Controlling sugar and the amount of carbohydrate intake these days seems to be one everyone’s mind, and which is why we tend to take time to understand FDA recommended limits specific to sodium, vitamin and trans fat and thus check nutrition labels rather meticulously to keep our diet in check.

Yet despite our efforts, it will be disappointing (and rather enlightening!) to know that most fruit drink and soda companies often conveniently label heart damaging sugar as ‘high fructose corn syrup’, a label that has been attached along with these bottles since the 70s. Rather obviously, with this deliberate oversight, you can only imagine how this can affect your chances of getting heart disease or stroke which in turn, affects your health as well.

In recent studies, it was found that for every one of these sugar-sweetened beverages that was drunk every day, participants registered an average increase of 1.6 millimeters of mmHg for systolic pressure as well as 0.8 mmHg of diastolic blood pressure.

And while it has also been found that if you have a blood pressure anywhere between 120/80 mmHg and 139/89 mmHg, this does not qualify for high blood pressure yet but you can be sure that you will have high blood pressure sooner or later.

And since high blood pressure is linked to an increased intake of sodium and sugar, not avoiding foods that add to these levels in your body can ultimately lead to heart disease and stroke. And perhaps this is why those who chose water over soda have a better BMI on an average while also having better eating habits as well.