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Twenty years ago, having a soda meant drinking 6.5 ounces that contained about 85 calories. Today at 7-Eleven, you can purchase the following Coca-Cola Classic options: a Big Gulp (32 ounces), a Super Big Gulp (44 ounces), a Double Big Gulp (64 ounces), or a Slurp and Gulp (32 ounces of fountain drink and 22 ounces of Slurpee).At McDonald’s, you have the choices listed in Table 7.4. So for an extra sixty cents you get an extra260 calories. If you have diabetes or are trying to prevent it, it is also important to know that the small Coke has almost 54 grams of sugar. That’s about fourteen teaspoons. The Supersize has 140grams of sugar—a whopping thirty-five teaspoons of sugar!

How about a caffe latte from Starbucks? It is true that black coffee has no calories, and a latte is typically made with milk, not cream. Sounds like a decent choice, right? Or is it? (See Table 7.5.) So what happens if you switch from a coffee with one ounce of low-fat milk to a grande caffe latte each day? Well, you get an extra 250 calories and an extra half of a pound of weight

per week. The math is bad for your waistline. That’s an extra 26 pounds in a year! A tall latte made with skim milk would be 120 calories and 0 grams of fat. On a daily basis, adding this more health conscious drink to your diet would increase your weight by only thirteen pounds per year.

So how do you eat well in this potentially toxic food environment with growing portion sizes and marketing strategies that tempt you to eat supersized meals with their “get more for less” messages? You should start with these strategies: