Sunday, 14 June 2015

DRINKING CALORIES - THE FACTS

 
 
 
 
HOW YOUR BRAIN RESPONDS WHEN YOU DRINK CALORIES
 
Did you know that your brain perceives food intake differently depending on whether it’s drunk or sipped as a sugary soft drink as distinct to when solid food is actually chewed?  OK, so this requires some clarification.
 
A research study undertaken in an American University** provided respondents with an additional 450 daily calories.  The difference was that half the students had a fizzy drink while half were given 450 calories of jelly beans.  The findings revealed that the students who ate the sweets compensated by unconsciously reducing their calorific intake throughout the rest of the day to adjust.  Surprisingly though, the participants who had the soft drinks actually increased their calorie intake.
 
According to the study findings, it would appear that the body unconscious regulates to maintain food/calorie intake.  So if you indulge in treat foods the body will automatically refuse over-indulgence later to maintain its equilibrium.  This is known as ‘calorie compensation’.  Conversely, the body doesn’t registered the high calorific average of a sugary drink in the same way as it does with food that’s been chewed. 
 
There’s no published explanation as to why this might be.  One theory is that fluid is absorbed more quickly than solids and another reason may be that the brain sees chewing as a distinctly different process entirely than drinking.
 
Of course fizzy soft drinks we now know contain astonishingly high quantities of sugar and so are a damaging source of weight gain in the diets of those who partake of them on a regular basis.  There are other negative connotations too as any Dentist will attest. 
 
You may have seen wide ranging internet sources relating that people who drink zero calorie and diet soft drinks gain more weight.  This is because these websites are not looking at conclusive and wide ranging research.  They are probably more or less all recycling sensationalist and alarmist information from the results of two very narrow and inconclusive research projects undertaken on rats. 
 
However, that’s not to say that drinkers of diet colas etc. don’t gain weight over time as it’s likely that they have other bad snacking habits, the impact of which they are trying to reduce by resorting to zero calorie drinks.  It is very likely that research would find that if these same people switched to consuming only water that they may still gain weight over time unless they were following a wholefood, nutritionally balanced diet. 
 
**Reference:  Study carried out by Purdue University  :  Indiana  :  USA
 
 


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