According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation the average American is drinking 44.7 gallons of soda every year. I was surprised when I read this statistic. Especially since knowing that I will have less than 1 Pepsi Natural a year. Who is drinking 44.7 gallons per year on top of what they are already drinking?
Let's do a few calculations with the 44.7 gallons:
44.7 gallons = 5,721.6oz = 476.8 (12oz) cans.
A single 12oz regular Coke has 140 calories, 39 grams of sugar and 35mg of caffeine.
So that average American is getting 66,752 calories, 18,595.5 grams of sugar (4,768 teaspoons of sugar) and 16,688mg of caffeine.
That is approximately 150 to 200 cups of coffee worth of caffeine.
1lb of fat = 3500 calories, so the average American can potentially gain 19lbs of fat by drinking the 44.7 gallons of soda a year. I often have people complaining that they are putting on 10 or more pounds a year. How much of this is coming from empty calorie drinks like soda?
The Beverage Marketing Corporation went on to say that we Americans are drinking 28.3 gallons of Bottled Water, 20.8 gallons of beer (another high calorie drink), 20.4 gallons of milk, 18.5 gallons of coffee, 11.5 gallons of fruit beverages, 10.3 gallons of tea, 4 gallons of sport beverages, 2.3 gallons of wine, 1.5 gallons of "value-added" water, 1.5 gallons of distilled spirits and 1.2 gallons of energy drinks.
I recommend to my patients that they drink half of their body weight numerically in ounces of water per day. Therefore if you weighed 140lbs you would need to be drinking 70oz of water per day. If you are drinking caffeinated beverages than I recommend drinking that same amount of water afterwards, since caffeine is dehydrating.
There is not much more to say about these numbers. We all know what these drinks are and why we like them. What we don't know is necessarily why we keep drinking them and cannot stop (High fructose corn syrup maybe? Stimulants like caffeine as well?). These numbers speak for themselves quite clearly though. I can only wrap this up by saying that the only good diet soda is NO diet soda.