Soft drinks, juices and sports drinks provide huge amounts of sugars to many diets, and drinking too much can cause tooth decay and harm your health. Learn how these beverages can cause tooth decay and what you can do to prevent it and improve your health.
Each day, soda consumption alone provides the average teenage boy about 15 teaspoons of refined sugars, the average girl about 10 teaspoons. These amounts roughly equal the recommended daily limits for teens’ sugar consumption from all foods.
Sugar and acid in soft drinks, juices and sports drinks can set up the perfect environment for tooth decay. Drinking too much of these beverage can contribute to other health problems, such as osteoporosis, kidney stones, and especially overweight and obesity, which are prime risk factors for type 2 diabetes in teens and adults.
Soft drinks are a problem not only for what they contain, but for what they push out of the diet, including vitamins, minerals and fiber. Less than 50% of adolescent girls consume enough calcium daily, which can lead to early development of osteoporosis. Girls who drink carbonated beverages are 5 times more likely to have bone fractures than those who don’t drink soda.
