Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagle the nutrition diva here with your quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous

This week we're talking about carbonated water and questions that many of you have sent in about

whether it may be bad for your teeth or for your stomach or for your bones.

Although I don't drink much soda, or as they call it where I grew up, pop. I do enjoy

drinking sparkling or carbonated water and I often recommend it as a healthful

alternative to soda. But several of you have written to me with concerns that

drinking carbonated water might be bad for you. Sure enough, I did a quick internet search and found

several websites warning that drinking carbonated water will leach calcium from your bones causing osteoporosis.

Others claims that carbonated beverages can harm the enamel on your teeth or irritate your stomach or even cause cancer.

Okay, let's sort the fact from the fiction.

Number one, carbonated water does not leech calcium from your bones.

Now soda consumption, particularly cola consumption, has been linked to lower bone mineral density.

However, it's pretty clear that it has nothing to do with the carbonation itself, or the bubbles in the drink.

Researchers had one group of women drink a liter of still water every day,

while another group drank a leader of carbonated water.

And after eight weeks, the researchers couldn't detect any difference whatsoever

between the groups when it came to markers for bone turnover.

In fact, the most recent analysis suggests that the reason people who drink a lot of cola have weaker

bones isn't really because something in the soda is robbing calcium from their bones but

rather because they tend to have a lower calcium intake. I did a whole show on diet tips for healthy bones and that's

episode number 25 if you want to look it up.

Number two carbonated water doesn't harm your teeth. When carbon dioxide is

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