Soda · Eco-Chick

Browsing all posts tagged with soda

Bummer! Soda Causes Cancer (Ready to Finally Give Up the Cola Now?)

Drinking soda is often sexualized and sexified, like in this image. But it’s one of the worst substances you can consume on a regular basis. Image via Mark Sebastian on Flickr.

Most of us know that soda is a not-great treat, one that most nutritionists advise us against. But how many women do you know with an admitted “Diet Coke addiction”? Well, it may be way worse than just an attachment to a bubbly beverage.

According to the trustworthy Rodale.com, it looks like unbeknownst to most of us (soda company honchos insist that it’s totally fine to consume it, of course), soda – especially colas like Coke and Pepsi – contain a cancer causing element.

High levels of a carcinogen known as 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MI, are created when certain forms of ammonia are used to create the caramel food dye used in some of the most popular soda brands on the planet. Although CSPI is lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to change label requirements, for now, it’s perfectly legal for soda to harbor hidden carcinogens without any disclosure on the label.
The Food and Drug Administration says the chemical is still safe despite the fact that CSPI projects common levels of 4-MI found in Coke and Pepsi cause 15,000 cancers a year. Part of the problem? Chemicals are introduced into the food system before being adequately tested for long-term effects in humans. “It’s hard to know how serious a problem food dyes might pose to health because the science is so difficult to do,” says Marion Nestle, PhD, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University.

Want more reasons to stay away from the carbonated stuff? It has negative health effects whether you’re over- or underweight, or whether you drink diet soda or the sugary stuff. According to The Stir’s piece entitled “Drinking Soda is Now Just as Bad for You as Smoking” (haha!), “Researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center have found that drinking two or more sugary drinks a day dramatically raises women’s risk for diabetes and high cholesterol. And while women who regularly quaff sugary beverages, like soda, are also much more likely to become obese, even skinny female soda drinkers had a higher risk for heart disease and diabetes.”

Diet soda is just as bad for your health, just in different ways. While it too has been linked to an “…increased risk for stroke and heart disease,” even more disturbing is how artificial sweeteners in soda affect the body in strange ways. According to Rodale’s excellent piece, “9 Disturbing Side Effects of Soda”:

“Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center monitored 475 adults for 10 years, and found that those who drank diet soda had a 70 percent increase in waist circumference over the 10-year study, compared with those who didn’t drink any soda. Those who drank more than two diet sodas per day saw a 500 percent waist expansion! A separate study the same researchers conducted on mice suggested that it was the aspartame, which raised blood glucose levels, that caused the weight gain; when your liver encounters too much glucose, the excess is converted to body fat.”

I enjoy a good root beer – with vanilla ice cream – about once year, and in the summer I love a gin and tonic, but that’s about it for my soda consumption. I usually opt for tapwater with lemon or herbal tea at restaurants. At home I drink Emergen-C in my water, make tea (cold chamomile and green teas) and fresh-squeezed juice.

What do you drink instead of soda?

aspartame, cola, diabetes, health, heart disease, mountain dew, Rodale, soda, sugar, The Stir, women

Ani Phyo’s Healthfully Decadent Raw Coconut Kream Recipe

No Comments

by Starre Vartan · 02/02/11

Dessert has always been my favorite part of any meal (though I do love apps!) and while I’ve managed to tame my sweet tooth in the last few years, I’ve by no means eliminated it. (By tame I mean I can get my sweet-happys from maple syrup, honey, and desserts made with fruit and less sugar.) Frankly, I’d rather carry around an extra five pounds than skip desserts, in all their toothsome glory. But I try to concoct or uncover desserts that are healthy as well as tasty. Just because it’s dessert doesn’t mean that it has to be a nutrition wasteland!

So stumbling upon Ani Phyo’s wonderful raw dessert cookbook (with 85 recipes!) was a coup. As you may already know, raw foods retain all sorts of wonderful enzymes, vitamins and minerals, plus are less ‘predigested’ (I know it’s a bit gross, but that’s basically what cooking is; partial digestion of food before you eat it). That means your body has to work a bit harder to digest, which makes you feel full longer and is actually really good for your gut. All of which means you get more nutrition and eat less when you go raw. While I’m not a raw foodist by any means, I’m going on my 19th year of vegetarianism and love the way whole foods that are minimally processed taste and make me feel. And the more I’ve read about the benefits of raw, the more I try to incorporate it into my diet.
More »

art, book, car, chocolate, Coconut Oil, cookbook, cooking, dessert, desserts, eating, epa, farm, filter, Food, fruit, health, healthy, Milk, natural, New York, ny, oil, raw, raw food, recipe, recipes, soda, sugar, Tea, vegan, vegetarian, vitamins, waste, water, Winter

Reduce: Use a Home Soda Making-Machine

12 Comments

by Melissa Goldberg · 12/21/08

(Image: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

On the homepage of the Container Recycling Institute is a counter clocking how many beverage containers have been landfilled, littered and incinerated in the United States. This year alone the counter has tallied over 125 billion bottles and cans. Amazingly, the average American drinks around 60 gallons of soda each year, sadly, only 33-45 percent of those bottles and can get recycled. The environmental toll from the production, packaging and shipping of each soda can and bottle is incredible – the energy wasted in 2001 to produce 50.7 billion soda cans was the equivalent to 16 million barrels of oil! Our towns and cities are being buried in water and soda bottles and cans.

