Saturday, October 14, 2006

Don't Drink the Cough Syrup!

A patient asked me yesterday how many calories were in cough syrup. She'd been sick for a week and figured that she's been going through close to 8 teaspoons a day.

You know, I'm not usually surprised by calories.

This time I was floored. 15 calories per teaspoon!

Doesn't sound like much to you?

Drop per drop cough syrup has ELEVEN times the calories of Coca Cola!

To put that in perspective, my patient, by having the recommended maximum of 8 teaspoons a day, was drinking the equivalent number of calories of 1.2 cans of Coke.

There is some good news. There are sugar free cough syrups out there. I found one from Robitussin. I love their description of the product, it's almost a Quobesity,

"Robitussin® Cough Sugar-Free DM is specially formulated for diabetics, and health conscious consumers"
I can't completely disagree with them.

What they're inferring of course is that if you're not health conscious, feel free to choose their other cloyingly sweet, ridiculously high in calorie, products.