Sugary sodas are worse for people’s health than cocaine, according to a famous fitness trainer who has worked with stars like Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston.
Sebastien Lagree has spent over 20 years getting top Hollywood movie stars into shape, training them through exercise routines and diet regimens.
However, no matter who her customer is, she tells everyone to avoid three things: microwaved meals, fried foods, and most importantly, soft drinks.
Mr Lagree told DailyMail.com: ‘The soft drinks are the worst. Cocaine Is Illegal, But Soda Aren’t? Soft drinks are worse than cocaine, in my opinion.’
Coach attributes this to the massive amounts of chemicals and added sugar in soft drinks, which researchers previously said have similar effects on our brains as hard drugs.
Famous fitness trainer Sebastien Lagree said sodas are worse than cocaine and artificially sweetened drinks aren’t much better in terms of nutrition.
Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston are among the celebrities Lagree has trained
When asked if anyone could change their diet simply by cutting out soda, Lagree said, “Absolutely.”
Earlier this month, rapper Post Malone revealed that he lost 65 pounds just by giving up soda. ‘The soda is so bad. It’s so good but so bad,’ said the rapper and singer on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Researchers previously told DailyMail.com that highly processed foods, such as donuts, soft drinks, cereal and pizza, should be reclassified as drugs because they cause compulsive use and mood-altering effects in the brain.
Mr. Lagree also believes soft drinks are a ‘big contributor’ to rising rates of diabetes, obesity and related diseases in the US due to the huge amounts of added sugar in these drinks. Some have up to 65 grams in just 16 ounces.
This is significantly more than the American Heart Association (AHA) recommended daily limit: 24 grams for women and 36 grams for men.
Considering the sugar in other foods you eat throughout the day, this often puts soda lovers well over safe limits, and also Too much added sugar has consistently been linked to harmful health problems.
In fact, a review published in the BMJ magazine in April linked high consumption of added sugars, the type of sugar in all these drinks, with 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 followed 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 sugary sodas a day were 85 percent more likely to be diagnosed with liver cancer compared to those who drank fewer than one a week.
Daily soda drinkers were also 68 percent more likely to die of liver disease than those who drank three or fewer a month.
America’s 25 Sweetest Drinks RANKED: Mountain Dew had the most sugar of any drink on the list, while Brisk Lemon Tea had the least. However, all of the drinks were well above or close to the recommended daily sugar limit 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 since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the artificial sweetener aspartame to be a “possible carcinogen”, are much better.
“Now we have artificial sweeteners, so we have zero this, zero that, but I’m not sure that’s even better for you,” he said.
“I don’t like having all that chemistry in my body, too.”
Instead, her drink of choice is simple.
“Nothing is better than water,” he said. You can’t go wrong with that.
Also opt for chicken, seafood, and a variety of vegetables and grains instead of fried foods and microwaved foods.
Mr. Lagree believes it’s crucial to focus on exercise and diet at the same time rather than overcompensating at the gym by eating junk food.
“You can’t train more than a bad diet,” he said.
Brazilian researchers published a study earlier this week suggesting that one in five premature deaths in the South American nation was linked to processed foods.
Dr. Alexandra DiFeliceantonio and Dr. Ashley Gearhardt called for them to be regulated in a similar way to nicotine.
In 1988, Dr. Charles Everett Koop, who served as US Surgeon General to President Ronald Reagan, published a 600 pages Report on nicotine addiction.
At the time, more than half of American adults smoked cigarettes, but the long-term impacts of their use were relatively unknown.
Dr. Koop used three key metrics, compulsive use, mood alteration, 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 to highly processed foods as well.
The first was compulsive use, which they described as a person wanting to drink soda and eat these other foods even when aware of how unhealthy they are.
“People want to cut back, people go on diets and the vast majority fail,” Dr Gearhardt told DailyMail.com.
“They find it hard to do it even when they know it’s going to kill them.”
He blamed the fat and sugar contents of the food for triggering an addictive response in the brain.
While more research on junk food 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 the dopamine receptors in a person’s brain.
The two researchers describe it as a “psychoactive” effect that a person will need to consume more highly processed snacks to achieve again, just like that of other drugs.
Processed foods also have a “reinforcing” effect, where a person can reach for the food even when they don’t need it.
Dr. Gearhardt used the example of a person who had healthy food in his refrigerator and decided to go out and buy chocolate ice cream because of his addiction.
