Aditi Jain

Mrs. Ja
Period G
9-4-19
Sugary Drinks and Fruit Juice: Friends or Foes?

This article talks about the relationship between drinking too much fruit juice/sugary drinks

and premature death. Researchers have found that drinking too much fruit juice/sugary drink has

increased a person’s likeliness to die early. This article scared me because sugary drinks are

everywhere and there are no disclaimers saying that if you drink too much of this you will die, but

there are disclaimers about eating raw fish and meat. The drink industries’ target market is children.

Children think it is okay to drink copious amounts of sugary drinks because it tastes good and comes

in many flavors. They do not know that this could lead to dying early. Children do not usually read

labels on drinks, that say how much sugar is in the drink. In an honest kid’s small juice pouch, there

is about 9 grams of sugar. Other products that also have a lot of sugar is Ketchup, Yogurt,

Chocolate milk, etc. These products mainly appeal to children and schools frequently give Chocolate

milk, Ketchup, and Yogurt to children for school lunch. Why are schools giving children

food/drinks that can harm them in the long run?

In a day, I usually drink milk and water. I sometimes drink fruit juice or soda, but not

regularly. I think that I limit myself well in what I drink and how much sugar it has. I do feel like it is

hard sometimes to keep away from sugary drinks because they taste so sweet and good. This makes

it hard for people to put down these drinks and drink something else. People have taken hiatuses

from sugar and have really benefited from it, but their hiatuses are not easy to do and maintain.

There is sugar in just about everything that we eat from bread to barbecue sauce. Industries just put

sugar in products so that consumers like the product and will continue buying it. This is just like

organic products that we use to clean our faces and body. Most products that require you to use

every day contain microplastics that poison the ocean, which poisons the fish, which automatically
poison us in the end. To put it bluntly, Industries these days just care about the money and not the

consumers or the environment.

Questions + Comments
- What about chocolate milk? Is this classified as a ‘Sugary Drink’ and if so wouldn’t children

drinking sugary milk increase the likelihood of premature death?

- Why have only seven cities levied taxes on sweetened drinks when this study applies to the

future generation the most?

- This is a really important topic that affects all people, affecting the younger generation the

most, why aren’t researchers making people aware of this?

- I thought it was interesting that the researcher was not surprised by her results because

finding that drinking sugary drinks increase your percentage of dying early is something

really large and something that we did not know before.

- In the passage, it says, “Specifically, drinking an excessive amount of fruit juice could lead to

an increased risk of premature death ranging from 9% to 42%...” The percentage range is

very high and 42% basically you could die about 50% earlier than you are supposed to. That

is very scary.

- After reading this passage, I wonder why people make drinks/products/food that can harm

humans if abused/used too much. The younger generation is going to fall for all the

marketing tricks and buy/eat/drink candy and food that is very bad for them.