Luis Ramos

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Dr. Loren Higbee

2/10/22
The Pink Lemonade Effect

Introduction:

Most of the current world’s population has taken part in enjoying a sugary drink to some

extent. Whether it be only on certain occasions such as having a hot chocolate or two during the

colder seasons of the winter, or consistently cracking open an ice-cold soda throughout the day.

More likely than not it is safe to make the assumption that everyone has at least had some sort of

encounter with a sugary drink of some sort. While it is well known that regardless of substance

too much of anything is never a good thing, the most common knowledge given out about these

sorts of drinks is simply that they will “rot your teeth” over a long period of time if consumed

without moderation. As a population, it isn’t really thought about how sugary drinks can affect

humans in other ways, for instance, effects on their mood throughout the day, how physical or

mentally engaging activities are changed, or how they are feeling within their own body. There is

a significant amount of information on this very surface level topic that for the most part hasn’t

been further explored for one reason or another. This is the exact thought process that has led to

a certain experiment recently, and with that experiment coming to its end, it has been concluded

that the number of sugary drinks in a person’s diet has a significant effect on things such as their

mood, hunger level, physical activity, and mental engagement.

The Experiment:

The experiment at hand took place over the course of five days (Friday through

Wednesday), it entailed one subject intaking a sugary drink (in this case being pink lemonade) of

varying quantities depending on which day it was. The subject of this experiment would begin

consuming 64 fluid ounces of the sugary drink which equates to almost 4 times as much sugar
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that is recommended for daily consumption. The subject would drink 16 fluid ounces less each

day until the 5th day of the experiment when they would drink 0 fluid ounces of any sugary

drink. Throughout the entire process the subject was to do their normal daily activities (such as

working out and doing schoolwork) and simultaneously record how they felt while doing so.

The Recorded Results:

Starting out on the first day when the subject had drunk 64 fluid ounces or 128 grams of

sugar. The subject had recorded themselves being sluggish in multiple aspects of their life. They

had recorded slower and less efficient reaction times in the classroom, as well as a shorter

attention span. When the subject had gone to the gym that day, they continued with the trend that

they had shown in the classroom and proceeded to record a slow and draining workout process

for the day. To pair with these lethargic reactions that their body had gone through so far due to

the extreme excess of sugar in their body, the subject recorded that their mood was not only less

than stellar, but they were also recorded to be significantly hungrier than they normally were.

Onto the next day where the subject consumed 48 ounces or 96 grams of sugar from the same

sugary drink. The subject had felt a slight amount of relief from the previous day’s intake

however still was not feeling at their best yet continuing to feel slightly sick from the significant

amount of sugar. However due to the decreasing amount the subject had begun to do slightly

better in relation to their coursework for school and their performance in the gym and to pair

with that while still eating an excessive amount compared to how they normally the subject was

not as hungry as the previous days. In the coming three days the subject would continue to

decrease the amount consumed by 16 fluid ounces until the 5th day (final day of the experiment)

where the subject consumed 0 fluid ounces of any form of sugary drink. The trend of the subject
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feeling less stagnant continued on until around the 4th day when the subject was reported to have

felt not only back to normal but a little bit better than normal. After doing some math, the

conclusion was that this had occurred because the subject had consumed 32 grams of sugar

which is the daily recommended amount for a male.

The Explanation:

With so much to unpack within this topic, the next statement should come as no surprise.

Sugar (Regardless of what form it may be consumed in) in excessive or insufficient amounts, is

not a good thing. An article written by Seok Tyug Tan and others suggest that “Children and

adolescents aged 2–18 years old are recommended to limit the added sugar intake to no more

than 25 g or 6 teaspoons per day” (3039). During the course of this experiment, the subject had

drunk from 128 grams of added sugar on the first day, all the way down to zero on the last. With

this being taken into consideration, it is no wonder why the effects of the experiment were so

adverse, the subject only had a healthy amount of added sugar in their diet for around 1-2 days at

the most.

