SECRET 8: CHOOSE THE RIGHT THIRST QUENCHERS


The Promise

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In one week of making this change, you will:

image   have more energy

In one month, you will:

image   drop up to 2 pounds

image   notice an improvement in mood

In one year, you will:

image   lose up to 26 pounds

image   feel great

image   have more energy


Sarah, a flight attendant from Chula Vista, California, stuck to her diet like glue. She had a bowl of cereal with nonfat milk and fruit in the morning. At lunch, she alternated between a turkey sandwich on whole wheat and a veggie wrap. At dinner, she paid close attention to just the right 3-ounce portion of meat with lots of vegetables. She exercised most days of the week and kept her snacks to a minimum. Yet she didn’t lose a single pound. “It was so discouraging,” she says. “After six weeks, I was no closer to my weight goal, so what was the point of even trying!” A glance at her diet showed little room for improvement. She wasn’t snacking on the airline peanuts or finishing off her husband’s French fries at restaurants. She passed my correct-portion size test and had cut out all sweets. Sarah was either lying about what she was eating and how much she was exercising, or she was defying the laws of physics.

Turns out she wasn’t exactly lying, it just didn’t occur to her that the few drinks she had with coworkers after a long flight could possibly do so much damage to her dieting efforts, let alone her mood. Repeated questioning finally uncovered that two or three times a week, Sarah had a couple of margaritas or Long Island Iced Teas. She also was partial to bottled green tea. What she didn’t know was those thirst quenchers added 1,500 to 2,000 calories to her diet, which off set the 500 calories she had cut back each day. “I thought the tea was calorie-free—what a shock to find it had more calories than three cookies!” she groaned. The drinks while socializing and a bottle of tea every day was all it took to erase all the dieting efforts all week long! Like Sarah, it is easy to undo all of your best efforts to be healthy, fit and happy, not by what you load onto your plate, but by what you pour into your glass or chug out of a bottle.

Samantha was a doctoral student with me at Ohio State (in health education, no less!). I’ll never forget the time she casually mentioned to me that she chugged two liters of cola every night while studying. My mouth dropped to my knees. That’s 850 calories of sugar water. If she did that every day for a year, she’d have consumed 310,250 empty calories—the equivalent of 88 pounds of body fat!

A Cosmopolitan or apple martini during happy hour, a soft drink while watching TV or a bottle of vitamin water to quench thirst is such a natural accompaniment to visiting with friends or unwinding at the end of the day that we sometimes forget about the calories we are consuming. Big mistake. Ignoring calories in beverages often undermines our best efforts to be fit, happy and healthy.


The Natural High

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Water is the most important nutrient in our diets. Second only to oxygen, it is hands-down, absolutely critical for life. Just make sure you get your water from no-or low-calorie options, so you nourish your body, mind and mood without packing on the pounds.


Liquid Calories

Not only are some drinks calorific, but those liquid calories are more fattening than calories in solid foods. They fly under our appetite-control radar, so they don’t fill us up. The calories in a root beer or a mojito are calories added to our total day’s intake, rather than replacing some of the calories in solid foods. It’s as if the internal calorie counter in our brains that keeps track of incoming calories is blind to liquids. So when we have a soda, we eat just as much at the meal as we would if we drank water. But the soda added 250 calories on top of the meal, while the water was calorie free.

This explains why study after study shows that the more bottled sugar water people drink in the form of soft drinks, bottled coffee drinks or teas, energy or sports drinks or vitamin waters, the more prone they are to weight gain, diabetes and a whole host of ills. Even one can of soda a week increases the risk for gaining weight. In fact, weight increases for every 3 ounces of soda consumed, which is about three gulps of cola. Imagine what a can or bottle a day can do for your waistline and your mood!

Pop-a-holic

Could you drink 650 cans of soda? No? Well, most people can. Every man, woman and child in the United States averages 54 gallons of soda a year, or the equivalent of 650 cans. At 10 teaspoons of sugar per can, that’s 106 teaspoons of sugar every week just from soda, and more than 49 pounds of sugar every year. Put another way, the average American is pouring ten 5-pound bags of sugar down his or her throat every year, just from soda. If you are like me, you don’t waste your money on sugar water, which means someone is drinking your share. That’s a whopping dose of nutritionally defunct sweetened junk and the number one source of sugar in our diets. Just cutting out bottled sugar-water drinks would make a huge dent in America’s waistline.

