Is giving up diet soda really worth it?

universally accepted as bad for you

You don't seem to quite have a handle on what "universally" means.

"My grandpa smoked for 50 years and didn't get lung cancer, so cigarettes must be safe! My cousin ate a bowl of lead paint chips each morning for breakfast when he was a child and he's in great shape! Come on, show me a study that conclusively states that cigarettes and lead paint are bad for you - and when you do, I'll still claim that they are good for you, because I'm a contrarian that that really loves to argue!"

No idea what this list of anecdotes has to do with anything. There's plenty of published science that strongly establish causative links between smoking, and lead exposure, to poor outcomes.

The same empirical evidence exists of health risks from pop as they do for tobacco and lead paint.

Absolutely and unequivocally false.

Recent research:

Eur J Nutr. 2013 Apr 11. [Epub ahead of print]
Sugar-sweetened beverage and diet soda consumption and the 7-year risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus in middle-aged Japanese men.
Sakurai M, Nakamura K, Miura K, Takamura T, Yo****a K, Nagasawa SY, Morikawa Y, Ishizaki M, Kido T, Naruse Y, Suwazono Y, Sasaki S, Nakagawa H.
Source
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Kanazawa Medical University, 1-1 Daigaku, Uchinada, Ishikawa, 920-0293, Japan, m-sakura@kanazawa-med.ac.jp.
Abstract
PURPOSE:
This cohort study investigated the association between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) and diet soda consumption and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in Japanese men.
METHODS:
The participants were 2,037 employees of a factory in Japan. We measured consumption of SSB and diet soda using a self-administered diet history questionnaire. The incidence of diabetes was determined in annual medical examinations over a 7-year period. Hazard ratios (HRs) with 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) for diabetes were estimated after adjusting for age, body mass index, family history, and dietary and other lifestyle factors.
RESULTS:
During the study, 170 participants developed diabetes. The crude incidence rates (/1,000 person-years) across participants who were rare/never SSB consumers, <1 serving/week, ≥1 serving/week and <1 serving/day, and ≥1 serving/day were 15.5, 12.7, 14.9, and 17.4, respectively. The multivariate-adjusted HR compared to rare/never SSB consumers was 1.35 (95 % CI 0.80-2.27) for participants who consumed ≥1 serving/day SSB. Diet soda consumption was significantly associated with the incident risk of diabetes (P for trend = 0.013), and multivariate-adjusted HRs compared to rare/never diet soda consumers were 1.05 (0.62-1.78) and 1.70 (1.13-2.55), respectively, for participants who consumed <1 serving/week and ≥1 serving/week.
CONCLUSIONS:
Consumption of diet soda was significantly associated with an increased risk for diabetes in Japanese men. Diet soda is not always effective at preventing type 2 diabetes even though it is a zero-calorie drink.

It's known that diet soda consumption is correlated with diabetes incidence.

The question is whether the diet soda causes diabetes.

What do you think? What confounding variables could be present here? What factors could explain this link?

Do you know how hard it is to prove causality? If you want to drink 10 cans a day and wait until it is proven, knock yourself out. I LOVE soda, regular, diet, any kind. But I stopped drinking it because frankly I'd rather go without than take the risk. What other people do is their business. My advice is moderation. I would never profess to know, with absolute certainty, whether or not is is safe or unsafe. I am simply presenting research that I have found. Others can read it or not, and make of it what they will. If you want to sit here all day and claim that it is perfectly safe, that is your business. But I think that it is irresponsible to advise other people based on your own soapbox. And if you knew that a correlation w/ diabetes incidence does exist, why not state that instead of just arguing that it is perfectly safe? Is this about being right, or providing information?

I do.

If you want to stop drinking it just in case it eventually turns out to have some health risk, that's fine. Just don't pretend that one has been established already.

universally accepted as bad for you

You don't seem to quite have a handle on what "universally" means.

"My grandpa smoked for 50 years and didn't get lung cancer, so cigarettes must be safe! My cousin ate a bowl of lead paint chips each morning for breakfast when he was a child and he's in great shape! Come on, show me a study that conclusively states that cigarettes and lead paint are bad for you - and when you do, I'll still claim that they are good for you, because I'm a contrarian that that really loves to argue!"

No idea what this list of anecdotes has to do with anything. There's plenty of published science that strongly establish causative links between smoking, and lead exposure, to poor outcomes.

The same empirical evidence exists of health risks from pop as they do for tobacco and lead paint.

Absolutely and unequivocally false.

So prove it. Show me some links to some independent studies, studies that weren't funded by producers of cola, aspartame, or the government, that prove beyond a doubt that diet pop and its chemicals are safe.

I have diet soda.. I need something to put my alcohol in..

universally accepted as bad for you

You don't seem to quite have a handle on what "universally" means.

"My grandpa smoked for 50 years and didn't get lung cancer, so cigarettes must be safe! My cousin ate a bowl of lead paint chips each morning for breakfast when he was a child and he's in great shape! Come on, show me a study that conclusively states that cigarettes and lead paint are bad for you - and when you do, I'll still claim that they are good for you, because I'm a contrarian that that really loves to argue!"

No idea what this list of anecdotes has to do with anything. There's plenty of published science that strongly establish causative links between smoking, and lead exposure, to poor outcomes.

The same empirical evidence exists of health risks from pop as they do for tobacco and lead paint.

Absolutely and unequivocally false.

So prove it. Show me some links to some independent studies, studies that weren't funded by producers of cola, aspartame, or the government, that prove beyond a doubt that diet pop and its chemicals are safe.

You can't prove something is safe. And that's not what I said is false anyway.

The poster said that there is equivalent evidence for poor health outcomes for diet soda that there are for smoking and lead paint. This is absolutely, 100%, completely false. I can't stress that enough. It's absolutely, absolutely false.

No.

universally accepted as bad for you

You don't seem to quite have a handle on what "universally" means.

"My grandpa smoked for 50 years and didn't get lung cancer, so cigarettes must be safe! My cousin ate a bowl of lead paint chips each morning for breakfast when he was a child and he's in great shape! Come on, show me a study that conclusively states that cigarettes and lead paint are bad for you - and when you do, I'll still claim that they are good for you, because I'm a contrarian that that really loves to argue!"

No idea what this list of anecdotes has to do with anything. There's plenty of published science that strongly establish causative links between smoking, and lead exposure, to poor outcomes.

The same empirical evidence exists of health risks from pop as they do for tobacco and lead paint.

Absolutely and unequivocally false.

So prove it. Show me some links to some independent studies, studies that weren't funded by producers of cola, aspartame, or the government, that prove beyond a doubt that diet pop and its chemicals are safe.

You can't prove something is safe. And that's not what I said is false anyway.

The poster said that there is equivalent evidence for poor health outcomes for diet soda that there are for smoking and lead paint. This is absolutely, 100%, completely false. I can't stress that enough. It's absolutely, absolutely false.

Is it? I don't really see either one of you backing up your claims with any real proof. You can say it's false all day long, but I don't know you, so it doesn't really mean anything. If you want to be logical and credible, then I think you ought to hold yourself to the same burden of proof you are holding everyone else to. At the very least, post the links to the information that leads you to say several people in this thread are making false claims so that people can decide based on evidence, not just your say so.

Aspartame has, to my knowledge, not been shown to cause any negative health outcome. There's no reason to give it up if you like it.