With the economy in the dumps– no pun intended– the problems arising from these drink containers is getting even more severe. Plainly said, at this moment in time, there is no market for recyclables. Paper, plastic, aluminum, cardboard, all those products we are so proud to put in our recycling bins and put on the curb for pick up are piling up at municipal recycling facilities. A once lucrative business, recyclers cannot find anyone to buy there “junk”.

According to a December 7th story in the New York Times entitled Back at Junk Value, Recyclables are Piling Up, in some areas mixed paper is selling for $20-25 a ton, down from $105 in October and tin is now $5 a ton, down from $327 earlier this year. Some towns and cities across country that used to get paid for their recyclables are either not getting their monthly checks or are now being charged to take the junk away.

I recently spoke with public works representative in my town who told me that our township was getting paid for all our recyclables but the checks had stopped coming. However, they told me that our town is lucky because we are in a contract with a hauler, so our recyclables were still getting picked up. In many towns without rock-solid contracts, recyclable haulers are refusing to pick up their loads.

So now what? Clearly we should not abandon our recycling programs. I know I’ve painted a bleak picture, but it is really important to continue to recycle. However, now more than ever, the first two of the 3 “R’s”s are increasingly more important. We need to REDUCE and REUSE.

Between 1960-79 the average person purchased 200-250 packaged drinks per year. In 2006 that number has soared to 686 drinks (Source: Container Recycling Institute). We need to turn this around and reach for zero new waste. We need to make consumer choices to buy products that are not only recycled and recyclable, but to buy goods that do not generate more recyclable garbage. Sounds hard right? Well in some instances its not as difficult as you might think.

In my house we’ve taken an interesting step in this direction. We drink a lot of soda water (seltzer). At least a 1/2 gallon a day. Now my husband and I used to drink Pellegrino by the case. Doing so would put at least 6-8 glass bottles back into the garbage/recycling stream on a weekly basis. In addition, our sparkling water traveled thousands of miles to reach us. A gallon of Peligrino costs over $7.50 per gallon, much more than gasoline.

Soda-Club Pure and Penguin machines

Recently, we got the opportunity to try out Sodastream Soda-Club, a home seltzer and soda-making machine. The machine is already helping eco-conscious consumers elsewhere – 30% of German and 24% of Swiss households have soda machines and have reduced their waste. With a Soda-Club machine, we drink freshly made, great tasting seltzer and we are drastically reducing waste from store-bought cans and bottles. The machine uses no batteries or electricity, just a 14.5 oz CO2 canister that can make up to 60 liters of seltzer or soda. Empty carbonators are returned to Soda-Club to be cleaned, inspected and refilled with CO2 drawn naturally from the air. Carbonators are reusable as long as they remain in good condition.

We tried a machine that is called the Penguin. This little marvel comes with 2 glass carafes. Other versions come with clear plastic (PET), BPA-free reusable bottles will about 3 years. Each bottle also comes with a special cap with a hermetic seal that keeps your soda carbonated long after you first open it and it really works.

The machine’s also come with regular, diet and caffeine-free flavors to make cola, root bear, cherry soda and many more. In addition they have fruit essence to make flavored-seltzer. If you are purist like me these syrups may not pass the test. But for those of you who still need your soda fix, it beats drinking high-fructose Coca-Cola. Regular flavors have 2/3 less carbs, calories and sugar than store-bought sodas, and contain much less sodium. Both regular and diet flavors do contain Splenda®.

For our household we are sold. We always have fresh bubbly seltzer in the house. Finish a bottle during a meal, just fill the bottle with water, stick it in the machine press the lever and we have seltzer in seconds. According to Carbonrally, we save about 6 lbs of carbon emissions per week (production, bottling, transport) by making our own soft drinks. According to Soda Club, worldwide, they estimate over 10 million units have been sold. That is huge savings worldwide in carbon emissions, bottles and cans.

So if you are like me and want to still recycle but REDUCE your waste dramaticly, I suggest giving a Soda-Club machine a try. The machines range from about $100 to $230 dollars depending if you order just a machine or a machine with flavors. All machines come with CO2 carbonators. It may sound a little steep but the savings on your waste, environmental impact and future costs (pay back depends on how much you drink), it is well worth it. AND Soda-Club is giving Eco-Chick readers a discount. Use the discount code MELISSA at check out you will get an additional $5 off after their current holiday discount, a total savings of $25 per machine.

homemade, recycle, reduce, soda, waste

January Sales are On….

No Comments

by Starre Vartan · 01/07/07

At Sodafine (for all sale stuff, click here)

At By Nature (for all sale clothes, as well as housewares, click here)

At Kaight (for all sale clothes, click here)

At Beklina (for all sale items, click here)

car, clothes, cotton, denim, dress, farm, hemp, Kaight, Organic, sales, soda

A Case of Coat Lust

No Comments

by Starre Vartan · 12/01/06

Confession: I have many winter coats. There’s the 3/4 length periwinkle wool overcoat, the chunky-knit turquoise peacoat, the 70′s butternut squash colored fuzzy cape, the plain black wool number with the best hood ever, and the abbreviated khaki raincoat. I love them all, and wear them all, too.

Obviously I am not a one-winter-coat girl, but I think it’s OK because I’ve had most of my coats for several years, and clean them each Spring to keep for the next year. I always think my coat wardrobe is complete, but then I’m tempted with the likes of these…..