From the first sip, soft drinks are ravaging the body—corroding tooth enamel, confusing appetite chemicals in the digestive tract, dissolving bone, filling fat cells and encouraging organ breakdown that leads to diabetes. Every time you have a soft drink, you are adding about 200 extra calories to your day’s intake. Even if you had a measly can a week, that equates to a 3-pound weight gain over the course of one year. In fact, people who drink sugar-sweetened drinks—from soft drinks and bottled teas to sports waters and energy drinks—double their chances of being fat. From a global perspective, introduce soft drinks to a country and within no time obesity and diabetes rates skyrocket.

Even water can pack on the pounds. Fancy bottled water, that is. Waters with added vitamins, herbs and flavorings often replace good old tap water. Just because it’s clear doesn’t mean it’s calorie free! Some vitamin waters supply the same calories as a cola. That’s like having a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a waffle cone! The bottled teas, like the ones Sarah was drinking, unless they are artificially sweetened, add the same calories as you’d get in a side order of hash browns.

Think you’re doing your heart good by drinking bottled tea? Think again. The antioxidant compounds in home-brewed tea that lower your risk for cancer and heart disease don’t make it into the bottle. Tea is a great thirst quencher and perfect indulgence that boosts mood and helps you lose weight—just make it at home and skip the bottled stuff. (See Chapter 9 for more on how tea can help with weight loss and mood.)

What should you do?

image   Skip soft drinks altogether, or drink diet versions of your favorite brands. Even then, limit intake to no more than one or two a week. Besides saving calories, your pocketbook will thank you for it. At about $1.50 a bottle, that daily sugar habit costs almost $550 a year!

image   Never bring soft drinks into the home; save them for special occasions, such as a baseball game or a trip to the movies.

image   Order water or nonfat milk with meals at restaurants.

image   On rare occasions (i.e., once or twice a year) when you do order a soda, choose the smallest size and ask for extra ice.

image   Save your money on the bottled energy drinks and vitamin waters. Instead, carry a water bottle from home.

image   To make plain water more enticing, flavor it with fresh lemon slices or True Lemon powder.

Go for the Thick Liquids

Weight gain is only likely with calorific, clear liquids. Other drinks, especially thick liquids, like soups, smoothies or tomato juice, actually help with weight loss. That’s because they fill us up so we eat less. Less food means less calories means more weight loss. Having a glass of tomato juice before a meal or a homemade smoothie in place of a meal is a trick many happy, fit people use to satisfy hunger and cut back on calories.

Beware of most store-bought smoothies. They typically are loaded with added sugar, up to 13 teaspoons per bottle! They also might contain mood-lowering saturated fats, like coconut milk, or questionable ingredients like royal jelly or ginseng. Check the label for serving size, too. That little bottle you think is just one serving could be two, with twice the calories and sugar. Even smoothies that look healthy can be calorie-packed.

Instead, follow happy, fit people’s advice and quench your thirst with a smoothie made at home from super mood foods like soy milk, berries and oranges. Or drink 100% fruit juice, such as orange, pineapple, grapefruit or tomato. Keep the serving size to no more than 1 cup for juice and 2 cups (16 ounces) for smoothies.

Here are some quick, easy recipes for super mood smoothies:


Is Fruit Juice Fattening?

Fruit juice is loaded with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, as long as it is 100% juice and doesn’t contain concentrated white grape, apple or pear juice. (These fruit concentrates are a way of adding processed sugar without having to put “sweetened with added sugar” on the label.) Juice doesn’t have the fiber that whole fruit does, so it isn’t as filling and the calories can add up if you overdo it. Also, some of the antioxidant-rich phytonutrients are lost when fruit skins and seeds are removed.

While whole fruit is best, juice is good for you, as long as it is 100% juice and the label doesn’t contain the words beverage, ade, cocktail, drink, or blend. Cranberry juice helps reduce the risk for urinary tract infections. Orange juice lowers blood pressure. Pomegranate juice might lower total cholesterol levels. Your best bets include 100% orange juice, grapefruit juice, pineapple juice, prune juice and tomato juice. Limit daily intake to no more than 1 cup (8 ounces).


