about sodas. Many people would know that sodas are sugary drink but did you know that consuming much less sodas are good for reducing your blood pressure too?
According to article written by Jennifer Motl, researchers tracked over 800 men and women for 18 months and checked how much they would consume sugary drink such as sodas,sweet tea,lemonade, coffee,fruit flavored drink,energy drink, sports drink drinks daily.
They found that those who cut back those sugary drink to 12 oz each day (which means, one small can of sodas a day) saw the blood pressure dropped for 1-2 points. The more they cut back the amount of sugary drink each day, the researchers saw more drop in blood pressure points.
As you may notice, Fructose is the common type of sugar find in sugary drinks. I have noticed that Fruit juice that says "Made with real fruits juice", this high fructose corn syrup were listed as 2nd ingredients and top ingredients were water and as you read the ingredients more to the end, you find more fruits juice in the list. So, package line sounds like real fruit juice might be in top ingredient but fact is, fruits juice is less used than high fructose corn syrup.
To read the full article by Jennifer Motl on sodas, please click here.
On the talk of sodas, my grandmother used to say "sodas are bad for your bones" when she saw me drinking a can of sodas. I can see that sodas are sugary and not good for health. But is it bad for bones too? I wondered and found an article written by Dr Jay Adlersberg at abc website on connection between sodas and bones.
Dr Jay writes, many people who would like to sip a can of sodas but would like to avoid the calories tend to reach out to diet sodas. However, drinking diet sodas is not good either even if choosing the one with less sugar in the drink. Problems in sodas remain because sodas contain phosphoric acid and phosphoru. Also it contains the bubbles called carbon dioxide,which turn to carbonic acid when dissolved in water.
According to Dr Loren Wissner Greene of New York University's Langone Medical Center, Phosphorus helps leech the calcium out from the bone. So, if you drink sodas a lot, not only it is bad due sugar in the drink but also bad for your bone because you get too much phophorus via sodas and reduce the calcium in the bone, and as a result, bones get weaker.
Dr Jay writes, the darker the color of the drink is, you find more phosphorus, which means Root beer, Colas etc..
Now, why bubbles are bad for you? Dr Jay writes that the more you drink sodas, you get more carbonic acid in your body and your body needs to neutralize the acid. To neutralize the acid, body would use the calcium from your bones and it weaken the bone strength.
To read the full article by Dr Jay Adlersberg on sodas and bone strength connection, please click here.
So, when my grandmother said that sodas are bad for your bones, she probably meant that it could weaken the bone strength in your body.
A year or two years ago, a nice tea company opened in the mall near us. The tea company is called Teavana, and we sampled a coupled of tea they offer. At the time, we still had Japanese green tea leaves at home so we did not buy any but, you may find the place interesting to explore wide variety of tea. Since you brew your own tea, you do not have to worry about fructose or high sugar amount in the drink and those tea made from loose tea leaves are served without added sugar, it is good for your body,too.
Many news, articles etc talk about sugar and say that it is bad for your body, but I think that limiting the sugar amount is not the only thing to look into for better healthy diet. Overall diet, life style etc also should be considered. Too much of anything is bad for you and, eating moderate amount of variety of thing would be better.
For us, depending on which store to go grocery shopping for, we buy a couple of Pomegranate tea sometimes. When you look the ingredient list, the first ingredient is tea, and second ingredient is pomegranate juice concentrate, and it looks good drink but since 3rd ingredient is fructose (sugar), I do not think it is best choice of the drink, and it is our occasional drink. If we do not go to store that carry my favorite Pomegranate tea, we get different kinds of tea. So, tea is our staple drink at our house.
For some, the answer might be sodas. Because I see many shopping carts loaded with many packs of sodas.
In Japan, staple drink for many is tea. You can get packaged loose tea leaves, you can get pre measured tea leaves packets, or you can get bottled tea. Bottled green tea at stores is simply brewed tea without fructose. Bottled tea here in the states seem to have more than brewed tea and almost always sweetened tea and nothing like real tea you would taste in Japan. Popular bottled tea brand in Japan is called "Oi Ocha" by Ito En. So, our family had occasional sodas now and then, but most of the times we drank tea. We brew our tea by ourselves.
Regular green tea is a little different from tea at tea ceremony in taste and appearance. Green tea at tea ceremony is green powdered tea. New green tea leaves are made into powder form. The green tea for tea ceremony is called "matcha" in Japanese and, matcha tea is made by adding hot water to the powder and mix well with whisker made with bamboo to proper consistency.
