(This article appeared in Time on March 30, 2015)
The Skinny on Diet Soda
Is it time to kick artificial sugars out of the can?
By Mandy Oaklander
Diet soda gives you a sugar rush far stronger than the granulated stuff in a sugar bowl ever could – and for no calories. But research is mounting that low- and no-calorie sweeteners may not be great choices for dieters. A recent study found that over nine years, diet-soda drinkers gained nearly triple the abdominal fat – 3 in (8cm) – as those who didn’t drink diet soda. Though scientists are still puzzling over how this may happen, here’s what they think is going on.
Not all sweetness satisfies.
When you consume enough real sugar, your brain gets the message, and a sense of satiety – or fullness – takes over. “Regular sugar has caloric consequences,” says Dr. Helen Hazuda, professor of medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and senior author of the new study. “Your body is used to knowing that a sweet taste means you are ingesting energy” – and that means calories – “and that if you don’t burn them off, it’s going to convert to fat,” she says. But the most popular artificial sweetener in diet drinks, for instance, is about 200 times sweeter than sugar without triggering a feeling of satiety.
That can lead to overeating.
Bad things can happen when you strip sweetness of its power to satisfy: the link between eating and the role of calories in your body starts to crumble. According to a recent study, when rats ate yogurt mixed with an artificial sweetener, they consumed fewer calories and gained more weight than rats that ate sugar-sweetened yogurt, suggesting that the no-calorie sweeteners interfere with a natural ability to regulate incoming calories. This—no surprise – can lead to sugar cravings and weight gain.
It may also mess with your microbes.
A recent study found in Nature found that artificial sweeteners changed the colonies of gut bacteria in mice in ways that made the animals vulnerable to insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, which are metabolic disorders that can lead to weight gain and increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes.
It might be bad for your heart.
In a study based on dietary questionnaires of 9,500 people, those who said they drank one can of diet soda a day had 34% higher risk of metabolic syndrome – a cluster of risk factors that can lead to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes – than those who didn’t drink diet soda/ the study stopped short of drawing a cause-and-effect link, but the association surprised the authors, who called for more research.
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Dr. LaBeau’s thoughts:
COMMENT: DISCLAIMER this is purely for your informational benefit. My only recommended beverage is water. That being said you can see why all the dietary foods and beverages have NOT accomplished the goal of weight control. In addition to lack of weight loss you also can add lowering our body pH due to acidity and loss of calcium due to the phosphoric acid in cola beverages. Researches at Tufts University, studying several thousand men and women, found that women who regularly drank cola-based sodas – three or more a day – had almost 4% lower bone mineral density in the hip, even though researchers controlled for calcium and vitamin D intake.
For those who are seriously looking to lose weight I find that tailoring a cleansing diet leads to the best success. A good way to start is to bring a week long diet log for us to go over.
Mark H. LaBeau, D.O.
