You’ve cut back on crisps, curtailed your favourite chocolate indulgence and
banished the biscuit barrel only to find that your weight is still creeping
up. Surely it’s your “big bones” or metabolism that’s to blame. The truth,
however, may be much simpler, if harder to swallow. A recent report in the Journal
of the American Dietetic Association reveals that nonalcoholic beverages
make up 22 per cent of US calories and supply half of the added sugar
consumed by its citizens.
Where America leads, we tend to follow. Your own personal drinks audit could
be both revealing and surprising, and you may just find that your upwardly
mobile weight has at its source a glut of liquid calories we unwittingly
consume.
Take a hypothetical day. You start with the little probiotic yoghurt shot,
which starts the liquid calorie clock ticking by notching up 77. Then there
is the medium-size latte you grab on the way back from the school run or on
the way to work: another 265. Perhaps you have a fruit smoothie thinking
that it is a good way to get one of your “five a day”. Allow another 130
calories per 250ml bottle for this drink. Next comes lunchtime and a can of
Coke, with 205 calories, then a mid-afternoon hot chocolate to keep you
going. Expect 448 calories for a medium-size serving from a typical coffee
shop.
Once you get home you may enjoy a glass of seemingly healthy cranberry juice,
a sparkling elderflower cordial drink or a Duchy Originals Organic Fruit
Refresher with dinner instead of wine, all with 120 calories per average
300ml tumbler. Then to round off the day, a nice warming malty bedtime
drink, with 188 calories for a small mug. While few of us would consume all
of these in one day, you get the picture. Were someone actually to drink
this lot, the calories would top 1,432; more than 70 per cent of an average
woman’s daily needs of 2,000 and over half a man’s daily requirements.
The reality is that many drinks are delivering the same number of calories as
a fairly substantial snack if not, in the case of hot chocolate, a main
course. For 450 calories you could tuck into a medium-sized portion of
spaghetti bolognaise.
That said, according to researchers from around the world, liquid calories
don’t fill us up in the same way as food. Jeya Henry, professor of Nutrition
at Oxford Brookes University, says: “Tests show that people don’t get the
same satiation from calories in drinks as they do when eaten in food.”
He believes there may be a good biological reason why we don’t detect these
liquid calories from an evolutionary point of view.
“Dehydration was the biggest killer when man evolved in the savannah regions.
Fluids rehydrate, whatever their calorie content, and man had to drink
whatever was available, whether it was calorie-free water or calorie-rich
coconut milk. The last thing you wanted was human beings putting the brakes
on drinking. The idea that liquid calories do not feed back into the satiety
centres in our brains makes evolutionary sense.”
As Professor Henry points out, the problem is that evolution is out of sync
with modern life and sociology. “In those days we would have burnt off extra
calories consumed, for instance, from coconut milk. Nowadays, with sedentary
lifestyles, this is not automatically happening.” How many of us, for
example, would hand our children a 500ml bottle of Frijj Strawberry
Flavoured Shake in place of dinner, even though, with 320 calories, it has
30 more calories than two grilled fish fingers, a scoop of mashed potato and
a serving of baked beans?
No one is saying we should give up soft drinks. They can be immensely
enjoyable and thirst-quenching. A glass of fruit juice or a smoothie counts
towards one of our portions for the day. But don’t drink five glasses and
think that’s your fruit and veg for the day. However many glasses of juice
you drink counts only as one portion because you lose vitamins in
commercially made smoothies, and juice made from concentrates lacks the
nutrients found in fibre.
Milk-based soft drinks can also be good, full of calcium and protein. But if
you include these drinks in your diet, it is important to tot up the
calories before you slurp them down, and make the appropriate allowance
elsewhere in your daily calorie intake.
However, there is an advantage to buying drinks in the kind of single servings
mentioned above. They tend to limit your intake to that serving size. The
problem with buying drinks in one-litre cartons or bottles is that, as
research indicates, the larger the portion, the more we are likely to
consume. This holds true for food as well as drinks. In clinical research,
when women were asked to cook a meal for two, they used over 100ml of sauce
for a chicken dinner from a 900ml bottle but only 75ml when given a 450ml
bottle.
Equally, research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic
Associationlast December showed that when offered a fizzy drink in a
360g serving people took a smaller quantity (giving them 128 calories per
glass), compared with 151 calories worth of drink when offered it in a 540g
serving.
