Your thoughts about Sodium???

[swwdts]

I wounder why cola companies add sodium?I drink around (15) DIET 12oz.colas within 12 hours & I changed my fav.brand which has 55mg per 12oz can& I started drinking another brand which had no sodium & lost alot of weight without changing my eating habit? I went back to drinking the old diet drink that I like which does have it & I have noticed the weight is coming back.Sodium is salt.So why do cola companies add salt?? Your info. please

[Resident Loser]

I wounder why cola companies add sodium?I drink around (15) DIET 12oz.colas within 12 hours & I changed my fav.brand which has 55mg per 12oz can& I started drinking another brand which had no sodium & lost alot of weight without changing my eating habit? I went back to drinking the old diet drink that I like which does have it & I have noticed the weight is coming back.Sodium is salt.So why do cola companies add salt?? Your info. please

...there are three things in two combos the body craves and loves...fat and salt (think chips etc.) and fat and sugar (candy and cookies)...any number of reasons to use salt...it's masking effect of the wonderful chemical broth in your diet drinks would be one of them. It's a trade-off...in order to get the proper brain response in the consumer when you futz with one of the three, one or both of the others are usually increased...take a look at what they do to "fat-free" foods...usually add sugar (actually high-fructose corn syrup...oooo, yummy) or salt...don't forget your artificial sweetener is sodium saccharin.

I'll take a guess that the salt is making you retain water...I'd lay off the colas and head straight for at least eight 8oz. glasses of filtered/purified water per day and give your urinary tract and related systems a rest from all those man-made, lab-grade, poisons...

jimHJJ(...not tryin' to be preachy, I just calls 'em likes I sees 'em...)

[kexodusc]

I'll take a guess that the salt is making you retain water...I'd lay off the colas and head straight for at least eight 8oz. glasses of filtered/purified water per day and give your urinary tract and related systems a rest from all those man-made, lab-grade, poisons...

jimHJJ(...not tryin' to be preachy, I just calls 'em likes I sees 'em...)

LOL!!!

Man are you guys off...sodium is as far from being salt as pepper is from being salt for all intents and purposes....it's a very natural and essential element in your body's chemistry. Like anything, too much of it can be bad though. Salt is sodium chloride...that's another beast altogether. The presence of sodium in these things acts more as an acidic buffer than a salt/suger/fat synergistic pleasure enhancer....

Sodium doesn't behave like salt much like liquid hydrogen doesn't behave like water...don't believe, me? Light a match, or take a bath in some liquid hydrogen...
And it's not as easy as running into a Chloride ion in your blood to make salt, either - thank whoever designed the universe for that, or the seas would be made of Hydrochloric acid and Sodium Hydroxide, not salt water!

But sign me up for 2 bottles of "Jim's Salty Diet Cola"...
(c) 1980 The Hanso Foundation

[ForeverAutumn]

I'll take a guess that the salt is making you retain water...I'd lay off the colas and head straight for at least eight 8oz. glasses of filtered/purified water per day and give your urinary tract and related systems a rest from all those man-made, lab-grade, poisons...

Yeah, the water retention was my immediate thought on the weight gain too. I hired a personal trainer recently and she told me to lay off of foods that are high in sodium. Aside from the water retention, it's just plain bad for your blood pressure and heart. She also told me that for every caffienated drink that I have, I should add two glasses of water to my day, to counteract the dehydrating effects of the caffiene. So if your cola has caffiene in it, there's even more reason to replace it with a nice refreshing glass of H2O.

As for the reason that sodium is added, aside from the craving factor, sodium is a preservative. You'll find loads of it in almost every pre-processed food in your supermarket. My suspicion is that the cola companies add sodium to extend the shelf life of the product. Although it's anybody's guess as to what's in that can or bottle that's natural enough that it could possibly go bad.

[kexodusc]

As for the reason that sodium is added, aside from the craving factor, sodium is a preservative. .

