Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how
Speaker 1: much sugar do they really put in soft drinks? This
Speaker 1: question actually came in through email and it goes like this.
Speaker 1: My friend and I are having a debate about soft drinks.
Speaker 1: He claims that there are five or six teaspoons of
Speaker 1: sugar in a soft drink, and I cannot see how
Speaker 1: that is possible. No one, for example, puts five or
Speaker 1: six teaspoons of sugar in a glass of iced tea
Speaker 1: or a cup of coffee. It wouldn't even dissolve who
Speaker 1: is right. This is hard to believe, but neither of
Speaker 1: you is right. There's actually more sugar than your friends suggests.
Speaker 1: Here are two ways to prove it to yourself. The
Speaker 1: first way is to buy a packet of unsweetened soft
Speaker 1: drink mixed like kool aid. They kind of add sugar too.
Speaker 1: When you're making it, you'll be instructed to add one
Speaker 1: cup of sugar and enough water to make two quarts
Speaker 1: or sixty four ounces of kool aid. A cup of
Speaker 1: sugar contains forty eight teaspoons of sugar. Therefore, a sixteen
Speaker 1: ounce serving of one of these beverages contains twelve teaspoons
Speaker 1: of sugar. For those of you on the metric system,
Speaker 1: that's about fifty grams of sugar and half a liter.
Speaker 1: The other way to prove it is to look at
Speaker 1: the calorie count on any soft drink container. For example,
Speaker 1: a typical carbonated soft drink will have two calories in
Speaker 1: a sixteen ounce serving. All those calories come from sugar,
Speaker 1: and sugar contains sixteen calories per teaspoon. By this measurement,
Speaker 1: a sixteen ounce serving contains twelve and a half teaspoons
Speaker 1: of sugar. So go down to the kitchen and get
Speaker 1: out a sixteen ounce glass, a tea spoon, and some sugar.
Speaker 1: Measured twelve teaspoons of sugar into the glass, it's an
Speaker 1: amazing amount. Then multiply that by however many SODA's you
Speaker 1: typically drink in a day. That's how much sugar you're
Speaker 1: consuming through soft drinks. Do you have any ideas or
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Speaker 1: email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
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