WVUA: Health Matters – Sugar-Sweetened Drinks (April 26, 2017)

April 27, 2017

In the South, we love our sweet tea. But as a whole, Americans are consuming too much sugar, and a good portion of that comes from beverages. A long-term sugar surplus leads to issues like obesity, diabetes and heart disease. University Medical Center Registered Dietician Suzanne Henson said down here, sugar is an epidemic. “It is not unusual to find even infants with sweet tea, sports beverages or regular sodas in their bottles,” she said. “So we have developed a group of young people who are accustomed to intensely sweetened beverages.” Drinking so many sugar-filled beverages at a young age often means kids crave those kind of drinks over, say, water.