the real deal on diet soda?

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  • Samerah12
    Samerah12 Posts: 610 Member
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    Aspartame is fine. Diet is all about calories in versus calories out. There is no insulin fairy, meal timing fairy, magic diet pill, or carbohydrate boogie man. Regular soda has calories. Diet soda does not.

    Peer-reviewed science does not espouse the purported nefarious affects of aspartame.

    Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=aspartame

    WHAT! I went to your link and the first study I clicked on (not cuz I went down the list looking for one to prove you wrong, I clicked the most relevent one I saw: "Effect of long term intake of aspartame on antioxidant defense status in liver.") concludes in their abstract that long term intake of aspartame can reduce the antioxidant potential of liver cells! Rather an important function in a liver...

    I can't believe I'm even joining this argument. I don't frankly care. I was just curious to see some actual peer reviewed studies for a change.

    Alright, 2nd link I click, "Effects of artificial sweeteners on body weight, food and drink intake" concludes that mice consuming aspartame (or other artificial no cal sweeteners) gained more weight eating the same amount of food compared to controls. And I am forced to conclude that you are making one argument and posting evidence that supports the other side.


    "Aspartame administered in feed, beginning prenatally through life span, induces cancers of the liver and lung in male Swiss mice." Good lord...

    I don't mean to pick on you but even worse than baldly stating anecdotal evidence is posting peer reviewed studies and pretending to have read them...
  • RoseyK
    RoseyK Posts: 157 Member
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    When I had gastric bypass in 2004, my surgeon told me NO diet soda...nothing carbonated. Carbonated drinks stretch the stomach....and so you feel like you need more food to feel full. if you give up the carbonated drinks...you will lose weight quicker. Soda also has sodium in it...so you will retain water. He also told us NO straws....when you drink from a straw, you swallow air.
  • mapexdrummer69
    mapexdrummer69 Posts: 445
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    Aspartame is fine. Diet is all about calories in versus calories out. There is no insulin fairy, meal timing fairy, magic diet pill, or carbohydrate boogie man. Regular soda has calories. Diet soda does not.

    Peer-reviewed science does not espouse the purported nefarious affects of aspartame.

    Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=aspartame

    WHAT! I went to your link and the first study I clicked on (not cuz I went down the list looking for one to prove you wrong, I clicked the most relevent one I saw: "Effect of long term intake of aspartame on antioxidant defense status in liver.") concludes in their abstract that long term intake of aspartame can reduce the antioxidant potential of liver cells! Rather an important function in a liver...

    I can't believe I'm even joining this argument. I don't frankly care. I was just curious to see some actual peer reviewed studies for a change.

    Alright, 2nd link I click, "Effects of artificial sweeteners on body weight, food and drink intake" concludes that mice consuming aspartame (or other artificial no cal sweeteners) gained more weight eating the same amount of food compared to controls. And I am forced to conclude that you are making one argument and posting evidence that supports the other side.


    "Aspartame administered in feed, beginning prenatally through life span, induces cancers of the liver and lung in male Swiss mice." Good lord...

    I don't mean to pick on you but even worse than baldly stating anecdotal evidence is posting peer reviewed studies and pretending to have read them...


    LOL. On mice. Wow.....


    isthisreallife?



    Also, please post that study. I'll admit, I didn't read that one, seeing that it's on mice, but I still have a general concern for mice that drink diet soda.
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
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    I know some people who have bad reactions to Aspartame. My niece is one of them. She gets pounding headaches if she has a diet soda.

    Me? I get a pounding headache if I don't have my caffeine. :laugh: I've cut down greatly, typically having between 12-20 oz a day (so, either a can or a 20 oz bottle), usually with breakfast. After that, I drink between 96 and 128 oz of water, using a diluted Crystal Light type mix. (Instead of one packet per 16 oz, I use one packet per 32 oz.)

    Those, too, contain Aspartame. As do the flavored sparkling waters I've seen. But since there's been no real scientific proof that it's bad for me, I'm going to continue to enjoy it.

    As I've said in another thread, if the caffeine in soda is actually enough of a diuretic that it keeps it from hydrating you, I'd be dead. There's been times in my life that all I drank was caffeinated soda, and my kidneys are in tip top shape, as well as having youthful dewy skin. :smile: If I'd spent years being dehydrated, I wouldn't have good kidneys or good skin.
  • Samerah12
    Samerah12 Posts: 610 Member
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    Aspartame is fine. Diet is all about calories in versus calories out. There is no insulin fairy, meal timing fairy, magic diet pill, or carbohydrate boogie man. Regular soda has calories. Diet soda does not.