The Jitter Threshold

I worked with Sasha in Chicago for a Good Morning America segment on the mood-altering effects of coffee. Sasha lived on coffee, drinking up to five grandes a day. She swore she would crumble into a blithering, fatigued idiot without a constant caffeine dose. “I have a high-demand job and I barely have the energy I need to keep up the pace, even with coffee,” she told me. She was convinced she couldn’t survive without caffeine. Yet she agreed to wean herself off the brew, if only for the chance to be on national television. To avoid the deadly caffeine withdrawal headache, I asked her to first cut back by one grande a day. The next week, she cut back to three grandes and made one half decaffeinated. By the end of the third week, she was caffeine-free.

The results were amazing. Not only did Sasha not crumble into a heap from fatigue, she actually had more energy than when she had been living on coffee:

“My energy level has always fluctuated throughout the day. I’d feel energized, then exhausted. That’s when I’d grab another coffee. But once I was weaned off caffeine, I found I had more energy and my energy level stayed consistently high all day long. I sleep better now and my mood has improved. I can’t believe how much better I feel!”

Caffeine is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Yes, it is the jolt we need to start our engines in the morning, but it also fuels fatigue. By blocking a nerve chemical called adenosine, caffeine keeps our nervous system wide awake. It works its magic within minutes of making it into the bloodstream, leaving us less tired, more alert, better able to concentrate and faster to react. Just one small cup of coffee and people type faster and with more accuracy, drive better in rush-hour traffic, perform better on tests and show improved short-term memory.

The high is followed by a crash. The first sign of caffeine withdrawal is fatigue. Within an hour or two of the last cup (the time varies from one person to the next), a person feels tired, crabby, shaky, even depressed. Like Sasha, it is easy to return to the coffee for another pick-me-up, and the cycle continues.

“Caffeine lifts you out of a grumpy state, but drink too much and it actually contributes to depression,” says Dr. Larry Christensen at the University of South Alabama, whose research found that some mood problems are fixed by eliminating caffeine. “We found in our studies on depression that even one week of going cold turkey on caffeine was enough to see a mood and energy improvement in about half of our subjects.”

Try eliminating caffeine for two weeks and see if your mood or sleep patterns improve. After that, you can try adding back a cup or two a day, as long as it doesn’t affect your mood. But refrain from a return to hourly trips to Starbucks!


Healthy Brew

Caffeine aside, coffee offers a few compelling health benefits for your body and mind that give java junkies reason to perk up. Coffee appears to lower the risk for heart disease and for dying from heart disease by up to 24%. The brew also helps lower the risk for certain cancers, such as colon, rectal and liver cancers. Something in coffee, other than caffeine, also lowers the risk for gout and diabetes and might protect against Parkinson’s disease. Coffee also might keep you mentally sharp into your senior years and extend your life.

Coffee a health drink? Coffee is an extract, and like other extracts, including wine, cocoa and tea, it is packed with antioxidants that protect cells’ genetic code or DNA from damage and promote cell survival. Coffee also might reduce inflammation associated with blood vessel damage. Of course, other studies have found that coffee might increase risks for pancreatic cancer and even might increase heart disease risk, so it is premature to recommend guzzling cup after cup every day. Also, how the coffee is made appears important to health, with filtered drip being healthier than pressed coffee.


Less Is More

Caffeine lingers in the body for hours. As a consequence, coffee drinkers take longer to fall asleep, sleep less soundly, wake up more often and wake up groggier than nonusers. A restless night, in turn, is likely to leave you dragging the next day, which is exactly what was happening to Sasha. Lack of sleep tips the scales in favor of weight gain, increasing the chances of packing on extra pounds by up to 70%!

Substituting a cup of tea or a diet Pepsi for an evening cup of coffee will not avoid insomnia, since both the tea and the Pepsi contain the same amount of caffeine as a cup of instant coffee. Finally, coffee acts as a diuretic, contributing to dehydration, which in turn causes fatigue. The irony is that, like Sasha, many people say they have more energy within weeks of giving up or at least cutting back on the very drink they thought was energizing them. (Check out Chapter 10 for more information on caffeine and sleep.)

You can have coffee without sacrificing your mood, sleep or waistline. Just limit intake to no more than three 8-ounce cups a day, and drink those in the early part of the day. Since caffeine can linger for up to 12 hours in the body, a latte at 4:00 p.m. could leave you tossing and turning at midnight. Also, make sure you aren’t overdosing on calories with a beverage that should be calorie free.

