Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
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fitness & health "some of the worst offenders are soda" fat, and they compensated for the loss of taste by adding more sugar in its many forms, including high fructose corn syrup. Some of the worst offenders are soda and other sweet drinks. According to Dr. Lilian Cheung, the Director of Health Promotion and Communication for the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, "There is strong evidence that con- suming sugary drinks – the largest source of added sugar in American diets – is not good for health. Prospective studies, for example, have found that high intakes of sugar-sweet- ened beverages are associated with increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease." She adds that on a typical day, half of Americans consume some type of sugared beverage. The American Heart Association recom- mends that women get no more than 100 calories from added sugar, and men 150. To keep that in perspective, one 20-ounce bottle of Coca Cola contains 240 calories. To make it worse, sugar in liquid form doesn't satisfy hunger like eating solid food, and that can lead people to consume even more calories. Dr. Steppel-Reznik says that higher levels of sugar in the bloodstream can predispose a person to heart disease by causing an increase in dangerous cholesterol particles. This opin- ion is in keeping with a recent 60 Minutes segment entitled "Is Sugar Toxic?" which fea- tured a nationally known researcher who has been looking at the connection between sugar and heart disease. She found that after giving 140 WellesleyWeston Magazine | fall 2012 SORINUS / DREAMSTIME . COM