Soft Drinks - Just Another form of Bottled Water

The Fanatic Cook wrote a blog called How America Eats in which she has a picture of a huge soft drink display in a supermarket foyer. The Fanatic Cook is concerned about the health effects of the soft drinks. When I saw this I started thinking about the environmental impact too. My thought was how is bottling all these soft drinks in aluminum and plastic bottles any different than just bottling water?

The major content of soft drinks is water. Its as much as 99.8% water. The rest is just some added flavoring, sugar usually in the from of high fructose corn syrup, carbonation and caffeine. So soft drinks are just bottled water in an unhealthy disguise of caffeinated sugar water. We still have the problem of transporting all the water in these soft drinks and disposing of all the bottles just like plain old bottled water.

To learn more see the following links:

• Think outside the bottle
• Wikipedia – Bottled water
• Wikipedia - Soft drink

If you still need sugar water, buy powdered drinks like Kool-aid or Gatorade powder and mix them with tap water. If you don’t like straight tap water, just use a carbon filter on your tap. A carbon filter makes tap water as good or better than most bottled waters. My filters work great. Drink the mixture from a reusable glass or bottle.

So do the environment, your waistline and your health some good by cutting out the soft drinks.