Is diet soda really making me fat?

squeaktones wrote: »

My nutritionist told me that diet soda and regular soda aren't much different to the brain. They are both sweet and that is what the body notices. She said diet sodas will make me crave sweets and suggested that I stop them or at least cut down to one a week as a treat. She suggested if I feel I must have something sweet and caffinated to drink that I get stevia instead of sweet n low and a tea bag instead of coffee. She said tea has beneficial antioxidents more so if it's green tea. She told me to try some of the flavored no calorie fizzy waters a couple of times a week to help reduce the soda craving. She said they bubble like soda so my body will feel like it's getting soda with less of the sodium. She said if I am drinking anything but water that it is going to have calories. She told me if I am drinking juices to do half water half juice. It cuts the calories but tastes just about the same. You also have to remember that diet soda has a lot of sodium. That is going to make you retain a lot of fluid.

gdyment wrote: »

memo1974 wrote: »

I found this article on health.com. Also, to answer some of the earlier comments: being skinny or thin got nothing to do with being healthy.
...
Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit, says Brooke Alpert, RD, author of The Sugar Detox. Even more troubling, these sugar stand-ins have been shown to have the same effect on your body as sugar. "Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain," Alpert says.
...
From:
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20739512,00.html

So do people actually think that the body relies on TASTE to decide what to do with a glucose molecule? Do you believe that if you masked the taste of sugar with salt or vinegar or something the body would say "Oh hey, this doesn't taste like sugar so I'm not going to process it as such - 0 calories for you! ". Conversely you think if you flavored a piece of carpet to be super sweet that eating said carpet would make your body produce insulin as if it was real sugar and store carpet calories?

I can get with the mental/psychological bits - rewarding/compensating with other things, people with weight issues to begin with are more likely to be diet drinkers, etc. Or sweet things making you crave other sweet things. But digestion doesn't give a crap what something tastes like (pun!).

IMO there is no scenario where someone who is dieting is better off having a regular coke vs a diet coke if those are your only 2 choices.

memo1974 wrote: »

I found this article on health.com. Also, to answer some of the earlier comments: being skinny or thin got nothing to do with being healthy.

The article:

When taken at face value, diet soda seems like a health-conscious choice. It saves you the 140-plus calories you'd find in a sugary soft drink while still satisfying your urge for something sweet with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. But there's more to this chemical cocktail than meets the eye.

Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit, says Brooke Alpert, RD, author of The Sugar Detox. Even more troubling, these sugar stand-ins have been shown to have the same effect on your body as sugar. "Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain," Alpert says.

Diet soda is calorie-free, but it won't necessarily help you lose weight. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of about a decade, diet soda drinkers had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And get this: participants who slurped down two or more sodas a day experienced a 500% greater increase. The way artificial sweeteners confuse the body may play a part, but another reason might be psychological, says Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork. When you know you're not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza.

Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of conditions (including high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol, and large waist circumference) that put people at high risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, Bjork explains.

When you drink diet soda, you're not taking in any calories—but you're also not swallowing anything that does your body any good, either. The best no-calorie beverage? Plain old water, says Bjork. "Water is essential for many of our bodily processes, so replacing it with diet soda is a negative thing," she says. If it's the fizziness you crave, try sparkling water.

Excessive soda drinking could leave you looking like a Breaking Bad extra, according to a case study published in the journal General Dentistry. The research compared the mouths of a cocaine-user, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet-soda drinker, and found the same level of tooth erosion in each of them. The culprit here is citric acid, which weakens and destroys tooth enamel over time.

Just one diet soft drink a day could boost your risk of having a vascular event such as stroke, heart attack, or vascular death, according to researchers from the University of Miami and Columbia University. Their study found that diet soda devotees were 43% more likely to have experienced a vascular event than those who drank none. Regular soda drinkers did not appear to have an increased risk of vascular events. Researchers say more studies need to be conducted before definitive conclusions can be made about diet soda's effects on health.

From:
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20739512,00.html