Sugary soft drinks are worse for people’s health than cocaine, according to a famous fitness trainer who has worked with stars such as Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston.
Sebastien Lagree has spent more than twenty years shaping Hollywood’s top movie stars, coaching them through fitness routines and diet regimens.
Whichever client he has, he tells them all to avoid three things: microwaved meals, fried foods, and most importantly, soda.
Mr Lagree told DailyMail.com: ‘Soda is the worst. Cocaine is illegal, but soda isn’t? Soft drinks are worse than cocaine in my opinion.’
The trainer attributes this to the massive amounts of chemicals and added sugars in soda, which researchers have previously said have similar effects on our brains as hard drugs.
Famed fitness trainer Sebastien Lagree said soda is worse than cocaine and artificially sweetened drinks are not much better nutritionally
Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston are among the celebrities Mr Lagree trained
When asked if anyone could change their diet just by eliminating soda, Mr Lagree said: ‘Absolutely’.
Earlier this month, rapper Post Malone revealed he’d lost 65 pounds just cutting out soda. “Soda is so bad. It’s so good, but so bad,” the rapper-singer said in an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Researchers previously told DailyMail.com that highly processed foods such as doughnuts, soft drinks, cereal and pizza should be reclassified as drugs because they cause compulsive use and mood-altering effects on the brain.
Mr. Lagree also believes soft drinks are a “significant contributor” to the rising rates of diabetes, obesity and related diseases in the US because of the massive amounts of added sugars these drinks contain. Some have as much as 65 grams in just 16 ounces.
This is significantly more than the American Heart Association’s (AHA) daily recommended limit of 24 grams for women and 36 grams for men.
Factoring in the sugar from other foods you eat throughout the day often puts soda lovers well above safe limits Many added sugars are consistently associated with harmful health conditions.
In fact, one review published in BMJ magazine in April linked high consumption of added sugars, the type of sugar in all of these drinks, to 45 negative health outcomes.
These include diabetes, gout, obesity, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, cancer, asthma, tooth decay, depression and premature death.
Researchers at Harvard University observed a group of nearly 100,000 American women over the age of 50 for more than 20 years.
They found that women who drank one or more sugar-sweetened soft drinks per day were 85 percent more likely to be diagnosed with liver cancer than those who drank less than one per week.
Daily soda drinkers were also 68 percent more likely to die from liver disease than those who drank three or fewer a month.
America’s 25 Sweetest Drinks RANKED: Mountain Dew had the most sugar of all the drinks on the list, while Brisk Lemon Tea had the least. However, all drinks were well above or close to the daily recommended amount of sugar set by the American Heart Association
While most doctors say sugar-free soft drinks are healthier, Lagree doesn’t think artificially sweetened drinks, which have come under fire because the World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled the artificial sweetener aspartame a “possibly carcinogenic,” are much better.
“Now we have artificial sweeteners, so we have zero this, zero that, but I’m not sure that stuff is any better for you,” he said.
“I don’t like having all that chemistry in my body either.”
Instead, his drink of choice is simple.
“Nothing is better than water,” he said. “You can’t go wrong with it.”
He also chooses chicken, seafood and a variety of vegetables and grains over fried foods and microwaved meals.
Mr. Lagree believes it’s critical to focus on exercise and diet at the same time, rather than overcompensating for eating junk food in the gym.
“You can’t beat a bad diet,” he said.
Brazilian researchers published a study earlier this week showing that one in five premature deaths in the South American country was linked to processed foods.
Dr. Alexandra DiFeliceantonio and Dr. Ashley Gearhardt called for them to be regulated in the same way as nicotine.
In 1988, Dr. Charles Everett Koop, who served as U.S. Surgeon General for President Ronald Reagan, published a 600 pages report discussing nicotine addiction.
At the time, more than half of American adults smoked cigarettes, but the long-term effects of their use were relatively unknown.
Dr. Koop used three key measures, compulsive use, mood modification and reinforcement, to determine that nicotine was an addictive substance.
Dr. Gearhardt and Dr. DiFeliceantonio applied the standards used to determine that nicotine was an addictive substance, including to highly processed foods.
The first was compulsive use, which they described as someone wanting to drink soda and eat other foods, even when they are aware of how unhealthy these are.
“People want to cut down, people go on diets and a vast majority of people fail,” Dr. Gearhardt told DailyMail.com.
“They find it hard to do that, even when they know it will kill them.”
She blamed the fat and sugar content of the food for triggering an addictive response in the brain.
While more research on junk foods is needed to determine exactly how they affect the brain, she believes the speed at which the body processes them may play a role.
These quick hits are similar to how nicotine, alcohol and cocaine work throughout the body, the researchers said.
The high sugar and fat content of these foods also affects a person’s dopamine receptors in the brain.
The pair of researchers describe it as a “psychoactive” effect that a person needs to consume more highly processed snacks to achieve again – much like that of other drugs.
Processed foods also have a reinforcing effect, where a person may seek out the food even if they don’t need to.
Dr. Gearhardt used the example of a person with healthy food in the refrigerator who chose to go out and buy chocolate ice cream because of his addiction.