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Drinks You Want to Avoid

64 views · Published 29 July 2016 · 1:50 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: Lee Health · 2016 · Science & Technology

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Keeping a healthy diet is important to our overall health, but experts say what you drink also plays a big role. 

Julie Hill, a dietitian with Lee Memorial Health System, says it’s the part of our daily diet that often goes overlooked. “It’s kind of something that we don’t think about. Places tend to presweeten things for us for convenience, such as sweet teas and diet sodas.”

She says even beverages like seltzer waters, tonic, and club sodas contain sugar. “The recommended is 35 or less grams of sugar. Typically in a 12oz of coke it’s about 56 grams of sugar,” said Hill. 

Health experts say when your body has too much sugar it can’t burn it off, causing it to be stored as fat. “The other thing that happens is our triglycerides can actually rise. Our bad cholesterol, our LDL can also rise. So it can actually negatively impact our health,” said Hill. 

From your morning coffee, to your afternoon soda, to your evening cocktail, health experts say moderation is key. 

“Definitely take in a lot of water. I think we forget a lot about water. We have the same mechanism for thirst as with hunger. A lot of times we have food instead of water and that can trigger us to eat more when we’re actually thirsty,” said Hill. She says drinking more water during the day instead of sugary drinks can decrease the number of calories you have per day. 

But if you need to treat yourself to a sugary drink, make sure you know what’s in it. “Make sure that you’re reading the amount of servings in the container because a lot of times even a soda may have two servings instead of one serving, so the 12 grams of sugar turns into 24 if we consume the whole container,” said Hill. 


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Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of medical care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For nearly a century, we’ve been providing our community with everything from primary care treatment to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.

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