While the number of highly processed foods have increased, the health stats have declined even further. While processed foods are to blame, there is another item that has been flying under the health raider, sodas. These fizzy drinks may not be a part of your daily life, but they are worse than you think! One of the biggest appeals of sodas and beverages is that sugary and fizzy taste of them. Because they are easier to consume and the sugary taste has an addictive effect, people buy more and more of it, without realizing that amount of sugar.

One thing that made people realize how much sugar they had been consuming was when videos of people boiling these fizzy drinks surfaced. Those videos showed that as soon as all the liquid vapored off, the residue was just burnt sugar.

Sugary drinks like sodas and, energy drinks are popular worldwide, but new research shows they're seriously harming our health. These drinks are linked to millions of new cases of diabetes and heart disease each year. Sadly, developing countries are hit the hardest. This study shows how big of a problem sugary drinks are globally and why we need to do something about it. It’s a call to action for better health worldwide.

Sugary Drinks, Diabetes, and Heart Disease

Sugary drinks are beverages with added sugars, like soda, juice drinks, and sweetened teas. While sales are down in some places, they're rising in others. Researchers studied millions of people across many countries and found a strong link between drinking these beverages and developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease. These drinks contribute to a significant number of new cases each year, especially in certain parts of the world. This means that cutting back on these drinks could greatly improve health globally.

Sugary drinks are quickly digested because they're liquid, causing a fast rise in blood sugar. They also pack a lot of calories without making you feel full, which can lead to overeating. Unlike other treats, they don't offer much nutrition besides sugar. This combination of factors can lead to weight gain, problems with how your body uses sugar (insulin resistance), and other health issues that increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease. It’s not just about the calories, but the type of calories and how our bodies process them.

Sodas have an addictive nature because the main ingredients are caffeine and sugar. The reason why people like consuming them is because they were built to trigger the release of dopamine in the brain. The hormone dopamine is a feel-good hormone that makes you feel happy and good, which makes you feel like consuming it more!

What We Can Do to Cut Back on Sugary Drinks

To protect our health, we should drink fewer sugary drinks. Healthier options include water, unsweetened tea or coffee, and sparkling water. Even diet soda is a better choice than regular soda, but it's best to limit those too. Reading labels is important to know what you’re drinking. Governments can also help by taxing sugary drinks, putting warning labels on them, and restricting their sale in places like schools. These actions can make a big difference in reducing consumption and improving public health. There are many ways you can avoid getting addicted to sugary drinks,

Avoid Using It As A Reward

When you give the position of a reward to things, you are actively making your brain think it is a good thing and that can trigger a dependence on it.

Don’t Use It To Make You Feel Happy

We all have days when you feel low and do not like how things are going, in days like those you feel like having a comfort food or drink, which can make it a crutch and is a one way street to addiction

Drink A Lot Of Water

Staying hydrated is one of the best ways to keep your addiction as bay, sometimes you may as well need some water to keep you straight and not stray from their path.

In India, over half of adolescent girls and women are anaemic; one-fifth have low Body Mass Index, while micronutrient deficiencies like Vitamin D and Vitamin B12 affect 60% and 53% of girls and women, respectively. The resulting lack of energy, poor ability to concentrate, bone pain, chronic fatigue, insomnia, and a variety of other health challenges cause significant loss of quality of life, poor productivity, and high morbidity among women.

The multifactorial causation theory of nutrition effectively defines that, alongside nutrition-specific factors, nourishment depends on nutrition-sensitive factors, including socio-economic and cultural factors, that are often shaped by communities.

Although women almost universally prepare food at home, gender norms compel women to prioritise serving food to family members before themselves, resulting in smaller portions and nutritionally inferior diets for themselves. This is particularly harmful to women when the demands of the body are high, such as during adolescence, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and peri-menopause. To break such harmful practices reinforced through generations, focused social and behaviour change (SBC) strategies that foster community action are essential.

