People are becoming more aware of the calories they intake every day.
Companies are responsible to display the nutrition value for their food or beverage products. Most people focus on counting their tangible calories every day, and forget to include their liquid calories.
Liquid calories are calories consumed through beverages.
Sue Brush, a Food and Nutrition Professor at Fanshawe College, says that “Juice is just as bad as pop, they basically have pure sugars in them. One is more of a natural sugar than an added sugar, however it’s the same caloric intake.”
Tracy Jones, Program Coordinator for the Food and Nutrition Management Program at Fanshawe College, says that a main ingredient to replace sugar in both food and drinks is corn syrup.
Jones explains, “Corn syrup mimics the chemical structure of glucose. So glucose is a naturally occurring sugar in many of the foods that we eat, it’s also the basis for white table sugar. What we did in the 70s is we took corn cobs, and processed them down and refined them to make corn syrup.”
Is this syrup that exists in many beverages and food products good for us?
Jones says, “New research has shown us that corn syrup does not trigger the same chemical reactions in the human body when it breaks it down as glucose does.”
Corn syrup tells our bodies that we are not satisfied, and we end up drinking or eating more to compensate for it.
Brush and Jones say that we have to be aware of the beverages we are consuming every day. Jones adds that specialty drinks, juices or fizzy pops can take up to 25% of our caloric intake for the day.
Brush says that it is best to get your nutrients through whole, beneficial products instead of empty calories in drinks and beverages.
