Diet Coke is a Joke....

Artificial Sweeteners Could Make You Gain Weight, Study
11 Feb 2008

A study by scientists in the US suggests that eating artificial sweeteners could make people put on weight because experiments on laboratory rats showed that those eating food sweetened with artificial sweeteners ate more calories than their counterparts whose food was sweetened with normal sugar.

The study is the work of Drs Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson, two psychologists based at the Ingestive Behavior Research Center at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, and is to be published in the February 2008 issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA).

The authors suggest that a sweet taste may cause animals to anticipate the calorie content of food, and eating artificial sweeteners with little or no calories undermines this connection, leading to energy imbalance by increasing food intake or reducing energy expenditure.

They conducted three sets of experiments on adult male laboratory rats who were put in two groups. One group was given yogurt sweetened with glucose (equivalent to table sugar, containing 15 calories a teaspoon), and the other group was given yogurt sweetened with zero-calorie saccharin.

The rats that had the saccharin-sweetened yogurt consumed more calories, put on more weight, gained more body fat, and did not cut back on their calorie consumption in the longer term.

All these results were statistically significant, said the authors, who argued that by breaking the link between the sweet taste and the anticipated high calorie food, the saccharin changed the body's ability to control food intake.

They also suggested that the change depends on experience, which might explain why the obesity epidemic in humans has gone up in line with increased use of artificial sweeteners, and why scientists fail to agree on the effect of artificial sweeteners on humans: some research shows weight loss, others show weight gain or no effect at all. Swithers said it could be because those studies did not take into account prior consumption and that people have different experiences with artificial and natural sweeteners.

The authors also measured changes in the core body temperature of the rats. Usually, when the body of an animal gets ready to eat, the "metabolic engine" revs up, which raises the core temperature of the body. But when they gave the rats fed on saccharin sweetened yogurt a new, sweet tasting, high calorie meal, their core body temperature did not go up as much as that of the rats who had been fed on yogurt sweetened with glucose.

Swithers and Davidson argued this was because the saccharin fed rats had a blunted response that had the double effect of making them eat more and making it harder for them to burn off calories. As they explained in their paper:

"The data clearly indicate that consuming a food sweetened with no-calorie saccharin can lead to greater body-weight gain and adiposity than would consuming the same food sweetened with a higher-calorie sugar."

Although they recognized that these results may be contrary to expectations, and indeed the news may not be well received by clinicians and health professionals who support the use of low and zero calorie sweeteners as a way to lose weight, and this data is based on rats and not humans, the authors pointed out their findings are in line with increasing similar evidence. More and more studies are showing that people who consume more articially sweetened diet drinks are at higher risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of health problems that increases risk of heart disease and diabetes, and includes high abdominal fat, high blood pressure and insulin resistance.

The authors suggest that other artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame K, probably have a similar effect as saccharin. They also said that although they anticipate the results on the rats would be similar in humans, this it is yet to be demonstrated with human subjects.

Swithers and Davidson pointed out that it is not all doom and gloom. Although it takes more conscious effort, counting calories is still a good way to keep control of weight.

"A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation by Rats."
Susan E. Swithers and Terry L. Davidson.
Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 122, No. 1, February 2008.

Sources: American Psychological Association press release.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today

Must be doing enough right that the diet coke isn't truly hurting the big picture. I have a medium diet coke about once a week from McDonald's, and I'm actually loosing weight faster than I'd expected. Maybe I should drink more to slow things down a tad. I just have to say anything I read that is diet related, I always take with a grain of salt (1 grain isn't going to wreck my sodium intake) and just keep exercising and eating healthy on the whole. I still have my indulgences, but they are kept to a minimum. That's what it's all about.

I definitely agree it's good to stay away from added sugar and sugar substitutes, but I have to take exception with one particular line in this post:

When it comes to losing fat, it is more about how much sugar (or sugar substitute) you consume rather than calories or dietary fat intake. Hence, the goal is to consume as little sugar or sugar substitute as possible (including fruits and their juices)

Fruit comes packed with so many good vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc - it does a disservice to discourage people from eating fruit. I eat on average 2 servings of fruit a day and am having no trouble with fat loss - I think the key is to make sure that you keep ADDED sugars out of your diet as much as possible and eat reasonable portions of fruit and dairy. From what I've read, normally the regulating systems in our body work quite well when you eat reasonably, but it's when you eat large servings of sugar at once that causes your body to overcompensate and release too much insulin (which leads to the crappy "sugar crash" feeling).

I get the feeling you know what you're talking about! So can I ask you a question? MFP has the option to track sugars. I am technically not overweight (according to my BMI), but I think I look chunky am I'm on the heavy side of "normal" on the bmi anyway. Visually, most of my fat is in my belly. I definitely have tummy flab. so anyway, I wasn't sure whether tracking sugars was necessary or not since MFP didn't automatically on default start tracking sugars. Eventually, I figured since I have a belly I should track sugars so I changed the settings to do that. It has me at 26 grams of sugar a day or something like that. Of course I was really frustrated because my plumsmart juice that I like to drink for my stomach issues has a good bit of sugar, though it says none of it is added sugar. Also, I like to eat fruit from time to time and even a glass of milk has 12 grams of sugar! But then I was told not to worry about it, because MFP should really only track ADDED sugars because that's what you need to observe when losing weight. THEN other people said, No, your body reacts the same way to sugar whether it's from an apple or a cookie! WHICH IS IT?! And if it's the latter, how am I supposed to eat fruit and drink milk?! I only drink one glass of the plumsmart a day (8 oz.) but it's got almost that much sugar in it (from the plums, it says).

My body seems to want to do the opposite as others' - diet coke conquers my food cravings and fills me up, and water actually makes me hungrier and my body retains it more than diet coke, which is completely the opposite of what I've been told all my life.

If you are going to have a soda then you are better off with a diet one.

Drink water as much as possible but artificial sweetener will not destroy all your hard work. If you are logging calories and you are sticking to your goals then half of the issue is gone as you are not overeating becasue of the DC.

And if you are worried about the insulin response then just have your DC with a meal or very close to eating. This gets rid of the other issue.