Drinking soda has nothing to do with intelligence. I’m a PhD who used to conduct research on health behaviors. Intelligence is not really a big influence on most health behaviors in and of itself. In fact, lots of research shows that people can know that something is bad for them and still do it. Smoking is a prime example - pretty much nobody who smokes thinks it’s good for them; almost everyone who smokes knows that it’s a bad habit that will likely kill them. It’s the same with unhealthy foods and exercise. People are well aware of what they NEED to do to keep themselves healthy. But people often are not motivated to do those things for a whole variety of reasons. And the motivation is the key to get people to change their behaviors.
I work at a tech company and I know looooooooots of STEM graduates who drink soda and eat fast food. In fact, my company provides FREE soda, so we drink a lot of it. (They’ve been doing things lately to provide more healthy drink options.)
Drinking too much soda absolutely could be the root of bad grades…indirectly. If you’re drinking caffeinated soda, that could be the source of the memory, sleep, and concentration problems.
soda messes up my memory, sleep, concentration, make me have to use the bathroom too much,and gives me anxiety
Well…not quite. Drinking soda can be addictive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are addicted (aka have a physical dependence on) soda. That doesn’t mean it’s not difficult to stop drinking it, though!
I struggled with this myself. I love soda, especially weird flavors of soda, and I drank a lot of it. For me, what I needed to find was an acceptable substitute for it. I discovered that I love flavored zero-calorie/unsweetened sparkling water almost as much as I love soda. I most drink La Croix and Perrier brands now - they’re fizzy, and they do have some fruit flavor but there’s no sugar or artificial sweeteners. Now…they’re expensive, but you can find cheaper brands of sparkling water (it’s going through a fad phase now, so even most grocery stores have generic brands of sparkling flavored water if you want to try it). Another option is to buy a SodaStream and carbonate your own water, then add a little real fruit juice like a squeeze of lemon, lime, or orange.
This is inaccurate…there are many ways to stop a bad habit and doing it cold turkey is not the only way (nor necessarily the best way, depending on what it is. Ending drug use cold turkey, for example, can kill you).
Most experts also would not recommend fad diets or extreme diets/eating styles as a way to quit bad habits. In some cases, you’re simply trading an old bad habit for a new one. In other cases, the transition period wreaks havoc on your health.
In most cases, fad diets don’t really work, anyway. (And most of them are based on shaky science or pseudoscience or no science. The Whole30 diet, for example, gives no justification for why you should cut entire swaths of food groups out of your diet. There’s nothing inherently wrong with legumes or dairy, and relatively few people actually have sensitivities to those foods that would make them sick. And for example, why is all sugar bad but fruit juice okay? Why no grains?)
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