As people began realizing the health dangers behind consuming soda drinks they started to move to what back then represented healthier alternatives such as fruit juices and smoothies. But big Soda companies such as Pepsi and Coke also noticed this trend and began buying small fruit juice companies.
They next promoted their products more as a healthier alternative to their soda drinks and filled the drinks with high sugar amounts to make the drinks tastier and more appealing. While some smoothie manufacturers still claim that their smoothies are made entirely from fruit there are studies showing that most smoothies contain as much sugar as a soda drink contains. This is typical around 18 tea spoons of sugar in a 20-ounce bottle of soda.
Researcher Barry Popkin, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, concluded after this recent study that smoothies are not as healthy as we would like to believe and that these drinks do not provide the same health benefits as eating a vegetable or whole fruit.
Statistics are one more reason to worry about. In U.S. about half of the population consumes at least one sugary drink each day. For minors these statistics are even higher. No wonder as children have soda machines in schools and US beverage manufacturers spend more than $3 billion each year to market their products to them
