The Drink That's Killing You?

Would you drink a fluid that could clean rust off of metal? That's a serious question. Would you grab your can of WD-40, or any other rust cleaner, off your work bench and drink it? While you're thinking about that, would you drink a fluid that (with electricity) you could use to corrode titanium? What about drinking a waste product of your body, such as urine? What about drinking spermicide? What if you drank a liquid that is everything that I just described?

Well, one of America's most beloved drinks is all of the above. That beverage is soda! I've never enjoyed soda, even when I was a kid. I don't like how it tastes or how it feels in my mouth. Most of all, I hate how lousy it makes me feel after I drink it.

My instincts serve me well too. In the past year or so, I've found out all of those interesting things that soda can do. In addition to all these nasty things, this is the way that many people load several hundred calories into their bodies, often times without even realizing it. Soda's loaded with some serious amounts of sugar.

He might be a bit of a nutcase, but Mike Brown brought up an interesting point. The fizz in soda is carbon dioxide. That happens to be the same gas that your body gets rid of every time you exhale. In other words, it's a waste product that you body actively tries to get rid of in order to function properly. What do you think you're doing to yourself when you throw it back in? Oh, it also forms an acid. Remember what happens to a tooth that's placed in soda for a few days? Yeah, it dissolves. That kind of takes the mystery out of why we're having problems with osteoporosis, doesn't it?

Plus, soda has some other lovely characteristics. A mentor of mine growing up told me that a good way to get the rust off of a shotgun that my dad let me borrow was to clean it with coke. It didn't work too bad either. It must be that phosphoric acid in the soda. That same acid is what can corrode titanium. If you pass an electric current through soda and dip titanium into it, it will permanently rust the nearly-impervious wonder metal.

Oh, and they just found out that regular soda drinkers do have a lower sperm count.

If you want to do yourself a favor for your health, cut your soda drinking back dramatically. It's a nasty drink that just wrecks your body over time and it really doesn't have any redeeming qualities to it. Seriously, if you want to get in great shape, then stop drinking it!