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Apisara Jaja Yooyuen

Mr. Abel Cadias
English 10 / 10:05
June 20, 2016

The Amount of Sugar in Soft Drinks Should be Decreased

The amount of sugar in soft drinks should be decreased to five percent weight
by volume because high sugar can cause diabetes and heart disease. The purpose of
this research report was to argue that sugar in soft drinks should be decreased to five
percent weight by volume. The importance of this research report is to raise
awareness on the effects of drinking soft drink to health. This pieces of information
found in this research report were based on five sources: First, the article of Health
Safety of Soft Drinks: Contents, Containers, and Microorganisms described about soft
drinks. Second, the article of Kris Gunnars showed the daily intake of sugar. Third,
the article of 10 Ways Sugar Harms Your Health talked about the bad effect of sugar.
Fourth, the article of Barbara V. Howard explained about how sugar effect health
problem. Fifth, the article of Soft Drinks and Disease from Harvard T.H. Chan School
of Public Health showed the rate of drinking soft drinks that causes heart disease and
diabetes. Last, Food Science: The Biochemistry of Food and Nutrition book educated
how sugar cause the diabetes.
Content of Soft Drinks

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Until the present, soft drinks drinking still be talked about in the health
community and policy community. For many years, various studies showed the
contacting between drinking soft drinks with the medical harms and now still argue
about it. However, they focus on soft drinks heath properties by considering to the
industry and consumers such as growing area of functioning of drinks. There are the
laws making sure that soft drinks producers always work follow to the standard of
international. Even the consumers believe that they buy safe soft drink with
guaranteeing quality, they still want to get a good information from product labels
helping them to decide to buy these products. So there is the paper telling a widely
overview of information about the product such available scientific facts and features
of soft drink include health protection. Especially, it show the materials such as flavor,
colors and additive (Kregiel, 2015).
Essential thing that can affect our health is the material of the product. Main
ingredients of normal soft drinks are water, flavor enhancer around 0.5% w/v, colors
around 70 ppm, carbon dioxides around 0.6% w/v, acidulate around 0.3% w/v,
antioxidants which are less than 100ppm, foaming agents for the example saponins
being not more than 200mg/ml, preservatives which are chemicals with the legal
limits, and sweetener around 12% w/v. But at present there are some types of
chemicals that can be used instead sugar. However, the ingredients might be
dangerous to our health if people drink it in large amounts and various people worry
about containing of sweeteners and preservatives during the period that soft drinks are
very popular so there are pressures making people try to decrease the using of some
ingredients such as artificial additives. Sweeteners or sugar is the ingredient that soft
drinks typically cover except the products with zero calorie. There are around 12%
w/v of sugar in soft drink. Natural carbohydrate sweeteners or simple sugar have

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many different formulas for example glucose, fructose which can be found in fruit,
and sucrose or table sugar. Glucose is the type of natural sweetener which is the most
common used, and also it is main source that provide energy. Glucose and fructose,
the two monosaccharides, molecules are bound and become a disaccharide which is
sucrose or saccharose and it can give a sweet flavor of drink (Kregiel, 2015).
Daily Intake of Sugar
The American Heart Association (AHA) reported that in one day men should
eat added sugars not more than one hundred and fifty calories per day calculated
around thirty seven point five grams or nine teaspoons and the maximum for women
is one hundred calories per day which is around twenty five grams or six teaspoons.
Some soft drinks still contain a large amount of sugar (Gunnars, 2016). For the
example, cola is the one product that has amount of sugar higher than the daily sugar
intake.
The table below from American Heart Association:

Group

Calorie of added

Sugar

Sugar

sugar

intake(g)

intake(teaspoon)

Women

100

24

Men

150

36

16

Preschoolers

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Children ages 4-

12

20-32

5-8

Teenagers

Table 1. Daily Sugar Intake, reporting amount of daily sugar intake in each group of
people by American Heart Association

Figure 1. A photo showing amount of sugar that coca cola contain in each product,
taken from: Sugary Soft Drinks and Diabetes (2015)

10 Effects of Sugar
Research by Atkins suggested that consuming too much sugars can affect to
health. First, too much sugar causes blood sugar being not stable. And this leads

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people to have uncontrollable emotion or mood swings, pains, and want to consume
more sugar. Using sugar can make people feel happiness just for a short term and after
that people will hungry and want to eat more sugar. Second, risk of some diseases is
increased by sugar. Foods with high-glycemic level and foods that contain sugar
create obese which leads to heart disease and diabetes. Next, sugar inhibits to the
immune system. It never has the research on human yet but human have done with it
on the animal studies and it show that immune response five was inhibited by sugar.
Moreover, sugar still be used for the source of bacteria and yeast. Then it can risk to
illness and infection because sugar supports these pathogens which cause the
infection. Another effect of sugar, high sugar makes people to get not enough amount
of chromium which is a type of mineral. People who eat large amount of sugar and
refined carbohydrate will rack of mineral chromium which act controlling sugar level
in the the blood. There are ninety percent of American people rack of chromium rated
by the scientists.
The following effect, sugar speeds up body to have aging and sagging skin.
After people eat sugar, these sugar will enter to blood stream. Then, they will attach to
protein during the glycation process and become a new structure molecules. The new
molecules are the things that lead to elasticity losing of aging body tissues in the body.
Moreover, sugar can create dental caries and gum disease which can develop to heart
disease. Chronic infections or the effect of dental problem are the main parts in
coronary artery disease developing. In children, sugar influences to their thinking and
their behavior. The New York City public school decreased sucrose or table sugar
include getting rid of artificial colors, artificial flavor, and preservatives in school
food. Then it increase fifteen point seven percent of the national academic ranking.
Beside, sugar grow the tautness because after the blood sugar swings or not balance

