Soda vs Water: The Average Adult Drinks 355 Cans of Sugar a Year
Updated: 1 day ago
Every drink hydrates. Soda, sweet tea, sports drinks and energy drinks are mostly water, and the body uses that water. The question with soda versus water was never hydration. It is what else comes along, and how much of it adds up over a year.
The CDC has measured the daily number. We turned it into a yearly one.
The daily figure
The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics published a data brief on sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among US adults, 2011 to 2014, based on NHANES dietary recalls. Sugar-sweetened beverages, in the brief's definition, include regular soda, fruit drinks, sports and energy drinks, sweetened coffees and teas, and sweetened bottled waters. Diet drinks, 100 percent juice, milk and alcohol are excluded.
The key numbers:
49.3 percent of adults drank at least one sugar-sweetened beverage on a given day (53.6 percent of men, 45.1 percent of women)
Average calories per day from these drinks, across all adults including those who drank none: 145
Men: 179 calories a day. Women: 113.
Men aged 20 to 39: 249 calories. Women aged 20 to 39: 160.
Men aged 60 and over: 82 calories. Women aged 60 and over: 55.
Share of total daily calories: 6.5 percent overall, and 9.3 percent for men aged 20 to 39
Turning calories into cans
Our method: multiply each daily figure by 365 to get a yearly total, then divide by the calories in one 12-ounce can of regular cola. For the can we used the USDA's FoodData Central entry for regular carbonated cola, which lists 42 calories per 100 grams. A 12-ounce can is 355 milliliters, and treating a milliliter of cola as roughly a gram gives about 149 calories per can. The CDC and USDA numbers are theirs; the yearly conversion is ours, and it is approximate because a "can" is a stand-in for a mix of drinks.
All adults: 145 calories a day is 52,925 calories a year, the equivalent of 355 cans of cola. Almost exactly one can a day, averaged over everyone, including the half who drank none.
Adults who actually drink them: dividing 145 by 0.493 gives about 294 calories a day for consumers, roughly two cans a day, or about 720 cans a year.
Men aged 20 to 39: 249 calories a day is 90,885 calories a year, about 610 cans.
Women aged 20 to 39: 160 calories a day is 58,400 calories a year, about 392 cans.
Men aged 60 and over: 82 calories a day is 29,930 a year, about 200 cans.
Women aged 60 and over: 55 calories a day is 20,075 a year, about 135 cans.
The age gradient is steep. A man in his twenties or thirties averages three times the sugary-drink calories of a man over 60, and those drinks supply nearly one calorie in ten of everything he eats and drinks.
The water comparison
Plain water has zero calories. Every one of the figures above goes to zero if the same volume is replaced with water, and the body is hydrated identically. That is the entire case for water over soda, and it does not require any claim about soda being uniquely harmful; the calories are simply there, and they are liquid, so they do not register as a meal.
There is a second point in the CDC data. The separate NCHS brief on total water intake found that only 30 percent of men's and 34 percent of women's daily water came from plain water. The rest came from other drinks and food. Among those "other drinks," the sugar-sweetened ones are supplying a share of hydration at a cost of 145 calories a day on average. Swapping some of that share for plain water is the cheapest change in the whole diet.
What about coffee?
The other common question is whether coffee counts, since caffeine is a mild diuretic. The best direct test is a 2014 trial in PLOS ONE, No evidence of dehydration with moderate daily coffee intake. Fifty men who habitually drank three to six cups a day were given four 200-milliliter servings of coffee per day for three days, then the same volume of water in a separate three-day period, in a crossover design. Total body water, measured with deuterium oxide, was 51.5 kilograms on coffee and 51.4 on water, no meaningful difference, and most blood and urine hydration markers did not differ either.
So for a regular coffee drinker, moderate coffee hydrates about as well as water. What it does not do is help you notice when you have stopped drinking anything at all after the morning cup. That is the real failure mode for most people, and it is a counting problem, not a coffee problem.
Counting what you drink
The CDC figures are averages of a single day's recall. Most people cannot say with confidence how many sugary drinks they had this week, let alone how many glasses of water. The fix is to count one thing, water, and let it displace the rest.
That is how Water Textapp is built. You set a goal in glasses and text a number each time you drink water. A bottle, 16oz or 500ml all work. When water has a running total and a goal, soda starts to look like what it is: a drink that does not move the number.
A one-week swap
Pick a water goal of eight glasses.
For every sugary drink you would normally have, drink a glass of water first. Log it.
Keep the coffee. It counts for hydration, according to the trial above, though Water Textapp only tracks water, so log water separately.
At the end of the week, count the sugary drinks you did not have. At roughly 149 calories each, ten skipped cans is close to 1,500 calories.
Try it by text
Text Hi to (646) 640-0771 to start Water Textapp. It asks for a daily goal in glasses, and from then on you text a number each time you drink water. It replies with your total and what is left, and checks in late morning and mid-afternoon if you are behind. It works on any phone that can text, with no app to install. Your first 20 messages are free, then one $9.99 a month subscription covers every Textapp. Details at textapp.co/apps/water.
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