    Peer-reviewed science does not espouse the purported nefarious affects of aspartame.

    Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=aspartame

    WHAT! I went to your link and the first study I clicked on (not cuz I went down the list looking for one to prove you wrong, I clicked the most relevent one I saw: "Effect of long term intake of aspartame on antioxidant defense status in liver.") concludes in their abstract that long term intake of aspartame can reduce the antioxidant potential of liver cells! Rather an important function in a liver...

    I can't believe I'm even joining this argument. I don't frankly care. I was just curious to see some actual peer reviewed studies for a change.

    Alright, 2nd link I click, "Effects of artificial sweeteners on body weight, food and drink intake" concludes that mice consuming aspartame (or other artificial no cal sweeteners) gained more weight eating the same amount of food compared to controls. And I am forced to conclude that you are making one argument and posting evidence that supports the other side.


    "Aspartame administered in feed, beginning prenatally through life span, induces cancers of the liver and lung in male Swiss mice." Good lord...

    I don't mean to pick on you but even worse than baldly stating anecdotal evidence is posting peer reviewed studies and pretending to have read them...


    LOL. On mice. Wow.....


    isthisreallife?



    Also, please post that study. I'll admit, I didn't read that one, seeing that it's on mice, but I still have a general concern for mice that drink diet soda.

    Aaaand this is why I don't post in the forums. The link is above: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=aspartame, Mice are an accepted first model system for humans, and your snarkiness does not disguise your ignorance.
  • mvln
    mvln Posts: 96 Member
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    I don't want to get into a debate on whether it is good or bad for you. I just want to share my experience.

    I have been a diet coke addict for as long as I can remember. I used to have 4-6 cans a day. Just recently, less than 2 months ago, I quit cold turkey. I subsitituted it with water, water, and more water. The shift made me feel good (knowing that water is a better drink). But the greatest motivation that made me stick to is was, my thighs started shrinking. When I checked the contents of diet coke, it's mostly sodium. So by giving up diet coke, I reduced my sodium intake. I guess, it led to lesser water retention which explains the shrinking.

    Well, that is how it was for me but everyone is different.
  • mapexdrummer69
    mapexdrummer69 Posts: 445
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    Aaaand this is why I don't post in the forums. The link is above: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=aspartame, Mice are an accepted first model system for humans, and your snarkiness does not disguise your ignorance.



    I believe that humans are accepted as the first model for humans. Dang, there's my ignorance again.
  • sweet_lotus
    sweet_lotus Posts: 194 Member
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    To the OP (and anyone interested), a review of the scientific literature in 2010 on aspartame was conducted by the European Food Safety Authority. That's a close to the REAL DEAL as I could find.

    They review most of the studies done on aspartame done in the 2000s: (warning, PDF!) http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/supporting/doc/1641.pdf

    Regarding the effects of aspartame on feelings of hunger:

    "It is suggested that the experience of sweet taste without a calorific intake has an influence on appetite for both sweet and savoury foods. It should be noted, that in the majority of these studies aspartame was included as part of a mixture of sweeteners. No studies focused on the effects of aspartame on body weight."

    So, no one, yet, has shown that ingesting aspartame actually causes weight gain.

    Interestingly, a study where rats were fed water sweetened with aspartame, the rats actually lost weight!

    There is a lot of stuff about carcinogenicity and neurological effects. They concluded that the evidence is not sufficient to revise recommendations on acceptable daily intake. In other words, it's safe in the doses you get it food.

    If you are a diet soda drinker who doesn't experience excessive hunger after drinking it, I don't see any reason why it would affect weight loss or have any negative health effect.
  • chizzledfrmstone
    chizzledfrmstone Posts: 58
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    While as many of you have pointed out that Diet Coke has no sugar, it has an artificial sweetener called Aspartame, which is the ingredient that is unhealthy for you. Below I have posted a link to a really great article explaining exactly what Aspartame is and what it can do to the body. I think if I tried to summarize it up I would do it an injustice, so I highly suggest reading about it.

    http://aspartame.mercola.com/


    Aspartame in diet soda is harmless.

    Unless you have Phenylketonurea :)

    Kinda makes me curious about all these people saying they get headaches after drinking diet sodas containing Aspartame.
  • mapexdrummer69
    mapexdrummer69 Posts: 445
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    ^thanks for filling in the disclaimer :-)
  • barbiex3
    barbiex3 Posts: 1,036 Member
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    DIET soda does make you hungrier. If you're going to drink soda it's better to drink it with the calories because it wont make you hungry later on. I drink regular pop, and I never get cravings after I eat, and I'm still able to loose weight.
  • mapexdrummer69
    mapexdrummer69 Posts: 445
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    DIET soda does make you hungrier. If you're going to drink soda it's better to drink it with the calories because it wont make you hungry later on. I drink regular pop, and I never get cravings after I eat, and I'm still able to loose weight.


