Can Drinking Soda Add To Belly Fat?

Drinking a soda every now and then probably will not impact your overall weight or health. But if you are a regular soda drinker, your habit can cost you in the form of increased belly fat. Sodas have no nutritional value, but each 12-oz. can contains 9 to 10 tsp. of sugar or an equivalent amount of sweetness from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Drinking diet soda will not get you off the hook, either. It, too, can contribute to widening your waistline.

Sugar and HFCS

In the 1970s, HFCS largely replaced natural sugar in the American diet. Nearly all sodas contain this cost-effective sweetener, which many studies link to the obesity epidemic. At Princeton University, in a study published in February 2011, researchers fed rats a regular diet and water sweetened with either sugar or HFCS. Even with equal caloric intake, the rats fed HFCS gained 48 percent more weight than their table-sugar-fed counterparts. Over the long term, the HFCS rats had an abnormal increase in body fat, particularly belly fat, and exhibited the same characteristics of obesity that humans do.

By the Numbers

The controversy over the merits of sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup notwithstanding, they both contribute to obesity. Both provide calories that have no nutrition at all. Even if you drink only one can of soda a day, whether made with natural sugar or HFCS, you will pack on 55,000 extra calories -- equal to more than 15 lbs. -- in a year. Consider, also, that the soda size of choice these days is a 20-oz. bottle and not a 12-oz. can, which adds 66 percent more empty calories for a total of 25 lbs. added to your weight over a year's time.

Diet Soda

Though not conclusive or completely understood, findings are suggestive that artificial sweeteners in diet soda, such as aspartame and sucralose, also contribute to obesity. In a study presented to the American Diabetes Association in June 2011, researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio found that despite zero calories, diet soda drinkers increased their waist sizes 70 percent over those who did not drink diet soda. In a study similar to that conducted at Princeton, Purdue University researchers found that rats fed artificial sweeteners consistently consumed more calories than those fed high-calorie sweeteners, such as sugar.

Metabolic Syndrome

Drinking too much soda over a long period of time can lead or contribute to metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome occurs if you have at least three or more conditions related to your metabolism at the same time, including obesity, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and abnormal cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Metabolic syndrome then puts you at greater risk for diabetes, heart attack and stroke. To avoid increased belly fat and its medical consequences, cut back on your soda consumption and drink one only occasionally.