New York City working to ban Large Sodas
It is widely known that sugary soft drinks are an unhealthy part of the average American’s diet. The high fructose corn syrup used to produce these drinks simply supply the body with empty calories. These simple sugars are broken down in the body in one step. The blood sugar rises, insulin comes into the bloodstream and carries the excess carbohydrates into the fat cells.
If carbohydrates are always readily available the human body will run exclusively on these as a source of energy. The body will do this because it is much easier to break down simple sugars for fuel that it is to breakdown and use proteins or fats. The addition of the empty calories from sodas keeps the body’s demand for energy fulfilled, and surpassed.
As an example let us say we order a hamburger, and a large coke. We consume the burger and the coke. The body sees what we have consumed and uses the simple sugars from the soda right away. A portion of the burger is broken down and utilized as well. However because the body has so much extra sugar to deal with it sends out the insulin to encapsulate the sugars to place in our fat cells for later use.
The problem comes in when the fat cells also take in the excess unused portion of the burger, so our fat cells have excess sugars, fat and sodium. The body will only use fat as a source of energy if there are no other immediate alternatives available. Consuming large amounts of sugary sodas make it so that our fat cells act like a check valve. Our cells only allow for storage going in and the excess energy is never taken back out.
This is widely known. New York City is preparing to launch a ban on large soft drinks in fast food restaurants, convenience stores, and movie theaters. Studies have shown that the ban will likely result in the average consumer consuming 73 calories less than if the ban wasn’t put into effect.