Believe it or not, but the absolute worst drink for your health might not be alcoholic in nature.
This insight comes via a heart surgeon named Dr. Jeremy London, who recently detailed the 'four things' he religiously avoids to protect his longevity.
Posting on his social media channel, the doctor started with the obvious: smoking, which in a few years might actually be overtaken by vaping.
"Number one, smoking: no question the single worst thing you can do for your entire body," he wrote on Instagram. "Destroys your lungs, causes lung cancer, high cardiovascular risks, heart attacks and strokes, don't smoke."
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Next on London's list was booze, which he went as far as to label 'toxic to every cell in your body'. Such was the liquid nectar's negative affect on his own wellbeing, he even described removing it from his life as 'probably one of the most transformative decisions I've made as an adult'.
Breads, pastas, refined flours and wheats all took a hammering, too.
"Eighty per cent of weight control is diet, 20% is exercise. I guarantee you can out-eat any exercise that you do," London added, before soft drinks were caught in his crosshairs.
"Liquid death," London called the likes of Fanta, Coca Cola, Iron Bru, and Pepsi. "Just don't drink them," he urged. "Period. Done."
Interestingly, the healthcare professional spoke to TODAY in a subsequent interview, where he claimed that his extreme attack on fizzy drinks was an attention tactic.
"I think that soft drinks are just a scourge in our society, and so I was really trying to get some attention," he admitted. "Obviously, high-calorie soft drinks and ingesting a lot of calories that people don't realise they're getting with the sugar-based soft drinks is a big no-no."
Then there's Dr. William Li's proposal that soft drinks are going under the radar a little bit in comparison to other health-threatening products.
Per the ZOE Science & Nutrition podcast, he doubled down on the sentiment shared by London.
"Soda is everyone's favourite whipping boy. Rightfully so," he declared. "The preponderance of clinical evidence, public health evidence, shows that high consumption of soda is associated with everything from metabolic disease to cardiovascular disease to cancer risk.
"But is it the sugar? Is glucose that demonic element that we need to crucify? Answer's no. Soda is not just water, otherwise that'd be just carbonated water. But soda itself has all these additives, colours, flavourings, preservatives, stabilisers... that is accumulated exposure to toxins. It's not one exposure, it's the chronic exposure over time."
Something to think about the next you're glugging down a sweet can of Dr Pepper in the sunshine.
Topics: Health, Food And Drink, Alcohol, Social Media
Dan Seddon