A typical carbonated soft drink
will have 200 calories in a 16-ounce serving. All of those
calories come from sugar, and sugar contains 16 calories per
teaspoon. Divide those two and you find a 16-ounce serving
contains about 12.5 teaspoons of sugar.
I wanted to compare this to coffee, so I looked at a 12 ounce
soda, which has about 140 calories or about 8.75 teaspoons of
sugar. Standard coffee cups (not mugs) contain about 6 ounces of
fluid. Take half the calories and sugar of a 12 ounce soda and it
would take about 4.38 teaspoons of sugar to make coffee as sweet
as soda.