Sweet Tea Vs. Soda Pop | Livestrong.com (2024)

Sweet tea is filled with sugar that can be bad for your health.

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Choosing sweet tea over soda may seem like a healthier choice. It's understandable that you may mistake sweet tea as the better option, but when it comes down to calorie and sugar content and long-term health effects, you're better off abandoning both for water or unsweetened coffee and tea.

Both soda and sweet tea are sugar-sweetened beverages, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that may have negative effects on your health if consumed regularly.

You don't have to do a lot of research to find bad press for sugar-sweetened soda. Soda offers no nutrients and contains a lot of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, which seems to be linked to the high obesity rates in the United States, notes the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

There are 65 grams of sugar in a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. That equals more than 15 teaspoons of the sweet stuff. The American Heart Association recommends you limit your intake to 6 to 9 teaspoons, depending on your gender, to protect your health.

In addition to sugar, soda contains artificial and natural flavors as well as citric acid and phosphoric acid, which are mostly chemicals that provide no nutritional value.

Studies also link chronic soda consumption with health problems. An animal study published in ‌Molecular Medicine Reports‌ in June 2016 showed that rats given Coca-Cola and Pepsi showed increased oxidative stress on their bones, livers and kidneys.

And an article in ‌Current Developments in Nutrition‌, published in May 2018, confirmed that sugar-sweetened soda consumption was positively associated with incidents of diabetes; basically, the more soda you drink, the greater your risk of developing the chronic disease. The researchers also found that switching to diet versions may not be any better either when it comes to diabetes risk. The correlation between diet soda consumption and elevated risk of diabetes was also strong.

Soda consumption is associated with less-than-healthy behaviors, explains the CDC. Frequent consumers of soda tend to be smokers, people with irregular sleep habits, those with sedentary lifestyles, fast-food consumers and individuals who don't eat regular servings of fruit. Soda often accompanies teens who overdo screen time, too.

According to the American Tea Association, on any given day, 159 million Americans are drinking tea, including hot, iced, sweet and unsweetened. Approximately 75 to 80 percent of tea consumed in America is iced. With all the negatives surrounding soda, tea seems a better option, and it can be — as long as it's unsweetened.

Tea is a natural product that keeps you hydrated with very few calories. It also contains flavonoids, compounds that have antioxidant properties. Flavonoids can neutralize free radicals, which increase inflammation in your body and contribute to chronic disease.

The American Tea Association states that unsweetened tea has numerous health benefits, including:

Sweet tea, however, is not the product evaluated for providing positive health benefits. Sweet tea actually falls into the category of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), as defined by the CDC, and is comparable to soda when it comes to sugar content and negative health effect.

Sweet tea may have marginally less sugar and fewer calories than soda, but it can be just as bad in the long run when it comes to your waistline, chronic disease development and well-being. The organization We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children's Activity & Nutrition) states that an average 12-ounce serving of soda contains 10 1/4 teaspoons of sugar, amounting to 41 grams and 150 calories. The same amount of sweet tea contains 33 grams of sugar — or 8 1/2 teaspoons — and 120 calories.

Sweet tea vs. soda becomes irrelevant when considering the effect of these beverages on health since they both contain similar calories and added sugar.

According to research published in ‌Obesity Facts‌ in February 2018, SSB consumption greatly increases your risk of obesity. The scientists recommend, given the evidence gathered from more than 30 studies, that public health policies discourage the consumption of these drinks and encourage healthy options, such as water, instead.

Another meta-analysis published in February 2018 in ‌BMC Obesity‌ found "substantial evidence" that sugar-sweetened beverages increase the risk of obesity (or just being overweight). It also found that these drinks encourage cavities and increase risk of insulin resistance and caffeine-related effects, especially in children.

Sugar-sweetened beverages, such as sweet tea and soda also increase risk of cardiometabolic conditions, such as hypertension. A study published in November 2017 in the ‌Journal of the Endocrine Society‌ reported that frequent sugar-sweetened beverage intake is linked to high blood pressure and other well-known cardiovascular disease risk factors.

If your goal is to save calories, then water, unsweetened tea or coffee or other naturally no-calorie drinks are best. The National Weight Control Registry monitors hundreds of people who have successfully lost significant weight (more than 30 pounds) and have been able to keep it off for longer than a year.

Analysis published in the journal ‌Obesity‌ in October 2014 revealed that just 10 percent of this group consumed sugar-sweetened beverages on a regular basis. The successful weight-maintenance participants noted that increasing water consumption was a significant step in their ability to lose weight and keep it off.