Coffee Calories

Coffee is almost calorie free, so it is a great substitute for dessert at the end of a meal, as long as it is decaffeinated! But start adding whipped cream, whole milk, chocolate syrups and other goodies and you chalk up more fat and calories than a big slice of cheesecake. For example, top any gourmet coffee drink with whipped cream and you’ve added 110 calories of fat. If consumed daily, that’s enough to produce a 1-pound weight gain each month. Even if you only have a whipped-topped coffee once a week, you still could gain almost 2 pounds over the course of a year.

From mochas to frappuccinos, gourmet coffee drinks are usually a combination of coffee, sweetened milk, ice and syrups. They range in calories from 120 calories to 500, depending on how much chocolate and flavored syrups, the type of milk and how big they are. For example,

image   A café mocha made with whole milk contains up to 400 calories and almost 7 teaspoons of fat, beating out chocolate fudge cake by 150 calories! Add a dollop of whipped cream and the calories jump to more than 500 and you’ve used up 60% of your daily allotment for fat, or more than 40 grams.

image   Order a Dunkin’ Donuts Hazelnut Coolata and you’ll be downing a 370-calorie drink with 5 teaspoons of fat, which is like having a hot fudge sundae with nuts.

image   Top your latte with whipped cream and grated milk chocolate and you’re sipping more calories and fat than a ½ cup of Häagen-Dazs butter pecan ice cream (or about 350 calories and 20 grams of fat).

You can have your latte and drink it, too, just tweak the ingredients.

image   Sprinkle your mochas lightly with cinnamon and cocoa powder for low-fat flavor, and just say “no” to the whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

image   Order an espresso with a twist of lemon for a no-calorie jolt of coffee reality.

image   Think of your coffee drink as your dessert for the day and have the whipped cream and chocolate shavings, then “just say no” to the ice cream that night.

Liquor Is Quicker

While a glass of wine is one of life’s little pleasures, too much alcohol can be a dieter’s nemesis. It is calorie dense, more fattening than food and dissolves our resolve to eat right.

I’ll Have a Quarter Pounder in a Glass, Please

Alcohol is the least filling of the four calorie-containing substances. (Protein is the most filling, followed by carbs, then fat, and finally alcohol.) At 7 calories a gram, alcohol has a calorie content closest to fat. It doesn’t take a math wizard to see that the calories add up fast. The average drink, such as a beer, glass of wine or shot of liquor, supplies about 150 calories, but that’s just a start. Add sugary mixes or cream to any drink and the calories double or even triple.

You also are probably getting more than you realize. In one study, researchers visited 80 bars and restaurants and found that bartenders were pouring up to 50% larger drinks than the recommended serving size. That means people who follow the guidelines to limit intake to one drink a day may be getting more than they bargained for—more alcohol and more calories.

We often think of beer as fattening, but you’ll gain weight twice as fast on a Lemon Drop or tall rum & Coke as on a can of beer. A large margarita supplies about 450 calories (the calorie equivalent of 18 chocolate Kisses), and a tall Long Island Iced Tea has up to 1,000 calories (the calorie equivalent of a platter of fried onion rings). An apple martini can pack up to 350 calories, depending on the recipe. You probably wouldn’t dream of eating a big slice of chocolate cake with butter-fudge frosting before dinner, but you’ve just gulped the equivalent in calories in that one drink alone. If you were to have two apple martinis and a beer at happy hour, you would be gulping more calories than is in two Quarter Pounders! You also are more likely to overindulge when at a bar, since the loud noise encourages you to drink more and faster.

Alcohol Is Really Fattening

Not all calories are created equal. Unlike protein, carbs and healthy fats, which are essential nutrients, alcohol is toxic. It damages tissues, destroys cells and interferes with organ function. For this reason, the body has evolved a complex system to rid itself of alcohol as fast as possible. It “burns” alcohol calories first and stores other calories coming in from food as body fat. So the fat in a Kahlua and cream, in the butter on bread, or in the fettuccini alfredo accompanying a glass of wine, which in the absence of alcohol might be burned for energy, heads straight for storage on the thighs, hips and waist. As a result, a meal that includes alcohol is much more fattening than any other meal, because the alcohol has added extra calories to the meal and every calorie from the food in excess of the body’s immediate needs is stored as fat.

It Dissolves Our Resolve

Not only does alcohol add calories, it also entices us to eat more. It stimulates our appetite and crumbles our diet guard. In fact, we gobble up to 200 more calories when a meal is accompanied by one alcoholic drink than when we don’t imbibe. Nighttime drinking is the worst, since it is highly unlikely you’ll head from the bar to the gym to work off the calories, so the calories are stacked on top of your total day’s intake.