Conclusion:

This experiment has shined a spotlight on a typically dark subject that previously had

been investigated a surprisingly little amount and illuminated the answers to what was not known

before. It is clear to see the conclusion that while sugar in moderation is a useful and necessary

addition to the human diet to function at peak performance, an excess amount of sugar in a

person’s diet will lead to not only sluggish mental activity and a greater struggle academically,
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but worse physical action and a delayed reaction time as well as increased hunger. As for how

this experiment might apply to the general public, George A. Bray and others bring up a solid

point claiming that “…the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) rose by a startling

38.5 gallons per person between 1950 and 2000 (10.8 gallons per person in 1950 to 49.3 gallons

per person in 2000)”(951), this more or less means that from what we can see, this applies to just

about everyone as the amount of sweetened beverages has increased per person. With that in

mind it would be more than safe to assume that if more people were aware of the fact that the

sugar they are consuming daily could be leading them down a more destructive and unhealthy

path, they might see fit to make some changes. While this experiment has clarified some certain

information as to what kind of effects sugar could have on the mind and body it could still be

beneficial to see what certain changes might occur with applied variants to it for instance

changing what time the sugar was ingested or if it was ingested over a certain period of time.
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Citations

Bray, George A, and Barry M Popkin. “Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a

Crisis in the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes?: Health Be Damned! Pour on the

Sugar.” Diabetes Care, vol. 37, no. 4, 2014, pp. 950–950., doi:10.2337/dc13-2085.

Tan, Seok Tyug, and Chin Xuan Tan. “Gender and Body Weight Status Differences in the

Consumption Frequency, Choice and Sugar Intake of Ready-To-Drink Sugar-Sweetened

Beverages.” British Food Journal, vol. 122, no. 10, 2020, pp. 3039–3048., doi:10.1108/BFJ-03-

2020-0243.
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Reflective Essay

This was my first larger side essay since the end of my last semester, and in being that I

had a few troubles that were unforeseen. For instance, with this essay, it took me a long while to

get into the “groove” with the entire writing process. I would sit in my seat open the work that I

had on my essay at whichever point that I would be at and draw blanks occasionally. While they

obviously didn’t last as this essay has inevitably been completed and submitted, it was just

another one of those small humps that I had to make my way over.

Luckily enough for me, my last semester of English 1301 had prepared me for most of

the challenges that I had run into over the entire course of this essay I had somewhat of a

gameplan on how to overcome them because of previous learning experiences. The largest issue

by far for me during this essay was finding peer-reviewed essays that applied to what I was

writing. For this essay it was quite difficult because not only was I having to find an article that

included the information I needed for the topic that I did my experiment on, but the article also

had to implement the information in a way that it would make sense to put it into my essay.

While this essay had its difficulties that I had to deal with, it also provided a decent

learning curve for things that I would be able to use in other classes of mine in the process. With

me writing this essay over Sugary drinks I obviously had to do some research over biological

effects that sugar and things of that nature had on the body and with that I had learned how to

better navigate a scientifically written report/article. These sorts of articles are almost always

written with a lot of words and terms that are more in depth than a surface level learner of any of

these subjects would understand, and through the process of writing this essay I had learned to
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navigate these sorts of essays and make my way through the “minefields” of information that

they always seem to carry along with them. This will come in handy for me in the future

specifically with not only the biology classes that I will be taking, but also just the general

scientific research classes that I will have to take as well.

With learning how to use a sort of outside research on an experiment of my very own, it

has helped my writing improve a lot because I really had to change a lot of how my essay was

written so I could manipulate the information into fitting in seamlessly and not sticking out like a

sore thumb. This being with my own experiment made it slightly more difficult than it would

have been if I was just writing about the research that I had done because it somewhat had to fit

the narrative in a manner that not only made sense to the reader but was easy to digest for them

and didn’t confuse them.

Tying up loose ends and putting a cap on this essay was nice, although it was a different

essay than I had gotten used to throughout my English 1301 experience, it had made it so that I

had to not only put the skills that I had previously learned into application, but I also had to learn

some new ones along the way so the essay could stay cohesive and informative while also not

dragging along for too long. While this essay was a nice reintroduction back into writing to start

off my second semester in college, I have spent entirely too long on it, and would respectfully

not like to look over this essay again for at least a few weeks before I go back and start making

edits to it.