Diet Soda

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Ruxie
Ruxie Posts: 21 Member
in Food and Nutrition
A coworker pulled me into her office yesterday and showd me part of a book she was reading on will power. The part she showed me was talking about diet soda and basically about all fake sweetened drinks, and said that the sweet taste tricks the body into thinking sugar is coming, so it releases glucose, but then there is no sugar, and then there is some kind of negative health effect from that which could cause weight gain. Can anyone with knowledge on this comment? I'd appreciate it!

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  • beckajw
    beckajw Posts: 1,738 Member
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    You are going to get a lot of different answers. There is no definited scientific proof either way.

    However, there is a study that says the brain registers the sweet from the diet drink and releases insulin (insulin, not glucose)--there are other studies that say this isn't true. Anyway, assuming insulin is released, this release of insulin, causes hunger, which, in turn, causes you to eat more.

    There are many people who have never had a problem with this.

    Honestly, even if you do feel hunger, you have the ability to control what you eat. So, diet soda (if it does cause hunger--again not proven), cannot cause you to gain weight unless you let it.
  • kylTKe
    kylTKe Posts: 146 Member
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    I assume you mean insulin?

    There has been a fair amount of research into the subject. Aspartame, the sweetener you're likely to find in diet sodas, does not have any appreciable effect on insulin release. It's not necessarily the same for other sweeteners.
  • shanice_22
    shanice_22 Posts: 202 Member
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    I've heard something similar, that diet pop can hinder your weight loss as they trick your body into thinking there's sugar coming and when it doesn't get the sugar it wants you crave something else to get that sugar hit.
  • AnninStPaul
    AnninStPaul Posts: 1,372 Member
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    A coworker pulled me into her office yesterday and showd me part of a book she was reading on will power. The part she showed me was talking about diet soda and basically about all fake sweetened drinks, and said that the sweet taste tricks the body into thinking sugar is coming, so it releases glucose, but then there is no sugar, and then there is some kind of negative health effect from that which could cause weight gain. Can anyone with knowledge on this comment? I'd appreciate it!

    There has been legitimate scientific work in lab animals (please don't make me look it up) that artificial sweeteners, including HFCS, don't trigger satiety hormones the way that regular sugars do. So even though a person has eaten, the body hasn't registered the calorie intake and therefore you still feel hungry. To me, this is particularly troubling with HFCS as it brings quite a few calories with it.

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