Match tea is very bitter and amount served in the cup is much less than you would drink in tea in the glass. You would find that if you attend at tea ceremony, you will be tasting bitter matcha tea along with very sweet sweets to balance out bitterness and sweetness.
Recently, I came across an article in local newspaper about sodas. Many people would know that sodas are sugary drink but did you know that consuming much less sodas are good for reducing your blood pressure too?
According to article written by Jennifer Motl, researchers tracked over 800 men and women for 18 months and checked how much they would consume sugary drink such as sodas,sweet tea,lemonade, coffee,fruit flavored drink,energy drink, sports drink drinks daily.
They found that those who cut back those sugary drink to 12 oz each day (which means, one small can of sodas a day) saw the blood pressure dropped for 1-2 points. The more they cut back the amount of sugary drink each day, the researchers saw more drop in blood pressure points.
As you may notice, Fructose is the common type of sugar find in sugary drinks. I have noticed that Fruit juice that says "Made with real fruits juice", this high fructose corn syrup were listed as 2nd ingredients and top ingredients were water and as you read the ingredients more to the end, you find more fruits juice in the list. So, package line sounds like real fruit juice might be in top ingredient but fact is, fruits juice is less used than high fructose corn syrup.
To read the full article by Jennifer Motl on sodas, please click here.
On the talk of sodas, my grandmother used to say "sodas are bad for your bones" when she saw me drinking a can of sodas. I can see that sodas are sugary and not good for health. But is it bad for bones too? I wondered and found an article written by Dr Jay Adlersberg at abc website on connection between sodas and bones.
Dr Jay writes, many people who would like to sip a can of sodas but would like to avoid the calories tend to reach out to diet sodas. However, drinking diet sodas is not good either even if choosing the one with less sugar in the drink. Problems in sodas remain because sodas contain phosphoric acid and phosphoru. Also it contains the bubbles called carbon dioxide,which turn to carbonic acid when dissolved in water.
According to Dr Loren Wissner Greene of New York University's Langone Medical Center, Phosphorus helps leech the calcium out from the bone. So, if you drink sodas a lot, not only it is bad due sugar in the drink but also bad for your bone because you get too much phophorus via sodas and reduce the calcium in the bone, and as a result, bones get weaker.
Dr Jay writes, the darker the color of the drink is, you find more phosphorus, which means Root beer, Colas etc..
Now, why bubbles are bad for you? Dr Jay writes that the more you drink sodas, you get more carbonic acid in your body and your body needs to neutralize the acid. To neutralize the acid, body would use the calcium from your bones and it weaken the bone strength.
To read the full article by Dr Jay Adlersberg on sodas and bone strength connection, please click here.
So, when my grandmother said that sodas are bad for your bones, she probably meant that it could weaken the bone strength in your body.
A year or two years ago, a nice tea company opened in the mall near us. The tea company is called Teavana, and we sampled a coupled of tea they offer. At the time, we still had Japanese green tea leaves at home so we did not buy any but, you may find the place interesting to explore wide variety of tea. Since you brew your own tea, you do not have to worry about fructose or high sugar amount in the drink and those tea made from loose tea leaves are served without added sugar, it is good for your body,too.
Many news, articles etc talk about sugar and say that it is bad for your body, but I think that limiting the sugar amount is not the only thing to look into for better healthy diet. Overall diet, life style etc also should be considered. Too much of anything is bad for you and, eating moderate amount of variety of thing would be better.
Thanks for the great info. I didn't know what exactly caused the leaching of calcium from the bones, though I had heard that dark sodas did that. We don't (or at least only rarely) drink dark sodas around here. Usually only if we are at a BBQ and nothing else is available, though usually we will just go for water then.
Hubby drinks a lot of Sobe Green Tea, but we recently found out that it is mostly sugar and water. He and son like drinks so sweet that they almost make me literally sick!
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We used to buy pomegranate tea, and now and then we brew Japanese green tea. Now, we brew loose tea leaves more regularly.
Recently,we found out that the grocery store we go to also offer various kinds of loose tea leaves. Their tea leaves are so fragrant and, we decided to try out a few and so far, we brewed Jasmine tea, Earl Grey tea.
Jasmine tea sure is different taste from Japanese green tea I am familiar with but, what surprised me most was the tea leaves' appearance because the tea leaves were just like small, round balls. Then,when brewed, leaves were unrolled, and it shaped like like other tea leaves. It was very interesting tea leaves.
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