Preservative!!! Thanks, FA...that's the word I was looking for...buffer describes how it does it, not what it does....finally that chemistry major paying for itself....

[Woochifer]

I'm trying to cut back on the sodium in my diet (high blood pressure runs in the family, and my last check came up high as well), but it's really hard if you take a look at how much of it is out there. I heard that Americans routinely ingest more than double the daily recommended maximum sodium intake.

The sodium content in diet drinks was a lot higher when saccharine was the dominant artificial sweetener, but diet drink makers went to aspartame (Nutrasweet) over 20 years ago and more recently to sucralose (Splenda). (Drinking 15 Diet Cokes a day probably isn't particularly healthy for the amount of caffeine alone, even if the caloric intake is minimal)

In actuality, 55 mg of sodium in a diet drink is hardly anything compared to how much you get from what you typically eat in any given day, and is no different than a regular soft drink. For example, a 12 oz can of V-8 vegetable juice will have close to 900(!) mg of sodium, a fast food burger will have over 1,000 mg (chicken sandwiches are even higher), an italian coldcut sandwich can have over 1,500 mg, a single KFC chicken breast portion will have over 1,100 mg, a serving of salad dressing can have over 400 mg, and even a 12 oz glass of milk will have nearly 200 mg of sodium! Things that are loaded with sodium include sauces, dressings and spreads, prepared frozen and canned meals, deep fried foods, cured meats, and tomato-based foods.

[emaidel]

Too much of anything is bad for you, whether it be salt, sugar or Pepto Bismol, as the posts here have stated. What surprises me is that no one has commented on the astonishing amount of "DIET" sodas in the initial post: 15 12 oz. cans in 12 hours?

That sounds like enough to kill an elephant, or at the very least a few grown children, whether the offending susbstance be sodium, aspertame, Splenda or cyanide.

[Resident Loser]

LOL!!!

Man are you guys off...sodium is as far from being salt as pepper is from being salt for all intents and purposes....it's a very natural and essential element in your body's chemistry. Like anything, too much of it can be bad though. Salt is sodium chloride...that's another beast altogether. The presence of sodium in these things acts more as an acidic buffer than a salt/suger/fat synergistic pleasure enhancer....

Sodium doesn't behave like salt much like liquid hydrogen doesn't behave like water...don't believe, me? Light a match, or take a bath in some liquid hydrogen...
And it's not as easy as running into a Chloride ion in your blood to make salt, either - thank whoever designed the universe for that, or the seas would be made of Hydrochloric acid and Sodium Hydroxide, not salt water!

But sign me up for 2 bottles of "Jim's Salty Diet Cola"...
(c) 1980 The Hanso Foundation

...it's an alkali metal...along with potassium, magnesium, calcium, litium...ad infinitum...usually sodium in foods is the compound sodium chloride (NaCl), a salt...so don't go getting all Mr. Wizard nit-picky on us with a Eureka! moment...unless we have some chemical equations to dissect, assume the ingestible, food-grade variants of the above mentioned elements to be in their most common applicable form i.e. salts and oxides.

I doubt the list of ingredients on the soda can lists pure sodium as an ingredient as in it's powdered form it is explosive in water and can be poisoinous when mixed with other elements...I'll guess the sodium in question appears as a percentage in the "Nutritional Information" mandated by the government...is it sodium chloride, sodium saccharin, sodium bicarbonate, monosodium glutamate, sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate, sodium malate, sodium citrate, sodium ascorbate...

jimHJJ(...you know that sort of thing...what was your minor?...)

[ForeverAutumn]

I'm trying to cut back on the sodium in my diet (high blood pressure runs in the family, and my last check came up high as well), but it's really hard if you take a look at how much of it is out there. I heard that Americans routinely ingest more than double the daily recommended maximum sodium intake...