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which come from eating sugary thing, then the stress hormones will be released
because sugar level is controlled to low down. The examples of stress hormones are
epinephrine, adrenaline and cortisol and role of them is to hold it up again by using
energy very fast. But the stress hormones will make a feeling of worries, fretfulness,
and unstable. Last, sugar can replace the necessary nutrients. USDA data state that
people who eat the largest amount of sugar also have the lowest consumption of
necessary nutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin B-12, vitamin C, folate, calcium,
magnesium, phosphorous, iron, and phosphorous.
In an article by Barbara, many scholarships present that sugar consumption
relates to animals hypertension. There is an article about human which show food
containing high sugar increase the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in people
who use diuretics during be diabetic. Eating sugar can enhance behavior and
carbohydrate fuel reserve but it really takes place just only having serious continuous
exercise not below than thirty minutes. Level of glucose in the blood, liver, and
muscle glycogen gives more fuel for contracting muscle. After they turn to very low
amount, then the body will tired and eating sugar might increase blood glucose level
back to the normal very fast. But for simple activity such as walking and cleaning,
eating sugar does not affect the presentation.
Disease Caused by Sugar in Soft Drinks
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health concluded that sugary average
cause heart disease and diabetes. The study basing on forty thousand men during two
decades showed that men who consume sugary drinks average one can a day got a
risk of heart attack or drying from it higher than others. Another study basing on
women that relate to, there are same drinks that affect heart disease. The Nurses

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Health Study survey following the health of women close to ninety thousands people
during more than two decades and got the result that who consumed sugary drinks
above two servings a day got a risk of heart attack or death from it forty percent
higher than women who did not. This study agrees with that people who consume a
large amount of sugary beverages regularly gain weight more than others and have a
smaller amount of healthy food than people who rarely consume these drinks.
Excessively weight or having excessively calories might be a small part describing
how sugary beverages and heart disease are related. Some risk might come from the
effect of metabolizing fructose from sugars or High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
which is used to make beverages sweet. These beverages contain high glycemic and
effect of them on cholesterol fractions, inflammatory factors, and blood glucose
support having high risk of heart disease.
People who intake soft drinks which is sugary drink about one to two cans or
more than that per day will have risk of growing type two diabetes increasing twenty
six percent over than people who seldom consume. Available evidence showed that
sugary soft drinks Involved in developing disease. The Nurses Health Study surveyed
about this by looking at above ninety thousands women during eight years focusing
on heath of them. The nurse said that who consume sugary soft drink or fruit punch at
least one serving per day double tend to develop type two diabetes than people who
do not consume much. Also in the Black Womens Health Study, there are the
enhancing risk of the disease and amount of weight due to increasing consuming fruit
drinks and soft drinks. The continuous revision on African-American women almost
sixty thousands people from all area in the United States. Framingham Heart Study
also report that people (men and women) who consume at least one soft drink have

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twenty five percent with risk of rising trouble to manage amount of sugars in the
blood and quite fifty percent rising metabolic syndrome.
In a Food Science: The Biochemistry of Food and Nutrition book by Mehas
and Rodgers, diabetes is the condition when body cannot control amount of sugar in
the blood. There are two type of diabetes. First, type one diabetes is when the
pancreas not produce insulin which is the hormone act to control blood glucose level
so this type usually be in children and young adults. Another one, type two diabetes
which is more common than type one and took above ninety percent of diabetes case
can occur in everybody causing by high sugar. This type is when insulin can be
produced but not enough or it cannot be used very well, in some case because cell
inhibits the body to use insulin. The problem of insulin come from eating a lot of
sugar because amount of insulin released follow to the amount of sugar consumed to
make sugar level in the blood be in the middle. High sugar make body release large
amount of insulin to low sugar level down very fast and almost below the normal
level. The process is that insulin activates the liver and muscle cells to take away
glucose from the blood and keep it in form of glycogen. After the sugar level goes
down below the normal level, glycogen be took from the liver and be converted back
into glucose released into blood. Insulin level swings follow to sugar level, then longterm effect of it is that insulin will become not function and lead to diabetes. The
diabetes, insulin not function, causes high blood sugar level which is a condition
called hyperglycemia.
Conclusion
The purpose of this research report was to argue that sugar in soft drinks
should be decreased to five percent weight by volume. This research report concluded

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that soft drink containing large amount of sugar has a lot of effects on health. Most
soft drinks contain sugar around twelve percent weight by volume but there are the
daily intake limiting amount of sugars in one day for each gender. Consuming sugar
higher than the daily intake can cause heart disease and diabetes. This research report
recommends further studies on sugar substitute.

References

Atkins. (n.d.). 10 Ways Sugar Harms Your Health. Retrieved 19 May, 2016 from
https://www.atkins.com/how-it-works/library/articles/10-ways-sugar-harmsyour-heal
th

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Gunnars, Kris. (May, 2016). Daily Intake of Sugar How Much Sugar Should You
Eat Per
Day? Retrieved 19 May, 2016 from
https://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/

Kay Mehas and Sharon Rodger. Food Science: The Biochemistry of Food and
Nutrition.
United States of America,(2006). Print.

Kregiel, Dorota. (2015). Health Safety of Soft Drinks: Contents, Containers, and
Microorganisms. Retrieved 19 May, 2016 from
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/128697/

American Heart Association. (2002). Sugar and Cardiovascular Disease. Retrieved 19

May,
2016 from http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/106/4/523.full

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (n.d.). Soft Drinks and Disease.
Retrieved 18
May, 2016 from
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/soft-drinks-anddisease/