What's your beverage doing for you? Part 1

Have a Coke and a Smile ...

You know it's bad for you, but you drink it anyway. Let's take a closer look at what that soft drink does to your body.

* In The First 10 minutes: 10 or more teaspoons of sugar hit your system. This is 100% of your recommended daily intake. You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
* 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat.
* 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
* 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
* In less than 60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
* In less than 60 minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
* In less than 60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. Likely, you’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. (As little as two if you’re a smoker.) But, hey, have another Coke, it’ll make you feel better.

This is not a slam against only Coke. It’s against the dynamic combo of massive sugar doses combined with caffeine and phosphoric acid -- things which are found in almost all soda.

So how about a nice glass of sugar-free, antioxidant rich iced tea ... it only takes three minutes!