The moral of the story is to keep a close check when pouring from litre
cartons. Few of us will serve ourselves the equivalent of the 200ml found in
an individual Tetra Pak carton of fruit juice, but it is worth bearing in
mind that for every 100ml extra you pour from a large carton, you need to
add 50 calories to your daily total.
Pure fruit juices, however, are not such a problem as other more calorie-dense
drinks. A 500ml bottle of Coca Cola contains 210 calories, the equivalent of
breakfast or a light lunch,such as two poached eggs and grilled mushrooms on
toast for breakfast or a tuna salad wrap for lunch.
But soft drinks do not just give us calories. “Energy” drinks also provide
significant quantities of caffeine. Red Bull, for instance, has about the
same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. Given that experts recommend we
stick to five to six cups of caffeinated drinks a day, energy drinks should
be included in your daily caffeine as well as calorie total. “Juice drinks”,
unlike pure fruit juice, which is just the juice, can contain artificial
sweeteners, flavourings and colourings and added sugar in various forms such
as glucose-fructose syrup.
This is rapidly absorbed and is best avoided when following a low-GI diet to
avoid big blood sugar highs and lows.
With vegetable juices, it is also worth noting the amount of salt they
provide. V8 100% Vegetable Juice, for instance, gives us 0.6g per 100ml. In
a small 200ml glass, this means that you are getting a fifth of your daily
salt in drink form. It is wise to account for this when working out salt
intakes (adults should not exceed 6g a day; children aged 7-10, 5g a day,
and aged 4-6, 3g daily).
This brings us back to the old adage — everything in moderation. Follow this
advice and whether you fancy the odd cola, coffee, hot chocolate or
vegetable juice, if you allow for the calories and don’t overdo them, there
is no need to give them up completely.
It is always worth remembering, however, that if you just want to quench your
thirst, tap water is safe, cheap and calorie-free.
The healthy way to quench your thirst
Here are some good choices from Amanda Ursell
Ocean Spray Cranberry Classic Light
60 calories per 250ml
Good because research indicates that cranberries contain the
supernutrient proanthocyanidins (PACS). When drunk daily, these appear to
help stop the E. coli bacteria that cause cystitis from grabbing on
to the urinary tract walls by creating a kind of nonstick coating. By
sliding out of the body before they have a chance to set up an infection,
PACs potentially help to stop an outbreak. Test-tube studies also suggest
that they may be useful in reducing the activity of H. pylori, the
bacteria that trigger stomach ulcers. This juice contains sweeteners and
glucose-fructose syrup, but totally unsweetened cranberry juice is
undrinkable and at least this has less sugar than the original versions.
Cawston Vale Pressed Apple and Ginger Fruit Juice
44 calories per 100ml
Good because new research from Glasgow University has indicated that
there are particularly good levels of the antioxidant supernutrients known
as polyphenols in cloudy apple juice. These, the researchers say, are
lacking in citrus-only drinks such as orange juice and are believed to play
a role in protecting against chronic diseases such as cancer when eaten in
whole fruits, as well as reducing cholesterol and improving circulation. The
ginger in the juice may help to curb travel sickness and nausea associated
with early pregnancy.
Tropicana Calcium
107 calories per 250ml
Good because this pure orange juice base has had calcium added so that
a 250ml glass provides 305mg of this essential bone-strengthening mineral.
It is a particularly good way of getting calcium into teens who do not drink
much milk. 305mg is just under half a teenage girl’s 800mg daily requirement
and almost a third of a teenage boy’s 1,000mg target. Adult women and men
need to have 700mg daily.
Lipton Ice Tea
63 calories per 250ml
Good because it has no artificial sweeteners, colourings or
preservatives and has 35 per cent less sugar than most soft drinks. It also
supplies some of the antioxidants present in tea, which have been linked to
protecting our circulation. The flavoured versions, including lemon, peach
and mango, have the same sugar content and calories.
Skinny Decaffeinated Cappuccino
77 calories per “regular” 350ml cup
Good because the skimmed milk gives us calcium and protein and,
according to experts at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, milk turns
to a semi solid in our stomachs so it requires some digesting. This sends
signals to our brains that milk-based drinks have a slightly satiating
effect. Research also indicates that a cappuccino will fill you up more than
a latte because its froth makes it look bigger. By opting for decaffeinated,
you are not adding extra caffeine to your daily total.
