diet drinks and their effect on your health

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_SABOTEUR_
_SABOTEUR_ Posts: 6,833 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hey, I here a lot of people on here and elsewhere saying that diet drinks are bad for you because they make you crave sugar and make your insulin spike. Does anybody have any links to studies about this and the long term effects of drinking diet drinks?

I'm really interested in the amount you drink before it is detrimental to your health. I would say I have one or two diet cokes a week just for a change to water or when I need caffeine. It doesn't make me feel hungrier or make me eat over my calorie amount as some people suggest it does or may have experienced themselves. I wonder if because I drink them in small amounts it's not that bad for me...?
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Replies

  • tomdrinkard
    tomdrinkard Posts: 29 Member
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    bump
  • Taem2
    Taem2 Posts: 47 Member
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    Hey,
    You are only substituting your craving for sugary stuff. Health-wise, aspartame? You have to decide that for yourself.
  • sunnyside1213
    sunnyside1213 Posts: 1,205 Member
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    Read the info on this site and you will never want to have a diet soda again.

    http://www.feelgoodtribe.com/2012/01/19/8-dangers-of-diet-soda/
  • Codefox
    Codefox Posts: 308 Member
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    I didn't really need to read any studies to make the decision. I switched to diet originally to cut out the worthless calories. Then I realized a can of diet soda has an ingredient list as long as my arm and its a list of ingredients my body does nothing but have to filter out at best. Do I think they were slowly killing me? Not really...but I also didn't see why I would put any of that junk in my body anymore.
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
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    Repost this on food & nutrition where it belongs and you'll all the links you need.

    Or just stop by your local ER and see how many people are in there for excess diet soda consumption. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm betting the number is zero
  • Codefox
    Codefox Posts: 308 Member
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    btw, just based on that article's correlation of diet soda consumption to obesity makes me doubt any of the rest of it. Correlation does not equal causation and without looking at why people drinking diet tended to be overweight more often than the regular soda drinkers makes that a worthless scare statistic. It could very well be that people that are overweight drink more diet so they can try and lose weight and people who are healthy have found a way to fit soda into a healthy lifestyle.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    As far as I am aware, there are no valid studies on humans showing it is detrimental to your health if consumed in reasonable quantities. The only exceptions are those with PKU or those who have a sensitivity to artificial sweeteners.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,708 Member
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    Rely on actual peer reviewed studies. There are lots of "fit" people (myself included) that consume it daily with no issues. Blogs, articles, and stories that are "horrors", usually rely on anecdotal evidence as it's "facts" against diet drinks.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    Read the info on this site and you will never want to have a diet soda again.

    http://www.feelgoodtribe.com/2012/01/19/8-dangers-of-diet-soda/

    This is an article without a single scientific study cited. Plus the only studies it refers to (without citing sources) shows correlation not causation.
  • BrittanyErica
    BrittanyErica Posts: 74 Member
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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoAtwVyzZI&feature=context-cha

    watch this, please. it explains so much.
  • n0ob
    n0ob Posts: 2,390 Member
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    Rely on actual peer reviewed studies. There are lots of "fit" people (myself included) that consume it daily with no issues. Blogs, articles, and stories that are "horrors", usually rely on anecdotal evidence as it's "facts" against diet drinks.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    Take your reasonable logic and GTFO...
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoAtwVyzZI&feature=context-cha

    watch this, please. it explains so much.

    There is no evidence of causation at all in this video.
  • nondomesticgoddess
    nondomesticgoddess Posts: 40 Member
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    Wow...good article. I had heard in the past that certain chemicals related to the break down of aspartame do not leave your body but build to toxic levels. I've never taken up diet soda because the few times I've tried it I get the shakes. A wierd reaction that I'm now very thankful for. But water and unsweetened tea do get boring ...:(
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    Wow...good article. I had heard in the past that certain chemicals related to the break down of aspartame do not leave your body but build to toxic levels. I've never taken up diet soda because the few times I've tried it I get the shakes. A wierd reaction that I'm now very thankful for. But water and unsweetened tea do get boring ...:(

    Not correct
  • Leguman
    Leguman Posts: 8
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    Lots of myth with aspartame. It is one, if not the most studied ingested chemicals, and no study could ever clearly demonstrate that it is harmful to the human body in concentration that is ingested (key word : concentration THAT IS INGESTED, not 10000x times the concentration that you would drink in a lifetime). As for the blog article, lots of unbacked claims in there, and some are clearly false (article states that the acidity of soft drink is harmful to the body... well your stomach is about 10 times more acid than your soft drink. Could be bad for the teeth though)
    Drink moderatly and it should be totally safe. As for the effect on hunger, well I have no idea about that, but I don't think your insulin levels that much (they do recommend to diabetic people to change sugar for artificial sweeteners, so it shouldn't affect insulin levels too much)
  • SunnyAndrsn
    SunnyAndrsn Posts: 369 Member
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    Repost this on food & nutrition where it belongs and you'll all the links you need.

