Corrosiveness of Soda Essay

Soft drinks, also called as sodas, are one of the most popular beverages that are drunk worldwide. Several brands of sodas, mainly from the brands The Coca-Cola Company, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper-Snapple, are competing in their sales. As of 2012, the leading brand of food beverages is Coca-Cola. Statistics show that more than a billion Coca-Cola products are consumed daily worldwide. That means that we are consuming more sodas than ever before, and many health issues are showing up, including teeth problems. Soft drinks can be found almost everywhere, from sari-sari stores, canteens, stalls, groceries, restaurants, and other places. The average capita consumption of sodas in the Philippines is seven liters per day, which is alarming. Most soft drinks contain high sugar content, as a typical 12-ounce can of soda contains 9 to twelve teaspoons of sugar. Sugar has been shown to suppress the immune system and has been linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypoglycemia, gout, kidney hypertrophy, retinopathy, obesity, hyperactivity, learning disability, viral, bacterial, fungal, and yeast infections, peptic ulcer, hiatal hernias, gallstones, Crohn’s disease, shortened life span, and depression. Sodas also provide empty calories, and that is also not a good point in drinking it. These are calories that enter your bloodstream without even providing vitamins, minerals, or proteins that you need for your health. Also, most brands of soda pop are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has been shown to be more very harmful than sugar. As much as we are more concerned of sugar content and the empty calories that soft drinks have, we must also consider the acidity of it. The corrosiveness of soda is ten times that of fruit juices, as they have this certain ingredient, called phosphoric acid. The phosphoric acids in sodas are used as an acidifying agent to give the sodas their tangy flavor. A latest research in the Academy of General Dentistry even states that this acid reports that drinking any type of soft drink hurts teeth due to the phosphoric/ and or citric acid in the beverages. Although phosphorus is also important to the body, imbalance in phosphorus to calcium in your bones can cause your body to break down calcium from your bones and release it to your blood to balance acidity. Not only does it affect your bones, it also causes  teeth to rot and turn yellow, and can also result to digestive problems. Phosphoric acids in high concentrations are actually used for rust removal, which makes it all the more dangerous to intake. People have been drinking lots of soft drinks each day. We see them buying it from stores everywhere, and they drink it to â€Å"quench their thirst†, instead of just drinking plain water. Drinking water is always the best option in quenching thirst than soft drinks. The average capita consumption of sodas in the Philippines is seven liters per day per person. Seven liters per day per person is quite a shock, because sodas are not supposed to be taken in large amounts, let alone drinking it each day. So that means that if you don’t drink in a day or two, others might be taking twice or thrice the amount of the sodas that you do not drink. Many people just consider the sugar content, and some even believe soft drinks to be harmless. But prolonged exposure to sodas lead to significant tooth enamel loss, a study from the Academy of General Dentistry showed. This proves that we must be careful in drinking soft drinks, even if we do not let the soft drinks stuck inside our mouths. The corrosive effect of sodas start nearly immediately, and it increases within time. Sodas that are dark-colored are the most corrosive. As much as you see the effect that they did to the coins, the effect would be far greater to our teeth, as they corroded tarnish easily. The phosphoric acid content, added by the sugars of these sodas is the root cause of the erosion of tooth enamels. The soda that removes the tarnish the fastest is the most corrosive and dangerous to people’s teeth enamels.