    Did you read the thread?
  • Elizabeth_C34
    Elizabeth_C34 Posts: 6,376 Member
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    I don't want to get into a debate on whether it is good or bad for you. I just want to share my experience.

    I have been a diet coke addict for as long as I can remember. I used to have 4-6 cans a day. Just recently, less than 2 months ago, I quit cold turkey. I subsitituted it with water, water, and more water. The shift made me feel good (knowing that water is a better drink). But the greatest motivation that made me stick to is was, my thighs started shrinking. When I checked the contents of diet coke, it's mostly sodium. So by giving up diet coke, I reduced my sodium intake. I guess, it led to lesser water retention which explains the shrinking.

    Well, that is how it was for me but everyone is different.

    Diet Coke has very very little sodium. It's right there on the label.
  • evluc
    evluc Posts: 1
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    Yes, I think I do. Clinical studies are so far not totally conclusive, but many dieticians will tell you that their patients start losing weight once they ditch the diet stuff. The physiology is as follows: since Homo Sapiens exists, that's 200 000 years or so, sweet foodstuffs always contained calories. Hence our brains and bodies evolved so as to associate sweetness with calories. Note that sweet drinks were not around before agriculture existed (10 000 years ago). There was only (the occasional) sweet food, meaning the seasonal fruit, but the only caloric drink was breast milk.
    Artificial sweeteners for mass consumption only exist since the 1950s. So when we ingest a diet drink or diet food (sweet, but no calories), our brains and bodies expect calories, because that's what 200 000 years of evolution made us expect. But no calories are forthcoming! Yet the brain expects them, so starts craving them. In other words, diet drinks can increase your appetite, or make you crave sugar. You save on calories by imbibing the diet stuff, but overdo it on calories in your next meal. Back to square one, or worse. If you really need the caffeine, drink some coffee. Or stop ingesting caffeine for a week or two, and you're not going to crave it anymore. Hit the sack early enough though...
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
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    Different people react differently to different substances. My niece gets headaches from diet soda, I don't. I get hives from the adhesive on Bandaid brand bandages, she doesn't. My husband allergic to pet dander, but we have seven cats and a dog, and he's fine with ours.

    We humans are complex creatures.
  • mynameisuntz
    mynameisuntz Posts: 582 Member
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    Diet soda is bad if you plan on drinking 10 gallons per day.

    Seriously, has anyone read the studies that involve diet soda? Do you understand there's a difference between clinical trials and research that looks at the biochemical markers? Feeding animals 50x the standard serving of diet soda, finding a problem, and generalizing those results to HUMANS who drink a 'normal' amount is not a logical line of reasoning.
  • sswift76
    sswift76 Posts: 37 Member
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    When filtering out all the nonsense diets and cliche's.........everything in moderation is what works. Calories in vs. calories out......and once in a while a diet soda is perfectly fine! Trainers don't know it all, Dr's will tell you that in moderation it's fine. I am trying to cut back on diet soda, because that is ALL I drink, I"m trying to add more water to up the health factor.
  • FearAnLoathing
    FearAnLoathing Posts: 4,852 Member
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    If diet soda made me hungrier I would not have problems eating all my calories lol
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
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    If it made you crave sweets, I wouldn't have an unopened bag of M&Ms in the cabinet. It's been there over a week.
  • BroiledNotFried
    BroiledNotFried Posts: 446 Member
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    Diet soda is linked to kidney damage. Kidneys are super important to clean your body of toxins, as well as kicking off the process to make red blood cells through releasing the chemical erythropoitien.

    ****

    SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) -Diet soda is popular with thirsty people trying to avoid calories. But a new study shows drinking two or more a day could decrease kidney function.

    Diet soda accounts for a quarter of all pop sales. But a Harvard study released at the American Society of Nephrology meeting gives news reason for concern about how much people drink on a daily basis. The study of more than three thousand women found those who drank even a couple a day saw a reduction in kidney function. Dr. Terrence Bjordahl, who practices nephrology at the University of Utah says “it was only associated with two sodas or more, any less than that was not associated with the progression of kidney disease.”

    The serving size was either a glass, can, or bottle of diet soda. Of the women in the study, 11.4 percent had a kidney function decline. The decline was 30-percent or more. The study spanned eleven years. Some decline in kidney function is normal as people age. Dr. Bjordahl says “you would expect a five to ten percent decline and this was a thirty percent change in kidney function, so it was fairly dramatic.”

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