It's a tough thing to cut back on sodium. It's everywhere! My husband was advised to reduce his sodium intake to lower his blood pressure. We never paid any attention to sodium before that, but once we started checking the labels of the foods we were buying, we were absolutely shocked at what we saw. Now we buy a lot less prepared food and we cook fresh foods in bulk and freeze them in single servings instead. It's more work, but we both feel like we're being healthier. And Hubby's blood pressure has come down, which is the important thing.

[wayner86]

Na+ is an ion which serves many functions. Blood, heart, nerve functions, much like its bretheren potassium (K). Thats why you have to watch Na intake because an imbalance can throw off normal blood/heart activity. Drinking too much soda (Na content) can cause Na levels to fluctuate and cause high blood pressure. And believe it or not, you can cause the Na levels in your body to fluctuate to the point of inebriation by chugging ~7L of water (although normal people wouldn't attempt this). Sodium is one of the coolest elements you can get your hands on, toss a chunk of this in some water and see what happens, rapid oxidation liberates hydrogen gas and the exothermic reaction ignites the Hydrogen. Pretty damn neat to watch. Our highschool chem. teacher told the class a story about a guy a few years before us that stole an entire .5 kg bar of sodium threw it in his neighbors pool and........it made a crator where the pool used to be. He clearly got caught.

Wayne

[swwdts]

Dang! That was a shock for the neighbor after coming home from work.

[Resident Loser]

...toss a chunk of this in some water and see what happens...

...magnesium and iron filings...

jimHJJ(...an impressive amount of light and heat...)

[noddin0ff]

Just FYI. If you want RELIABLE information about dietary sodium, I would highly recommend the following resource

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/dietarysodium.html

[wayner86]

If you want RELIABLE information

.....whats that supposed to mean?

...magnesium and iron filings...

KMnO4 + C3H8O3 + FeO + Al

also an impressive light show

Wayne

[noddin0ff]

.....whats that supposed to mean?

Not trying to call anyone out. Just trying to highlight a terrific resource, paid for by your tax dollars that is out there for every one to use. The info comes from actual knowledgeable heath professionals and scientists, and is not backed by any commercial agenda. It also provides links to ongoing science and can make pretty clear delineations between what is known and what is unfounded quackery.

If someone wants to know about health issues they shouldn't get all their info from web forums and pseudo 'nutrition' web sites. There's just too much mis-information and hucksterism. It's often hard even for a scientist to sort out fact from fiction. The National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine have got some really helpful info on just about any topic concerning health and health studies. And, it's becoming very accessible.

In aggregate, this thread has lots of pieces of true info, some of which pertains to diet, some pertains to rapid oxidation. Some of the comments are just correlative and anecdotal. It is a good discussion, but wouldn't want to try to educate myself about Na+ from this thread.

[GMichael]

I drink around (15) DIET 12oz.colas within 12 hours

I'm no doctor, but this can not be good for you. Not only is that much sodium bad for you, but look at all the man made chemicals in Diet soda. Not to mention that when I worked in a machine shop we used to use Coke to loosen rusted nuts & bolts that wouldn't come apart. This is not an "old wives tale". This really works. Imagine what it's doing to your insides. Try water. If you need more taste, Gatoraid has a new flavored water line that's not too bad.

[swwdts]

I'm thinking on going back to drinking diet rite diet cola.I lost ALOT of weight when I drunk only that cola for 1year & I did not change my eating habits.I drink 1.5 liters of fruit punch Gatorade daily when I help my neighbors w/ their farm work.I've used Coca Cola to remove green & white build up on old car battery cables.

[Bernd]

I'm no doctor, but this can not be good for you. Not only is that much sodium bad for you, but look at all the man made chemicals in Diet soda. Not to mention that when I worked in a machine shop we used to use Coke to loosen rusted nuts & bolts that wouldn't come apart. This is not an "old wives tale". This really works. Imagine what it's doing to your insides. Try water. If you need more taste, Gatoraid has a new flavored water line that's not too bad.

Here is a 20 can of chemical brew a day guy. Nothing wrong with me he said.