How To Give Up Soda
For as natural and healthy as I try to be in my day-to-day living, there is one health-busting and eco-trashing habit that has followed me from childhood. I’m totally addicted to Coca-Cola, straight up (no diet or decaffeinated versions here.) It’s bad enough that I’m loading up with sugar and creating unnecessary waste in the form of soda packaging but now there are the additional concerns raised by HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup.) So I’ve decided to nip this habit in the bud and give it up cold turkey (or cold coke can.) This is not a habit that I want my kids to learn from me! If your kids are already addicted, check out this post on getting kids of soda and into to a healthier way of life…
How to get your Kids to give up Soda!
by Moni, Vegetarian on the Cheap
I think we all know it by now - sodas are by far the worst part of our children’s diet. They have been implicated in everything from childhood obesity to bone loss. They are a nasty mix of hydrogenated corn syrup, caffeine, carbonated water, phosphoric acid, artificial flavors, artificial sugar and sodium benzoate (yum!), and they are completely void of anything remotely beneficial, nutritionally speaking. So, the task would be to remove this item from our children’s diet permanently - or at least ban it from our house and make soda an “on the road treat” only.
Now, the obvious solution would seem to be replacing soda with other forms of soft drinks, such as vitamin waters, sports drinks or iced tea. Ha! Actually that’s just side-stepping the real issue at hand. In reality, you haven’t advanced at all. All these drinks are still manufactured by the same soda industry - you are still feeding the beast! All these so called sports drinks are still loaded with sugar and many unhealthy ingredients. Your dentist will be forever grateful - you will send his kids to college, and the negative impact on the planet remains the same - all these drinks still come in plastic bottles.
But “no” you say, “Iced tea comes in glass bottles!” - well, apart from the fact that it is very unlikely that you will find an iced tea that does not have high fructose corn syrup in it - the very notion that it would be okay for a little kid or a growing teenager to habitually drink a very caffeinated beverage is simply wrong. Black and Green Tea have been implicated as a growth retardant (great, tell that to your football playing son or your daughter with model aspirations - or vice versa), and caffeine affects their little bodies particularly strong: irritability, mood swings, restlessness, dehydration, adrenal exhaustion, mild addiction are just some of the benefits!
So, what is the solution? Well, let’s look for something that is healthy, cheap and makes a positive difference for the planet. May I introduce: Water and Herbal Tea!
Water: plain filtered tap is just fine - stick it in the fridge. Done! You will have an ice cold, delicious, zero-calorie power beverage. Fill up your kid’s stainless steel to-go canteen and they are all set.
Herbal Tea: comes in a dizzying number of flavors; Raspberry Zinger, Lemon Zinger, Bengal Spice, Mandarin Orange, Peach Passion, Honey Vanilla Chamomile, to name a few. Stick two tea-bags into a glass jar, fill with filtered water, and in about 5 hours (or better yet, overnight) you will have an extremely flavorful, inexpensive, delicious, cold drink - try out all the different flavors and you may be surprised how willingly your kids will embrace this change. Cut out the often funny pictures on the tea box and stick them onto the glass jar - or better yet have your kids decorate the jar themselves for extra P.R. impact. Make sure your tea does not have artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners in it. Celestial Seasonings is a great brand to try - they offer flavor variety packs, which is a good way to get you started.
Try to resist the urge to sweeten the tea - it takes about a week for taste-buds to readjust and that way you can keep the tea calorie free. If however you absolutely must sweeten I would suggest agave nectar or stevia for a low-glycemic natural sweetener and then gradually try to phase them out. Both are available at your health food store.
Also, for the grownups, iced Earl Grey tea or Irish Breakfast tea is delicious and may replace that cup of coffee for a fraction of the cost. Enjoy!
I had a 20-ounce-a-day Mountain Dew habit (yes–shudder–Mountain Dew!) for years. I tried everything I could think of to quit and just couldn’t do it. What worked for me was completely changing my morning routine and replacing the soda with something else that gave me a bit of the sweetness, caffeine and most importantly RITUAL I craved but wasn’t loaded with HCFS. it helped that we moved around that time, and I wasn’t sure where the nearest convenience store was, so instead of running out for a Dew each morning I brewed a cup of black tea and that became my new morning routine/ritual. I do add a bit of sugar, and I drink caffeinated tea, but to me it’s an acceptable tradeoff compared to the nasty stuff I used to drink. After about 3 weeks of tea, I could no longer touch Dew…it just didn’t sound good. I’d gotten to a point where I didn’t even LIKE it but felt that I needed it and could never get enough. Now, if I have more than one cup of tea I get shaky and feel over-caffeinated. And on occasion I’ll have a Coke when out to eat, and it leaves me feeling really weird and fuzzy-headed. So, I know I must have made some big chemical changes in my body.
Great topic!
PS–this is why I won’t let my kids have any caffeinated soda and only non-caffeinated soda, very occasionally during parties. I tell them they’re too young to have a monkey on their backs!
I gave up sodas during my first pregnancy, with rare indulgences otherwise. I’m one of the lucky ones where simply not buying them at the grocery store allowed me to cut the habit pretty completely.
No doubt it helps that I work at home… less temptation.
Can I use these tips on my husband, too?
Congrats on giving up soda. I’ve cut back on Coke by drinking more filtered water. I’ve tried herbal teas, but the taste is lame compared to the wonderful aroma. I keep making changes in my diet, aiming at a healthy lifestyle. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables and take my vitamins every day. It’s made a big difference already. I even found an inch loss plan that helped me lose 40 pounds.
~Marilyn
I’ve finally given up soda after years of trying. Hooked on Coke as a kid. Thought Diet Coke was better but it’s not. Coke Zero became a very addictive habit - 10-12 a day!
I drink mostly green tea now. I have coffee when I really need the caffeine. Caffeine is really nowhere nears as bad as sugar, HFCS, aspartame and the benzene family. I’d rather my kids drink coffee than soda.
But the best substitute I’ve found when I really want a soda is Twinings Irish Breakfast tea ICED with citric acid. Lemon would be good too but I never liked lemon in cola so adding lemon takes away from the cola-substitute effect. I get citric acid at a wine store and put it in a shaker. One cup boiling water, one bag of Twinings Irish Breakfast tea, steep 1 minute. Fill a 32 oz container with fresh clean ice. Shake some citric acid over the ice and pour on the tea. I don’t miss Diet Coke anymore with this.
Hey, nice tips. I’ll buy a glass of beer to the man from that chat who told me to visit your site
i like lv bags, lol, you may try to get one,