Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses pour la santé.

Soft drinks are too sweet and sometimes too fatty for your health.

Breakdown of Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses pour la santé.

• être: to be
• et: and
• pour: for
• trop: too
• parfois: sometimes
• sucré: sweet
• la santé: the health
• la boisson: the drink
• gazeux: carbonated
• gras: fatty

Questions & Answers about Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses pour la santé.

Why is it les boissons gazeuses and not les gazeuses boissons?

In French, most adjectives come after the noun, unlike in English.

• boissons = drinks (noun, feminine plural)
• gazeuses = fizzy / carbonated (adjective, feminine plural)

So the normal order is:

• les boissons gazeuses = the fizzy drinks / soft drinks

Putting the adjective before the noun (les gazeuses boissons) sounds wrong and is not idiomatic French.

Only certain common adjectives (often size, beauty, age, goodness, quantity – sometimes called BANGS adjectives: beau, grand, petit, jeune, vieux, bon, mauvais, etc.) usually come before the noun. gazeux / gazeuse is not one of those, so it goes after boissons.

What exactly does gazeuses mean here?

gazeux / gazeuse literally means gaseous, containing gas. For drinks, it means:

• boisson gazeuse = a carbonated drink, something with bubbles
  • e.g. cola, lemonade, Fanta, etc.

So les boissons gazeuses is basically soft drinks / fizzy drinks / sodas.

Grammatically:

• gazeuse = feminine singular
• gazeuses = feminine plural (to agree with les boissons)

Why are sucrées and grasses in the feminine plural form?

Both adjectives describe les boissons, which is:

• boissons → feminine plural noun (la boisson, les boissons)

In French, adjectives must agree with the noun they describe:

• feminine plural ending: -es

So:

• trop sucrées (too sweet)
• trop grasses (too fatty)

Both take -es to match boissons (feminine plural).

You cannot say:

• *trop sucré (masc. sing.) or *trop gras here — that would be ungrammatical.

What is the difference between trop sucrées and très sucrées?

• trop sucrées = too sweet
  → there is too much sugar, more than is good/reasonable. Negative idea of excess.

• très sucrées = very sweet
  → just describes a high level of sweetness. It can be neutral or even positive, depending on context.

In this sentence, we are talking about health, so trop is logical: the sugar level is excessive and bad for health.

Same idea with trop grasses:

• trop grasses = too fatty / too rich (in fats or calories)
  Not just very fatty, but excessively fatty.

Why is parfois placed before trop grasses? Can it go somewhere else?

parfois is an adverb meaning sometimes. In the sentence:

• … sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses …

it modifies trop grasses: sometimes too fatty.

Possible positions:

1. Les boissons gazeuses sont parfois trop sucrées et trop grasses pour la santé.
   → are sometimes too sweet and too fatty

2. Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses pour la santé.
   → always too sweet, and sometimes also too fatty

3. Less natural, but possible with a slight change of emphasis:
   Parfois, les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et trop grasses pour la santé.

The original sentence suggests: they are generally too sweet, and sometimes also too fatty.

What does grasses mean when talking about drinks? Do soft drinks really have fat?

Literally, gras / grasse means fat, fatty, greasy, oily. It is usually used for:

• fatty foods: un plat gras, de la viande grasse, un fromage gras
• greasy things: des cheveux gras (greasy hair)

For many common sodas, there is actually little or no fat; they are mostly high in sugar.

So why trop grasses?

• In everyday speech, people sometimes use gras / grasse more loosely to mean:
  • rich, heavy, calorie-dense, or simply unhealthy and high in calories.

In a more precise, health-focused sentence, you might see:

• trop caloriques (too high in calories)
• trop sucrées et très caloriques

But trop grasses is still understandable and used in casual language to talk about unhealthy, rich drinks (especially if they contain cream, milk, or other fatty ingredients).

Why is it pour la santé and not pour la santé de l’homme / de la personne / de vous, or à la santé?

pour la santé here means for (one’s) health in a general sense:

• pour la santé = for health / for your health / for our health (generically)

In French, the definite article (la) is often used for general, abstract concepts:

• La santé est importante. = Health is important.
• C’est mauvais pour la santé. = It’s bad for your health.

Other possibilities:

• pour votre santé = for your health
  → more personal (e.g. a doctor speaking directly to you).
• pour la santé des enfants = for the children’s health
  → specific group.

à la santé, on the other hand, is used for toasts (cheers!), not for this meaning:

• À la santé de Pierre ! = To Pierre’s health! / Cheers to Pierre!

Could we say Les boissons gazeuses sont mauvaises pour la santé instead? What’s the difference?

Yes, that’s a perfectly correct sentence:

• Les boissons gazeuses sont mauvaises pour la santé.
  = Soft drinks are bad for your health.

Differences in nuance:

• mauvaises pour la santé
  → a general judgment: they’re bad / unhealthy, without stating why.

• trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses pour la santé
  → gives specific reasons: too much sugar and sometimes too much fat (or calories), which makes them bad for health.

So the original sentence is more descriptive and precise about what the problem is.

Why don’t we repeat the verb sont before parfois trop grasses?

The subject and verb are the same for both adjectives:

• Subject: Les boissons gazeuses
• Verb: sont

So French (like English) normally says:

• Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses.
  = Soft drinks are too sweet and sometimes too fatty.

You could repeat the verb:

• Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et sont parfois trop grasses pour la santé.

This is grammatically correct, but heavier and less natural in a simple sentence. Usually, French avoids repeating sont when the meaning is clear.

Could we put the adjectives before the noun, like les trop sucrées boissons gazeuses?

No, that is not natural French.

1. The normal order is:

   • les boissons gazeuses (noun + adjective)
   • sont trop sucrées (verb + adverb + adjective)

2. Structures like trop + adjective + noun before the noun (les trop sucrées boissons) are extremely marked or poetic. In everyday French, you don’t use that order.

So you should keep:

• Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées…
  and not Les trop sucrées boissons gazeuses…

Is boisson always feminine? How can I tell?

Yes:

• la boisson (the drink)
• une boisson
• les boissons

There is unfortunately no reliable, general rule that tells you the gender of every noun. You mostly have to learn each noun with its article:

• la boisson, la santé, la viande, le sucre, le soda, etc.

A useful habit: when you add a word to your vocabulary list, always learn it as a mini-phrase:

• une boisson instead of just boisson

How is the whole sentence pronounced, and are there any important liaisons?

A careful but natural pronunciation in IPA:

• Les boissons gazeuses sont trop sucrées et parfois trop grasses pour la santé.
  → [le bwa.sɔ̃ ɡa.zøz sɔ̃ tʁo sy.kʁe e paʁ.fwa tʁo ɡʁas puʁ la sɑ̃.te]

Points to notice:

• les boissons → [le bwa.sɔ̃]
  
  • bois- like bwa.
• gazeuses → [ɡa.zøz] (the final -s is pronounced [z] here)
• sont → [sɔ̃] (nasal vowel, no t sound)
• trop sucrées → [tʁo sy.kʁe]
  
  • final p in trop is silent before a consonant.
• parfois → [paʁ.fwa]
• grasses → [ɡʁas] (final -s pronounced [s] because of feminine plural spelling, but phonetically same as singular grasse in most accents)
• santé → [sɑ̃.te] (nasal an in the first syllable)

There are no obligatory liaisons in this particular sentence, so you can pronounce each word separately as written above.