What IS a sweetened beverage?
A sweetened beverage is also a “sugary beverage” or any drink you consume that contains sugar. The sugar can be an added ingredient taking many different forms from sucrose, to fruit juice concentrate, to high fructose corn-syrup etc. It can also just be the natural sugar occurring in whatever ingredients are in the beverage.

Why should sweetened beverages be avoided or minimally consumed?
There are a number of reasons why it’s best to avoid (or minimally consume) sugary beverages.

• Firstly, they often contain the majority of your recommended added sugar intake. It is recommended that women consume no more than 6 teaspoons of added sugar a day, and men no more than 9. Thus, in one thirst quenching beverage, you can easily consume your entire recommended daily intake of added sugar.
• Second, drinking a beverage that contains sugar (especially those with higher amounts) is virtually like drinking your desert! Unfortunately, when you drink your desert you don’t really get to fully enjoy the calories you are consuming. The drink will taste “good” and “sweet” but most sugary beverages are artificially or “naturally” flavored and don’t have much depth to their flavor. When you consume sugar in a desert item you can derive more pleasure from the “excess calories” if you really stop to enjoy the complex flavors of the desert.
• Third, unless you are going to be immediately exerting yourself (i.e. exercising) the sugars consumed in the sugary beverages will be stored in your body as fat. For most people this is less than ideal.

Discover how many TEASPOONS/CUBES of sugar are IN your sugary beverage….
This is one equation that I perform often when looking at the nutrition panel on a sugary beverage (or anything else with sugar in it). 

1. Find the nutrition label on your sugary food item.
2. Note how many servings are in the container. (Often it is more than 1 serving and this will be important to consider at the end of the equation).
3. Find where it says “sugars” and look at the number next to it. It will likely be a two digit number followed by the letter g (for grams).
4. Divide that number of grams of sugar by 4 (or 5 if it makes the math easier). There are four plus Grams of sugar in a Teaspoon of sugar. Thus, this division will tell you how many TEASPOONS (or cubes) of sugar are in ONE SERVING of the beverage.
5. Take this number and multiply it by the number of servings in the container to get an idea for how many teaspoons of sugar are in the entire beverage!
6. Now, consider how much of the beverage you drink at one sitting and how many teaspoons (or cubes) of sugar that is. I like to imagine the cubes of sugar IN the bottle to give me a good visualization of how much sugar I am drinking. Now, also consider the recommended daily intake of 6 teaspoons (for women) and 9 teaspoons (for me).

Resources:
American Heart Association article about Added Sugars
World Health Organization Draft Guidelines: Sugar intake for adults and children