Thanks to the considerable awareness about weight loss generated by experts and media alike, almost all of those so-called ‘bad foods’ now have seemingly ‘good alternatives’ so that you could enjoy your favorite foods without getting fatter.
So we have diet drinks to replace fizzy drinks and diet soda to replace the original sweet soda. But how healthy are these diet alternatives? In this article we shall take a closer look at that.
The Problem with Diet Soda
Take diet soda for example. It may contain fewer calories than the original soda, but they are also loaded with lots of caffeine which makes equally harmful.
In case you don’t know already, caffeine is a diuretic that makes us dehydrated by flushing out all the water from our body.
The more caffeine we consume, the more our body would become dehydrated. But how would you know if your body is dehydrated or not? Here are some quick symptoms to check out.
1. Fatigue: Are you always tired? Do you feel unable to concentrate on any one thing? Do you tend to feel sleepy even after sleeping for a long while? Do you feel that you lack the energy required to perform your daily chores? Believe it or not, they are all symptoms of dehydration.
2. Headaches: We all know how annoying headaches could be. But do you know why they happen? Very often, when our brain is deprived of even a little amount of water, we suffer from headaches. Keep in mind that almost two-thirds of our brain is composed of nothing but water.
3. Difficulty in passing bowels: When water gets depleted from your body, your stool gets harder and harder, consequently making it difficult for you to pass the bowels. You would notice that almost always a patient suffering from constipation is advised to drink lots of water and fruits; while water keeps the stool soft, fiber pushes the bowels so hard that you should have no difficulty passing them at all.
4. Dark-colored urine: Do you urinate less than usual? Is the color of your urine dark? This is yet another pointer to the fact that your body is dehydrated and it needs water supply. When your body’s water level is reduced to an abnormally low level, the kidneys find it difficult to flush out the toxins and other waste products properly from our body and consequently our urine becomes abnormally dark.
5. Bad breath: If you have tried high and low and are still unable to get rid of your bad breath, consider increasing your water intake. Bad breath is caused by bacteria, and water helps flush out these bacteria from your mouth, thereby ridding you of bad breath.
As you can see, diet sodas are not a good choice because they could make your kids’ body dry as hell. If you really want to control your kids” soda intake, persuade them to drink water more often.