Dear Gramps,
Many people avoid drinking soft drinks because they contain sodium. Can you tell me why soft drink makers have to put sodium in their beverages? What is wrong with just carbonating flavored water? I would think they would get more sales if they did so.
Will

Dear Will,
The amount of sodium in most soft drinks is miniscule–amounting to a very small pinch of salt. What people should be worried about in soft drinks is the amount of sugar they contain. Look at the ingredients on any can of pop and you will find that it contains from around 40 to 45 grams of sugar!! The weight of three teaspoons of sugar is one gram. So if a can of pop contains, for instance, 42 grams of sugar, that is 14 teaspoons full!! Could you imagine putting 14 teaspoons full of sugar in your cocoa or coffee in the morning, or on a bowl of cereal?
Furthermore, refined sugar is not really a food; it is an addictive drug. Of course it is highly caloric in content–4 calories per gram, but they are empty calories. There is no other food value in sugar. Ethyl alcohol is also highly caloric, and also has no food value other than the calories it contains. And sugar, as the drug that it is, is also highly addictive. The food industry capitalizes on this property of sugar by adding it in high concentrations to many, many food products.
Gramps