Drinking Soda Won't Ruin You, But Drinking Soda Without Moving Will
It turns out you can (at least) two sodas a day — provided you walk around 12,000 steps to counteract your Diet Coke habit. Yay?
The New York Times highlighted a study by Dr. Amy Bidwell, formerly of Syracuse University, that tracked the human body’s reaction to tons of fructose, particularly high-fructose corn syrup (soda’s favorite ingredient), and gauged its effects on the human body when it was or wasn’t paired with light exercise.
Drawing on 22 participants, Bidwell gave each two servings of lemon-lime soda per day at 250 calories per drink, which is roughly the amount an average American soda-drinker consumes. Then she asked half of the volunteers to move around less than usual and then asked the other half to move around more, specifically adding another 12,000 steps to their daily routine. After one week of rest, the control groups switched their roles and the movers moved less and sitters moved more.
Ultimately, Bidwell and her research group found that if you want to drink that Coke, you better walk to the store and back to buy it. Getting in 12,000 steps each day works to undo all the crappy things sugary drinks to do a human body, such as turning your intestines into marbled fat depositories.
“I don’t want people to consider these results as a license to eat badly,” said Dr. Bidwell, who is now an assistant professor of exercise science at the State University of New York in Oswego. But the data suggests that “if you are going to regularly consume fructose,” she said, “be sure to get up and move around.”
Image via Getty.