    Or just stop by your local ER and see how many people are in there for excess diet soda consumption. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm betting the number is zero

    ^^LMAO! Agreed, have never seen this in the ER
  • n0ob
    n0ob Posts: 2,390 Member
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    There isn't or ever will be a smoking gun... Much less a chemical as benign as aspartame.

    Your body can take care of certain doses of cyanide, arsenic, mercury, lead, sarin, formaldehyde, tetrodotoxin, Botox, etc. Sorry, we are absolutely amazing and will survive. A few food preservatives and some nonnutritutive sweeteners aren't going to take your body down, as your body MAKES more toxic chemicals daily, hourly, and every second than aspartame.
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    Wow...good article. I had heard in the past that certain chemicals related to the break down of aspartame do not leave your body but build to toxic levels. I've never taken up diet soda because the few times I've tried it I get the shakes. A wierd reaction that I'm now very thankful for. But water and unsweetened tea do get boring ...:(

    Aspartame is broken down into two amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Both of these amino acids are found in chicken and in various fruits and they are not harmful provided you don't have Phenylketonuria. Methanol is a digestive byproduct of aspartame and that gets converted into formaldehyde in the liver and formaldehyde is converted to formic acid and excreted.

    You really, really do not need to worry about aspartame provided that you're not consuming doses that are, to be blunt, freakishly stupid like a case of soda per day.
  • ahamm002
    ahamm002 Posts: 1,690 Member
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    Hey, I here a lot of people on here and elsewhere saying that diet drinks are bad for you because they make you crave sugar and make your insulin spike. Does anybody have any links to studies about this and the long term effects of drinking diet drinks?

    I'm really interested in the amount you drink before it is detrimental to your health. I would say I have one or two diet cokes a week just for a change to water or when I need caffeine. It doesn't make me feel hungrier or make me eat over my calorie amount as some people suggest it does or may have experienced themselves. I wonder if because I drink them in small amounts it's not that bad for me...?

    Best case scenario: diet soda is only bad for your teeth. Worst case scenario: it does cause some people to gain weight, and possible other systemic health issues too. So why bother with it? Why not just get used to drinking things that we know are good for you like coffee, tea, and water? It's not like diet soda really tastes all that great anyway. Once you stop drinking it for awhile you won't miss it at all.

    It's crazy to me that so many people seem to think it's necessary to go around drinking all these super sweet artificially flavored drinks all the time. And they don't even taste that good. Heck, remember when diet soda first came out and everyone hated it? But the recommendation back then was to "get used to it."
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
    Options
    Hey, I here a lot of people on here and elsewhere saying that diet drinks are bad for you because they make you crave sugar and make your insulin spike. Does anybody have any links to studies about this and the long term effects of drinking diet drinks?

    I'm really interested in the amount you drink before it is detrimental to your health. I would say I have one or two diet cokes a week just for a change to water or when I need caffeine. It doesn't make me feel hungrier or make me eat over my calorie amount as some people suggest it does or may have experienced themselves. I wonder if because I drink them in small amounts it's not that bad for me...?

    Best case scenario: diet soda is only bad for your teeth. Worst case scenario: it does cause some people to gain weight, and possible other systemic health issues too. So why bother with it? Why not just get used to drinking things that we know are good for you like coffee, tea, and water? It's not like diet soda really tastes all that great anyway. Once you stop drinking it for awhile you won't miss it at all.

    It's crazy to me that so many people seem to think it's necessary to go around drinking all these super sweet artificially flavored drinks all the time. And they don't even taste that good. Heck, remember when diet soda first came out and everyone hated it? But the recommendation back then was to "get used to it."

    For you it is silly because you don't enjoy drinking them.
    For someone else, who may misunderstand what is good and what isn't, and makes all sorts of dietary restrictions that may not need to be in place, that might cause adherence issues and dietary adherence better rank near the top of the list, especially for obese people.

    If you enjoy diet soda and don't drink tons of it per day and don't have dental issues, I see absolutely zero reason to eliminate it and I'd advise against it provided that the diet soda is giving the dieter some enjoyment in what is generally not an enjoyable process for most people.

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