Sugary drinks and food

If we’re honest, sugar tastes really good. It is difficult not to make room for it in our lives. The largest source of added sugar in our diet comes from sweetened beverages. This is why a lot of research focuses on the health effects of these types of drinks. On the other hand, the positive effects of high protein diets are well documented. Increasing protein intake increases the feeling of being full. And the metabolism decreases energy intake. But what happens when, for example, we drink a sugary drink with a good steak? How does this change the way our body processes and uses nutrients from food? To answer these questions, new research asked a series of volunteers to spend 24 hours in a metabolic chamber on two separate occasions. A metabolic chamber is a hermetically controlled room. This allows you to measure exactly how the body uses nutrients from food. For the research procedures, volunteers ate the same food throughout the day. During one of the visits, they ate a diet that consisted of a total of 15% protein and by the second visit it was 30%. At each meal, they were given a sugary or artificially sweetened drink. After each meal, they asked the participant about their cravings and desire to eat certain types of foods. Drinking a sugary drink with a meal was found to decrease fat burning and heat production. And when we combined a sugary drink with a protein-rich meal, the combination reduced fat utilization and thermogenesis even further, by more than 40%.** Furthermore, over the course of a day, the body only processed 80 of the 120 kcals that the drink provided. Thus creating an excess of 40 kcal regardless of the amount of protein in the food. So in summary, eating something sweet when eating a good meat dish, for example, is not the best option. Not even the most recommended.