Re-Positioning Women’s Nutrition for Effective Behaviour Change

The objective of SBC is to change knowledge, attitudes and practices of target groups and stimulate social change at the local and national level. Good SBC efforts can encourage community engagement, influence social norms, support policy advocacy, promote service uptake, reach underserved populations and foster a media environment that resonates with downstream engagement. Community Action can be an outcome of a good SBC effort.

An SBC approach meant to centre a woman’s nutrition needs within a household must target all decision makers within that family and community such as husband, mothers-in-law, elders, local leaders and other influencers. Rather than adopting a narrow woman-centred approach, messages that position the health and nutrition of a woman as central for the well-being of the entire family are more effective.

Communication strategies that emphasise outcomes that are valued by families, such as better nutrition leading to a reduction in sickness-related income loss, decreased healthcare expenditure, increased savings and improved productivity, are more appealing and acceptable in Indian and other similar societies. Such framing aligns women's nutritional needs with aspirations families are motivated to achieve.

Behaviour change rarely occurs after a single exposure to a message. New ideas gain acceptance when repeated consistently by trusted community sources like ASHAs, Anganwadi Workers, SHG leaders, Panchayat representatives, faith-based leaders, community elders, and frontline health workers. Consistent messaging across platforms builds trust, creates social acceptance, and gradually shifts expectations regarding women's health.

Also read: Eating 4–6 Servings of Whole Grains Daily May Lower Heart Disease Risk

Fostering Community-Led Collective Action

Evidence demonstrates that community-led collective action effectively shifts entrenched norms. Women's collectives provide safe spaces for discussion, peer learning, and collective problem-solving, becoming agents of social change rather than mere beneficiaries. Sustainable improvements require interventions operating simultaneously across multiple levels:

• Individual level: Knowledge, confidence, and agency for informed nutritional choices.
• Household level: Positioning women's health as essential for effective caregiving, household productivity, reduced healthcare costs, and overall family well-being.
• Community level: Women's collectives, SHGs, youth groups, Panchayats, and faith-based organisations fostering dialogue and establishing healthier behaviours as socially desirable.
• Institutional level: Frontline workers requiring training, supervision, and culturally appropriate tools for consistent messaging.
• Policy level: Integrating nutrition with livelihoods, women's empowerment, social protection, and primary healthcare rather than isolated sectoral programmes.

Also read: Can An Overweight Child Be Malnourished? Signs Of Hidden Malnutrition In Kids

Lessons from Implemented Programmes

JEEViKA, Bihar's State Rural Livelihoods Mission, demonstrates effective change. Rather than presenting maternal and child nutrition as isolated health issues, JEEViKA positioned nutrition within household well-being. Messages focused on how improved food practices enhance productivity, increase income, and strengthen family well-being. This framing resonated with household priorities and encouraged wider family participation, contributing to substantial improvements in dietary practices without directly challenging cultural norms. Messages were discussed during SHG meetings, reinforced through peer support, and complemented by frontline health services.

Alive & Thrive, implemented by FHI 360, generated important evidence on culturally grounded social and behaviour change communication in Bihar. Formative research found poor maternal diets driven less by food scarcity than by household norms regarding meal frequency, food allocation, and perceptions about eating during pregnancy. Importantly, many pregnant women were willing to consume more diverse diets when household members supported changes and messages addressed prevailing beliefs rather than simply providing nutritional advice. The programme emphasised repeated interpersonal communication, practical counselling, engagement of influential family members, and community-based reinforcement.

Food fortification provides a cost-effective population-level complement to this goal. Fortified staples can help bridge micronutrient gaps; however, they are complementary to, and not a substitute for, a balanced and diversified diet.

A comprehensive review across India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam concluded that integrating social and behaviour change interventions into community-based women's groups improves maternal and child nutrition practices through peer support, collective efficacy, and existing social capital.

The Way Forward

Improving women's nutrition requires moving beyond food distribution, supplementation, and knowledge-sharing. The challenge is fundamentally social as much as nutritional. Food availability creates opportunity, but social norms determine utilisation. Lasting improvements depend on transforming beliefs, behaviours, and relationships governing food allocation within households, demanding culturally grounded communication, repeated reinforcement from trusted actors, and sustained collective action through women's groups.

Women's nutrition should be recognised as a strategic investment in household resilience, economic productivity, community development, and national human capital, not solely a maternal and child health issue. When women are well-nourished physically and mentally, benefits extend far beyond individual health.

Future programmes should move beyond information dissemination towards community-owned social norm transformation, using collective action as catalysts for sustained behavioural change. This represents one of the most promising pathways for improving women's nutrition at scale while strengthening family health, livelihoods, and community resilience.

By Dr Amrita Misra, Visiting Professor, Azim Premji University

Whole grains are becoming more popular day by day because of their nutritional benefits, and a recent study has highlighted another major advantage of eating four to six servings. According to the study published in the European Heart Journal, eating four to six servings of whole grains every day may help lower the risk of heart disease. As heart disease is arguably one of the most fatal ailments, these findings, if true, can give hope to millions.

The research shows that eating a diet rich in whole grains may help to prevent heart disease. The study emphasizes that these foods reduce body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and glucose in the blood, which in turn play a major role in lowering the risk of heart disease overall.

The lead researcher Dr. Helda Tutunchi from Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran said, "Although higher whole-grain intake has long been linked to better heart health in population studies, clinical trials have produced mixed findings. This left an important practical question unanswered: How much whole grain should people eat to meaningfully improve cardiovascular health?"

"To address this, we systematically combined and analyzed all available randomized controlled trials to identify the amount of whole grain associated with the greatest benefits." She added.

The findings came after trials conducted across Asia, Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. Notably, more than 6,500 people took part in these trials. The thorough analysis showed that whole grains significantly reduced people's body weight, waist circumference, and blood pressure, as well as levels of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose, and interleukin-6, a sign of inflammation in the blood.

The study suggested that these benefits might be seen in those who eat 30 to 40 grams of whole grains per day, but the maximum benefits were found in people eating 60 to 100 grams per day. This amounts to around four to six servings of whole grains a day—for instance, oatmeal, a sandwich made with whole-grain bread, and a serving of brown rice.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr Cecilie Kyrø of the Danish Cancer Institute in Copenhagen and her colleagues noted that more than 50 years ago, Sir Denis Burkitt and his fellow researchers suggested that refining staple carbohydrates—and removing the cereal fibre in the process—could contribute to a wide range of Western diseases by affecting stool volume, bowel transit time and the environment within the colon.

Whole grains are cereal grains that retain all three major components—bran, germ and endosperm—in the same proportions found in the intact grain. They can be consumed as whole kernels or flakes, or ground into flour and used to make bread and other foods.

When we think of malnutrition, we often picture a child who is thin or underweight. But malnutrition can sometimes look very different. An overweight child can also be malnourished.

A child may consume enough—or even too many—calories and still not get the nutrients needed for healthy growth. Diets high in processed foods, sugary drinks and refined carbohydrates can lead to excess weight while being poor in iron, calcium, vitamin D, vitamin B12, protein and other essential nutrients.

This is particularly important today, when childhood overweight and obesity are increasing alongside micronutrient deficiencies. A child’s weight alone therefore cannot tell us whether the child is adequately nourished.

Parents need to look at the overall picture—growth pattern, height and BMI for age, dietary habits, physical activity and, when required, blood tests for specific deficiencies.

Parents should also remember that “eating more” does not always mean “eating better”. A balanced diet containing adequate protein, vegetables, fruits, whole grains and other nutrient-rich foods is essential.

The goal should not simply be a healthy weight, but a healthy, well-nourished child.

Dr. Ashish Gautam, Principal Director, Robotic Surgery, Laparoscopic & Minimal Access Surgery, Max Hospital, Patparganj