Food & nutrition

Soft drinks

8 sources · Latest source check 2026-10-10 UTC

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Soft drinks are a broad family of nonalcoholic beverages. Here the focus is flavoured soda: water with flavouring, often carbonation, and sugar or another sweetener. The wider category also includes still drinks, concentrates, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. Bubbles, sweetness and caffeine are separate features.[1]

Descriptions that answer different questions

Descriptions that answer different questions
Description	What it tells you
Sugar-sweetened soda	A flavoured drink sweetened with sugars such as sucrose or glucose/fructose syrups. Carbonation is an additional property, rather than the source of its sugar.[1]
Diet or reduced-calorie versions	Sugar substitutes can replace carbohydrate sweeteners. Products can differ in their mixture of sweeteners, flavourings, acids and other ingredients; inspect the actual formulation.[1]
Fruit drinks and sweetened teas	These can also contain added sugar. A fruit or tea description does not itself make a purchased drink unsweetened.[3]

What the ingredient list and panel contribute

FDA’s US carbonated-drink explanation distinguishes an ingredient list from a nutrition panel. Ingredients are listed by descending weight, commonly starting with carbonated water. The panel reports the serving size, calories and relevant nutrient amounts. Flavours, colourings, acids and preservatives serve different manufacturing purposes. Knowing an additive’s name does not by itself compare the sugar or energy in two drinks. FDA also identifies the phenylalanine warning on products containing aspartame, which is specifically relevant to phenylketonuria. The explanation is a regulatory and label overview, rather than a trial showing the long-term health effects of an individual product.[2]

Different sugar names still describe sweetening

Illinois Extension lists cane sugar, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, honey and several other names among sources of added sugar. Its examples include soft drinks, sweetened coffees and teas, fruit drinks and lemonades. A familiar or natural-sounding sweetener name therefore does not establish that a drink has less added sugar. Reading the ingredients explains what was used; reading the nutrition information helps compare the amount in the finished product. That distinction is useful when two similar-looking bottles use different recipes.[3]

The adult comparison was more modest

CHOICE, published in 2012, studied 318 adults with overweight or obesity for six months. Participants replaced caloric drinks with water or diet beverages, or received an attention-control programme allowing dietary changes of their choosing. Mean weight loss was approximately 2–2.5% in the replacement groups, but the mean differences between all three groups were not statistically clear. A separate analysis found a greater chance of reaching 5% weight loss with beverage replacement. These findings concern substitution in a supported programme, rather than adding diet soda to an unchanged diet. Nestlé Waters USA funded the investigator-initiated study and supplied water; the authors reported no company involvement in design, conduct or manuscript review.[5]

Long-term associations do not settle every causal claim

A 2015 systematic review examined prospective studies of beverages and incident type 2 diabetes. Sugar-sweetened drinks were associated with higher incidence, including after adjustment for adiposity. An association was also observed for artificially sweetened drinks, but the review identified residual confounding and publication bias for that finding. People’s health, weight and reasons for choosing diet drinks can complicate interpretation. This is observational disease-outcome evidence, whereas the replacement trials tested weight-related outcomes over months. The two designs are not interchangeable. This dated review is a useful illustration of the uncertainty, rather than a complete assessment of all research available in 2026.[6]

Acidity remains a separate issue

Dental erosion is acid-related loss of tooth substance. ADA identifies frequent exposure to low-pH drinks, including diet sodas, as relevant. Removing sugar does not necessarily remove the acids in a formulation.[7]

Evidence & uncertainty

There is human trial evidence that replacing a sugary drink with a noncaloric drink can reduce weight gain in a particular child population. That does not establish that every diet soda improves every health outcome. Comparisons, adherence and who was studied matter; the principal child-trial result also depended partly on handling missing follow-up data.[4]

Selected-source overview · Independent review pending

Published questions

Are all soft drinks fizzy and sugary?

Selected-source overview · Independent review pending. Read the evidence context.

No. The broad category includes still and carbonated products, and sugar-sweetened and alternative-sweetener formulations. A soda’s bubbles, sweetener and other ingredients describe different parts of its recipe.[1]

Evidence behind this answer

Health Safety of Soft Drinks: Contents, Containers, and Microorganisms
narrative product composition review · 2015
Selected original publisher definition, formulation and conflict passages inspected directly after PMC access challenge; dated broad disease claims and regulatory limits are not adopted as current conclusions · 2015; background, beverage categories and ingredient sections used for definitions only; conflict declaration inspected; DOI 10.1155/2015/128697