Kids + soda = bad combination. It's a formula that's accepted pretty much worldwide, considering that soda is made up of everything that is bad for you and your offspring. Banning soda from schools is one way to get it away from children and teens, but does it work?

Nope, says a recent study published in USA Today. Apparently, kids who go to schools without readily-available soft drinks consume just as much of them as kids who do have soda in their schools. There's is a silver lining to this cloud, however -- overall, all kids are consuming less soda, on average.

I think this goes to show that ultimately, it's up to the parents to teach healthy habits to their kids. What do you think?

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We know portion sizes have grown. They've grown a lot -- and many of us have grown right along with them. But DietBlog is providing some fairly shocking comparisons of portions now compared to 20 or so years ago.

Consider these four items -- take-away coffees, potato chips, chocolate milk, and soft drinks. A standard bottle of pop used to be 12 oz, containing about 160 calories, but now, a dollar (or more, depending on where you are) in a vending machine will get you 20 oz and 245 calories. Chocolate milk is worse, having doubled in size and calories.

That's not the worst of it, though -- coffee, which once was only available in convenience stores (do you remember the days before Starbucks?), generally came in a 7 oz cup, so even with sugar, you were just getting around 85 calories. Now, a large coffee is more than double the size and with all the extras you can order, you can take in just shy of 500 calories. But chips are the icing on the big, fatty cake -- snack bags used to have just about 150 calories, and now, some snack bags that come with sandwiches have 500 calories!

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Not too long ago, San Francisco's mayor banned bottled water in City Hall. Now he's taking things a giant step further, proposing that the city charge large businesses a fee when they sell sugar-laden soft drinks. Apparently, the mayor blames corn syrup for the growing waistlines in his city, and says he'll use the money raised to support local anti-obesity programs.

Beverage companies are almost laughably quick to point their finger in a different direction. Saying that if the mayor bans soft drinks, he certainly needs to ban video games and TV as well, they voice their disapproval. I partially agree; I don't think obesity is a single-cause issue, but I do believe that corn syrup in processed foods definitely contributes.

What about you? Do you support fees on unhealthy goods, or is the mayor taking things a step too far?

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Want to lose weight? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe you don't even need to. Or maybe you do, and you just don't feel like putting forth the effort. It's your body, which means it's your choice. Health matters and professionals, barking personal trainers, and even societal pressures aside, your decision to lose weight is ultimately yours to make and yours alone.

But, still the question lingers - How do you lose weight? Exercise works extremely well, but some people are loathe to even imagine themselves trying this route. Eating a proper diet is also a great way, but some people simply enjoy the food they eat far to much to make the sacrifice. Exercising and diet together are a synergistic powerhouse when it comes to losing weight, but if a person is not willing to do one of these two, they're almost certainly not going to do both. So, welcome back to square one - How do you lose weight?

Apart from the methods already mentioned, there are very few ways to drop some pounds. However, if what you are looking for is a workout and diet-free approach that can still at least knock off a few pounds, researchers from Harvard suggest that the easiest way to go about doing so is to replace sugary soft drinks (such as Mountain Dew and Coke)with water or diet versions of these drinks. It appears that sugary soft drinks short-circuit the complicated interplay of hormones that are responsible for telling us when to eat and, more importantly, when to stop eating.

The next time you pick up a can of soda, look at the amount of sugar inside a standard 12-ounce can. Once you do that, you might put the can down and pick up a bottle of water. If you're on a diet or trying to lose weight in some way, I strongly suggest looking at the "Nutrition Facts" label on every can of pop until you make the decision to cut those aluminum can from your diet.

Why the harshness, you may ask? Well, all the empty calories included inside each can of pop don't do a thing for your metabolism or waistline except for exciting both. Not only is pop overly expensive for what it is, but it's simply not a good thing to put inside your body.

The taste is what gets mo of us, though. Water has "no taste" according to many friends of mine, but is far healthier. Pop, on the other hand, has plenty of sugary taste (but is bad for your waistline), and most people choose taste over health. In fact, the rampant obesity in the U.S. can probably be attributed to that statement, unfortunately.

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Soft drinks are very tasty on a hot summer's day -- that is, unless you prefer mounds of sugar filled with empty calories. Advice: drink ice-cold water instead.

But besides being nutritionally deficient in many ways, how about sodas being bad for heart health? According to WebMD, a recent study concluded that the folks out there with a "soda habit" (an addiction, in other words), have an increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Google that term and read about it -- it will make your head turn.

What to do, you might ask? Slowly wean yourself off of sugary soft drinks week by week, even turning to diet versions to help the transition. Slowly get to the all-natural fruit drink or water route, even though boring corporate afternoons may not have the "jump" you may be used to with a super-sugary soft drink. It's hard, but can be done.

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In what should come as no surprise to most, a new study shows that sweet drinks (aka, soft drinks and more) at snack time and right before bedtime are making preschool-age children fatter.

Should two to four year-olds even be drinking sugary drinks? That's a decision every parent will have to make for themselves, but with so much sugar in all of these drinks, it's probably not a good idea for anyone to drink them -- including toddlers.

When preschoolers drink these products, the Canadian study stated that they would be twice as likely to be overweight by age four-and-a-half. Nothing like going into preschool already overweight, huh?

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It takes diligent effort to find beverages these days that are not sweetened with some form of sugar -- whether it's real or fake. Fructose, glucose, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, NutraSweet, Splenda, cane syrup -- talk about being confused!