That’s what happened to James, an attorney in Encinitas, California:

The thousands of calories noshed standing up were enough to cause James’s cholesterol to soar and his waistline to bulge. When he started ordering diet cola with a twist at these events, he also regained control of his appetite. “No one even knew I wasn’t drinking, they thought I’d switched to bourbon and soda. I lost 25 pounds. Better yet, by staying sober, I’ve learned so much more about my colleagues and clients!”

Eating a little extra is not a problem if a person only has a glass or two of wine a week, but Americans average 2.5 gallons of alcohol a year—or two to five drinks a day. We drink to have fun. We drink to relax. We drink to indulge ourselves, to celebrate and to bond with friends. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fine to include a little alcohol in our lives. It might even boost health, reduce our risk for disease and extend our lives (see Chapter 9). But this habit also could undermine your mood and widen your waistline if you are not careful.

Cheers to Your Health

A little alcohol is good for you, or at least it’s good for your heart. It keeps the arteries clear, dissolves blood clots that can otherwise lodge in arteries leading to heart attack and stroke, and gives the good type of cholesterol, called HDL, a little boost. Moderate drinking also might reduce the risk for dementia and vision loss in later years.

Drink too much, though, and the damage far outweighs the bonuses in terms of your health, mood and quality of life. Excessive drinking destroys your body and leaves you crabby, depressed, forgetful, sleep deprived and fatigued. One study found that while a drink a day reduced the risk for dementia later in life, more than two drinks a day doubled the risk. It also can leave you dead if you do something stupid like drink and drive.

Drink too much and you also mess up your nutrition by flushing mood-boosting nutrients out of the body, like vitamin C, potassium and calcium, as well as magnesium, zinc, vitamin A and the B vitamins. Any or all of those deficiencies will leave you mentally muddled, down in the dumps and too pooped to enjoy life.

Anyone with at least two functioning brain cells knows you shouldn’t mix alcohol and medications, both prescription and over-the-counter. Alcohol can enhance a drug’s action, leading to greater side effects. It can cancel out or lessen a medication’s effectiveness, such as in the case of antibiotics. Alcohol can convert medications to toxic chemicals that damage tissues (e.g., mixing alcohol with Tylenol can cause liver damage). Finally, alcohol can magnify the sedative effects of certain medications, including antidepressants.


What’s Too Much?

It’s easy to spot a drunk, right? They drink until they are sloppy drunk. They may have a history of drunk driving or have had blackouts where they can’t remember what they did the night before. They might have a drink in the morning to relieve a hangover. Those are the blaring signs. More often than not, however, the signs are more subtle.

How can you tell if you drink too much? By answering this question: is it interfering with my life, job, social and family relationships or health? If anyone is having a problem with your drinking, then it’s a problem. General guidelines for defining the terms are

A light drinker: No more than three drinks a week (one drink = one 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or 1 ounce hard liquor)

A moderate drinker: No more than 13 drinks a week, and no more than two drinks on most days of the week

A heavy drinker: Has 14 or more drinks a week, or more than two drinks almost every day


The Best Thirst Quenchers

A can of diet pop, a glass of wine or an energy drink a few times a week is fine. But if you find you are drinking closer to the average in this country—a gallon of sugar-filled canned or bottled drinks a week and/or more than one alcoholic beverage every day—then you have ventured outside the thirst-quenching boundary of what happy, fit people have found works for their moods and waistlines.

Moderation is the key. Soft drinks should be an occasional treat, not a daily habit. Have one or two a month, not a day. To maximize the health benefits of alcohol, such as lowering heart disease risk, and to avoid the dangers of weight gain and depression, most happy, fit people limit alcohol to one drink a day or less.

Have your glass of wine with rather than before, between or after meals. A glass of wine with a healthy meal that includes soup, salad, vegetables, lean meat and fruit for dessert combines the ingredients needed to enhance feeling full on fewer calories. On the other hand, drink during happy hour and you’re more likely to munch on a ton of greasy appetizers.

Who Sails Your Vessel?

You have vowed either to not drink alcohol or sugary drinks or to drink in moderation. Sometimes that is easier said than done. Most people don’t like to drink alone, so the social pressure to join the crowd can be stiff. Toasting the birthday boy or ringing in the New Year doesn’t have to mean drinking alcohol at all and certainly doesn’t require getting drunk. Just because everyone else orders a soft drink or a martini at the restaurant, doesn’t mean you should do the same. But what do you do if the only beverage offered is soda or beer?

