Contents
“Sugar-free drinks do not help you lose weight or eat healthy”
Nutrition
Health disseminators, dietitian-nutritionist Julio Basulto and pediatrician Carlos Casabona, provide in “Drink without thirst” a guide on the healthy consumption of liquids
Haven’t you tried the new “bioregenerating ultra-attractive drink (BUBI)” announced by Julio Basulto and Carlos Casabona? With a satirical, casual and intentional tone, the scientific disseminators start the first chapter of their book “Drink without thirst” (Paidós) with the fictitious launch of a drink with supposed miraculous properties to record the amount of advertising impacts and pseudoscientific jargon that we can suffer every day and that sometimes lead us, as the title of his book “Drink without thirst” says, to drink everything, a lot and without rhyme or reason, thus forgetting one of the main regulatory systems the amount of fluid the body needs: the thirst.
The authors wonder (rhetorically) whether the market release of new drinks Actually alerting to the fact that, in the face of this growing supply of all types of liquids, the recommendations on their consumption are scarce or insufficient, when not erroneous or interested, since many of them show the influence of the “lobbies” of the companies What do you sell juicesrefreshments, energy drinks o alcoholic. «It is not that we believe that the majority of beverages offered by the industry are bad in themselves, what we intend with this guide is to provide the necessary information so that consumers can correctly read and interpret the fine print on the labels of those beverages and not everything that the advertising messages say is created “, explains Carlos Casabona.
One of the issues that most concerns the authors, and they express it in the different chapters of the work, is the excess sugar intake from the liquids that are drunk on a daily basis because, as they explain, its consumption is unequivocally related to the current pandemic of overweight and obesity that the population suffers. This message, which for years has been transmitted by health-related disseminators through social networks (especially in Instagram y Twitter), has come to provoke positive responses from the food industry, either with the launch of new products that include less sugar or with timid or subtle changes in their nutritional claims. However, as Casabona and Basulto point out, this has not led to the desired withdrawal from the market of beverages that continue to include “exorbitant amounts of sugar.” In the spirit of attracting those consumers who do not want to gain weight or who simply want to eat healthier. But we disseminators are clear and so we see in the book citing scientific studies on the matter that people who drink these drinks with synthetic sweeteners not only do not lose weight, but they are not following a healthier diet, “he argues.
The key to this null and healthy consequence of consumption of sugar-free drinks (which, by the way, have been in the market for more than 15 years) is, according to Casabona, in the halo effect that they exercise and that evokes the already popular occurrence of: “Give me a coffee with saccharin and two chocolate croissants, please.” Somehow, as the author explains, the fact of believing that something is being consumed without sugar seems to give us a license to eat twice as much.
To this must be added, according to Casabona, other harmful effects of these sweetened beverages such as their ability to cause changes in the microbiota or even at the metabolic level, as some studies suggest that the pancreas can secrete insulin when the brain tells it that what is being taken tastes sweet, despite the fact that sugar is not actually being consumed and that can generate a certain imbalance .
They deserve separate chapters, with revealing infographics to understand the concepts that they cite, the mention of the authors to the need to choose with healthy criteria the vegetable drinks (misnamed vegetable milks), the worrying rise of energy drinks (although the authors refer to them as “exciting”) among young people and even children and the detailed explanation of the slogan that a piece of fruit is always a better option than a juice, no matter how “natural and freshly squeezed” be”.
Another of the great concerns that Basulto and Casabona address in their work “Drink without thirst” is related to the alcohol, especially among the most YOUNG. «You only have to look at WhatsApp jokes, memes on social networks, summer announcements or sports sponsorships to realize that alcoholic beverages enjoy social prestige and are related to youth contexts, group sentiment , happiness and famous or attractive people », alert Casabona.
In addition, the co-author of “Drink without thirst” explains that some of the most widespread hoaxes or false myths related to drinks have to do precisely with alcohol (such as the alleged “Benefits of beer” or the supposed benefits of the “Daily glass of wine”) and that behind them is the action of the “lobbies” of that industry that, according to Casabona, for years paid different institutions to make public biased studies that either blamed obesity on other factors and omitted the intake alcohol or attributed certain benefits to the intake of these beverages avoiding referring to the toxic and harmful effect of alcohol about health. «If you do the test by searching Google for the words ‘beer and benefits’ or the expression ‘daily glass of wine’ you will find numerous messages or references that refer, for example, to the ability of wine or beer to lose weight, increase longevity, strengthen bones or improve sexual activity. Beer has even been said to be the best drink for hydration after exercise. And that are disparate», He clarifies.
That is why he does not rule out (or rather qualifies that “it would be desirable”) that, over time, alcoholic beverages include, as happened in his day with tobacco, clear messages that warn of the detrimental effect of their consumption on health and not a mere recommendation of “responsible” or “moderate” consumption as is currently the case in Spain.