On top of controlling sugar intake to maintain proper health, a new study suggests that there is yet another reason to avoid fructose (specifically): it may harm those all-important arteries.

The study concluded that fructose-sweetened drinks can promote the development of fatty acid deposits in arteries past what glucose-sweetened beverages can provide.

The next time you whip out that sweet drink, see what kind of sweetener is in there -- and drink at your own risk (for many reasons).

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Read many processed food nutrition labels, and chances are you'll see the ingredient "sodium benzoate" listed. Just like "sodium nitrite" and "monosodium glutamate," this preservative sounds pretty harmless. After all, it has the word "sodium" in it, right? That's quite a misdirection if you've done the research on these substances.

Sodium benzoate was looked at in recent research in Britain and was found to actually "switch off" certain vital parts of DNA (not in humans -- yet). Umm, this is not good.

Although jumping the gun on a news story like this is not a good thing, it almost seems natural that a preservative chemical used extensively could harm a person's DNA. Solution: dump soft drinks (diet and regular), and drink only water, tea, coffee and fresh fruit juice.

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Someone tried to tell me the other day that the tea I was drinking had more caffeine than coffee. I dismissed this statement because although I know regular tea has quite a bit of caffeine, it doesn't cause nearly as much of those nervous jitters that too much java leads to. But I decided to look in to it, and this is what I found -- Black tea has about half the caffeine of brewed coffee, and green tea has even less than that. Also: some soft drinks that you wouldn't think have caffeine do, including Mountain Dew, Cream Soda, Mellow Yellow and Sunkist Orange. So if you're watching your caffeine, cutting out the coffee might not be enough.

Another thing the article points out? A Grande-sized coffee at Starbucks has twice the caffeine of a regular-sized portion of coffee, so don't fool yourself into thinking that one cup actually counts as one.

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Have you ever noticed the high amount of sugar in many foods these days? While processed (white) sugar may indeed make things taste really good, too much intake of it is definitely not a good thing. To understand why, a little research on the overconsumption of refined white sugars could be in order.

This article over at eDiets explains that the average American consumes well in excess of 100 pounds of refined sugar each year. 100 pounds! Yikes -- and my guess much of that is in the form of soft drinks. I've said it before -- the best thing you can do for your health is to rid your daily diet of all soft drinks.

Your body will be glad to get rid of all that high fructose corn syrup and caffeine. Even diet drinks have the chemical aspartame and I'm not sure they are any better than regular soft drinks over the long term. Type "endocrine disruptor" into your favorite search engine a read a bit. Prepare to catch your mouth as it hits the floor, though.

In dietary terms, though, sugar is really just carbohydrates. Unless you crave an abundance of carbs in your diet, read this and then reconsider.

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Yale University researchers stated today that people who drink sugary soft drinks do not appear to compensate by reducing calories somewhere else in their diets. This sounds like common sense, as regular soft drink consumers most likely are not that mindful of caloric intake in the first place. I could be wrong, though.

The consumption of overall calories every day by those that drink sugary soft drinks tends to be more than that of people who don't consumer soft drinks.

As usual, smoke-and-mirrors soft drink industry representatives deflected the issue by says "people can enjoy all kinds of drinks as part of a healthful diet," whatever that means. Perhaps this is why Naked Juice was purchased by Pepsi recently and Fuze was bought by Coca-Cola.

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Are you a fan of soda and soft drinks? Although these beverages taste just about as good as anything, they have just the opposite nutritive effect. In fact, most soft drinks (if not all) are not good for you from a nutrition perspective. That is, unless you have a metabolism that relies entirely on sugar alone.

If you see descriptive words like these: Classic, Effervescent, Exciting, Bold, Sophisticated -- remember, they are just words. It's sad that almost every consumer really needs to do tons of research about everything they eat and drink (if health conscious, anyway), but the reason for the obesity epidemic and record diabetes conditions is due to something. Why not try to get nutrition right regardless?

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Have you ever examined the contents of what is in a normal soft drink? If so, you may have been kind of repulsed. I know I was -- and I used to be addicted to several popular soft drink brands (no names here). After quitting soft drinks years ago and losing quite a bit of weight because of it, I vowed to tell anyone who would listen just how bad the over-consumption of soft drinks can be to weight management.

So, it comes as no surprise that a recent slew of report reviews draws a pretty strong conclusion that shows a very consistent relationship between drinking sugary soft drinks and increased risk for obesity and diabetes.

The amount of refined sugar alone in a single 12-ounce can of most popular soft drinks is enough to give anyone pause. And, I agree completely with Dr. Kelly Brownell, who said that "there is no denying that sugar-loaded soft drinks are having a negative impact on health."

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Every year since 1950 the National Coffee Association (wow, they really do have an association for everything) has conducted a survey to see just how many people are drinking coffee, and to determine the direction of trends. This year, from data collected in January 2007, is the first year that daily coffee drinkers outnumber daily soda drinkers since 1990. And, interestingly enough, although the NCA attributes the rise to the ever-growing number of coffee options available to consumers, it was actually specific to regular coffee only -- gourmet coffee drinkers declined slightly.

With soda consumption causing so many health problems, and even becoming popular even as a breakfast drink, I'm sure the coffee industry is relieved to get this news. But (not to burst anybody's bubble) with coffee at 57% and soft drinks at 51%, they're practically the same!

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