The idea to research about this topic was influenced by our class discussion about sugary drinks and if they can cause weight gain. Personally, I have always been told that sodas like Coca-Cola and Sprite are not good for you and can cause weight gain. I have also been informed that dark sodas cause a person’s acne to increase more than a clear soda. How much of that is true?

Medical Daily wrote a very informative article about how soda can negatively affect a person’s health. In medical terms, drinking soda, an extremely sugary drink, makes the body create insulin which is “a hormone produced in the pancreas by the islets of Langerhans that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood.” Insulin is created in response to an increase in sugar in the body because without this insulin, the result can be a form of diabetes. Medical Daily writes that when someone drinks soda, “Within just 20 minutes, blood sugar levels spike and the liver responds to the insulin by turning sugar into fat for storage…Soda’s connection to the obesity epidemic is so intertwined, Harvard researchers (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/sugary-drinks-fact-sheet/) have calculated each additional soda consumed increases the risk of obesity 1.6 times.” Logically, consuming soda is not as filling as eating a solid food. The same Harvard researchers explain that, “A typical 20-ounce soda contains 15 to 18 teaspoons of sugar and upwards of 240 calories. A 64-ounce fountain cola drink could have up to 700 calories. People who drink this “liquid candy” do not feel as full as if they had eaten the same calories from solid food and do not compensate by eating less.” So, a person is bound to consume more calories when drinking a can of soda with their meal as apposed to drinking something healthier, like plain water. Therefore, with the amount of calories and fat being created due to the sugar within a soda, it can be concluded that soda does make an impact on a person’s weight gain.

After researching the rumors of dark sodas causing more acne than clear sodas, I discovered that the type of soda does not matter in regards to how a person’s acne may increase due to a can of soda. However, an article on the Fox News website comments that, “many dark colas contain advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. A recent study from the National Institutes of Health determined that AGEs react with proteins, lipids and nucleic acids in almost all skin cells, contributing to and potentially accelerating skin aging.” Overall though, soda actually does not DIRECTLY affect a person’s acne, but its contents and what they do to our body can. Again, the amount of sugar is an issue, and the caffeine as well influences acne. Just like in the subject of weight gain and how the amount of sugar your body takes in with a can of soda, insulin is produced to counteract that amount of sugar which, according to livestrong.com, clogs pores and can cause inflammation in the skin.

There are many ways to test these theories of if soft drinks cause weight gain and an increase in acne. Studies can be shown how soda can affect a person’s health medically, and experiments can also be conducted. Experimenters can create a test where they have a group of people, different ages and races, on the same sleep pattern, eating the same meals with a controlled amount of soda to see who’s acne may increase and if they gain any weight. Testing these theories can be difficult though because other factors may be altering the results. For example, everyone’s body is different and may react differently according to gender, age, race, and even genetics.

In conclusion, it is a fact that soda does contain high amounts of sugar. This amount of sugar is larger than necessary in one sitting for a person, and can affect how the body may react to such an intake of sugar, causing weight gain and increase of acne.