One habit worth practicing is planning ahead of time how you will handle these key situations when the pressure or temptation to drink the wrong stuff can overwhelm your best intentions to break this habit. That plan might include

Water: The Perfect Beverage

Water is the perfect beverage. It is fat free, sugar free and calorie free, and it works with, rather than against, our bodies’ natural thirst and hunger systems. Replace the typical 19 ounces of soft drinks, energy drinks, vitamin waters or bottled teas guzzled daily by each American with plain water and you will quench your thirst and cut almost 250 calories from your daily diet, the equivalent of a 1-pound weight loss every two weeks, or 26 pounds in a year.

Water always has been and always will be the most important nutrient in our diets. Second only to oxygen, it is absolutely critical for life. We need water for almost all body functions, including digestion, absorption, circulation, excretion, transporting nutrients, building tissue and maintaining body temperature. Everything in the body—from reproduction to mood and memory—depends on water. Water helps ward off fatigue (the number one health complaint in the United States), keeps tissues hydrated and helps prevent headaches, kidney stones and urinary tract infections. It even helps make us smarter, wards off memory loss and improves attention.

In short, your body just won’t work right without enough water. It can’t rid itself of waste products, so toxins accumulate. The cells can’t function properly when water balance is disrupted. Even mild dehydration, such as losing 1% to 2% of body weight or 1½ pounds for a 150-pound person, results in a variety of problems, from headaches, fatigue and weakness to lightheadedness, poor stamina, reduced short-term memory and poor concentration and reasoning ability.

Hungry or Thirsty?

The next time you find yourself tempted to nibble on something sinful, like chips, try drinking a glass of water and waiting 15 minutes to see if the urge to snack subsides.

Why? Some people aren’t in tune with their hunger signals and mistake hunger for thirst, turning to ice cream when what their bodies really want is a glass of ice water. In one study, two out of every three people who had lost weight and maintained the weight loss said they “make a concerted effort to drink water to control their weight.” It tastes good, is refreshing and helps them limit the amount they eat. Happy, fit people also say that drinking a glass of water helps them satisfy the desire to eat between meals when they aren’t really hungry; they just need something to sip on, rather than something to nosh.

The 8x8 Rule

You can’t go a day without replenishing your body’s water supply. Hey, we aren’t camels! Our bodies can’t store excess water for future times of need. What goes out must be replaced ASAP. That means daily intakes are essential, preferably spread evenly throughout the day, not gulped all at one time. Your body processes water slowly. Drink a quarter cup of water every 15 minutes and it has time to make it into tissues. Drink a quart in five minutes and most of the water will be flushed out in the urine.

Follow the 8x8 rule: drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day. That’s about how much fluid your body loses just staying alive. Of course, that’s just a guideline and some people will need more than the basic 8x8, including people who exercise, live or work in hot climates or perspire heavily and women who are pregnant or breast-feeding.

The bottom line: you need at least eight glasses, every day, seven days a week, preferably sipped rather than gulped.

You’ll know if you are getting enough fluid when your urine is pale yellow to clear and you urinate every two to four hours. Dark yellow urine is a sign your body is lacking in water and is trying to conserve. (One exception to this rule is if you take large doses of B vitamins, which can color the urine a bright yellow.)


Water Bottle Blues

Reusable bottles, some baby bottles, plastic utensils and many clear plastic food-storage containers contain an estrogen-like chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA) that has been linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, altered thyroid function, enlarged prostates and abnormal development of reproductive organs, at least in animals. BPA also could have damaging effects on infant brain and nerve development. Even in amounts considered “safe” by the Environmental Protection Agency, BPA might impair brain function—again at least in animals. Hot liquids and food enhance leaching in BPA-containing plastics. For example, boiling water increases leaching up to fifty-five-fold. It is assumed that microwaving in these containers also is dangerous.

The worrisome issue is that a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 95% of people screened tested positive for BPA. The research is so convincing that some countries, like Canada, are taking steps to ban BPA from all products. Currently, manufacturers are not required to label BPA on containers, so there is no way to identify which plastics contain the potentially dangerous chemical. The best alternative is to use stainless steel, glass or plastics labeled “BPA-free.”