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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how

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Speaker 1: much sugar do they really put in soft drinks? This

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Speaker 1: question actually came in through email and it goes like this.

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Speaker 1: My friend and I are having a debate about soft drinks.

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Speaker 1: He claims that there are five or six teaspoons of

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Speaker 1: sugar in a soft drink, and I cannot see how

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Speaker 1: that is possible. No one, for example, puts five or

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Speaker 1: six teaspoons of sugar in a glass of iced tea

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Speaker 1: or a cup of coffee. It wouldn't even dissolve who

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Speaker 1: is right. This is hard to believe, but neither of

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Speaker 1: you is right. There's actually more sugar than your friends suggests.

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Speaker 1: Here are two ways to prove it to yourself. The

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Speaker 1: first way is to buy a packet of unsweetened soft

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Speaker 1: drink mixed like kool aid. They kind of add sugar too.

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Speaker 1: When you're making it, you'll be instructed to add one

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Speaker 1: cup of sugar and enough water to make two quarts

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Speaker 1: or sixty four ounces of kool aid. A cup of

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Speaker 1: sugar contains forty eight teaspoons of sugar. Therefore, a sixteen

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Speaker 1: ounce serving of one of these beverages contains twelve teaspoons

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Speaker 1: of sugar. For those of you on the metric system,

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Speaker 1: that's about fifty grams of sugar and half a liter.

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Speaker 1: The other way to prove it is to look at

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Speaker 1: the calorie count on any soft drink container. For example,

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Speaker 1: a typical carbonated soft drink will have two calories in

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Speaker 1: a sixteen ounce serving. All those calories come from sugar,

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Speaker 1: and sugar contains sixteen calories per teaspoon. By this measurement,

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Speaker 1: a sixteen ounce serving contains twelve and a half teaspoons

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Speaker 1: of sugar. So go down to the kitchen and get

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Speaker 1: out a sixteen ounce glass, a tea spoon, and some sugar.

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Speaker 1: Measured twelve teaspoons of sugar into the glass, it's an

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Speaker 1: amazing amount. Then multiply that by however many SODA's you

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Speaker 1: typically drink in a day. That's how much sugar you're

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Speaker 1: consuming through soft drinks. Do you have any ideas or

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Speaker 1: suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an

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Speaker 1: email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, go to

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check

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Speaker 1: out the brain Stuff blog on the how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com home page