how bad are diet sodas?

Bad.

But sooooo good!

And it depends on what you mean by bad I guess. With the exception of two periods of 10 months and 6 months where I went cold turkey I have had between 2 (an excellent day) and 20 (er, yeah ...) cans of diet coke a day. It's never impacted on my weight loss and keeps cravings for bad foods away. But my teeth are suffering, I have a minor heart problem and I dread to think what my insides look like.

Carbonation is really bad for your bones.

How so? Your body is an amazing buffer. If anything, the phosphoric acid equilibrium could get off-balance with regular drinking of colas.

I'm one of the VERY few that thinks drinking a diet soda every once in awhile would be alright. I wouldn't go so far as to say drinking one every day would be healthy..

They aren't that bad. Lots of bad studies being pushed out there. Try to look for reliable sources and not the fear-based hype. Here's something from the Mayo Clinic:

"Drinking a reasonable amount of diet soda a day, such as a can or two, isn't likely to hurt you. The artificial sweeteners and other chemicals currently used in diet soda are safe for most people, and there's no credible evidence that these ingredients cause cancer. Some types of diet soda are even fortified with vitamins and minerals."

Bad bad bad. I normally don't post negative things, but they are worse for you than normal soda. It's the aspartame. Look it up. I say his as a Bio major not a dieter or uneducated naysayer. It activates the pleasure centers in your brain like a drug tricking you into thinking something tastes good, and making you crave another as soon as he chemical dissipates, which breaks down into methylated chemicals. (they cause malfunctions in DNA replication)

I have been Diet Coke free for five days now. The first day I took an Excedrin to offset the MAJOR headache I had. I'm still having cravings but my teeth and skin feel and look so much better. I have more energy without caffeine and would recommend cutting out Diet Coke!

http://jezebel.com/5816114/your-diet-coke-problem-is-actually-a-problem

okay, this will settle it for me ...


Does diet soda have a

1. physiological effect, as in it causes your body to do certain things, in this case gain weight?

2. or is more of a mental thing, where it causes you to crave food more?

of couse, 1. is worse than 2. because you can fight off 2. but you can't really offset the effects it has on your body/organs,e tc.e tc.

does that make sense???

Bad bad bad. I normally don't post negative things, but they are worse for you than normal soda. It's the aspartame. Look it up. I say his as a Bio major not a dieter or uneducated naysayer. It activates the pleasure centers in your brain like a drug tricking you into thinking something tastes good, and making you crave another as soon as he chemical dissipates, which breaks down into methylated chemicals. (they cause malfunctions in DNA replication)

Methylation of DNA causes gene expression to be shut off. Methylated chemicals do not necessarily cause the same effect - in fact, if this were true... you wouldn't be able to eat anything. I guarantee you that I could find methyl groups on nearly any random food you picked if I had a lab where I was free to analyze it.

Lots of food items activate the "pleasure center" of your brain. Chocolate? (theobromine) Tea? (caffeine) Exercise? (enkephalins.. dopamine...) By using this logic, exercise must be a really terrible thing. Once you exercise once, you feel great and you might even want to exercise again once the surge of neurochemicals is gone..

Could you link to an aspartame study on PubMed?

Bad bad bad. I normally don't post negative things, but they are worse for you than normal soda. It's the aspartame. Look it up. I say his as a Bio major not a dieter or uneducated naysayer. It activates the pleasure centers in your brain like a drug tricking you into thinking something tastes good, and making you crave another as soon as he chemical dissipates, which breaks down into methylated chemicals. (they cause malfunctions in DNA replication)

My first Diet coke was NOTHING like my first onnie or beer bong.

I went to an eye-opening demonstration. it was this 'system' for making your own soda at home (at the bed, bath & beyond store) long story short, soda is nothing more than carbonated sugar syrup. so - next time you want that soda, remind yourself you might as well be drinking mrs butterworth's syrup and maybe that will help you pick something better. it's helped me immensely.
try adding some sparkling water to diet cranberry juice or your fave - very refreshing and pretty close to soda.

Diet soda's are horrible for you!! If you look at studies they cause weight gain, osteoperosis, migraine headaches, increased blood pressure, increased cholesterol, etc... one of the most horrible things you can do to your body.... I am just going to post a small add here

Diet drinks and obesity

In 2005, Sharon Fowler and her colleagues from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio presented eight years of research data that explored the link between obesity risk and soft drinks. According to the WebMD summary of the study:

Fowler’s team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64. Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

26% for up to 1/2 can each day
30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day
32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.
For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.
For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%.

Obviously, there’s a difference between correlation and causation. This study is not meant to imply that diet soda causes obesity, just to point out that diet soda consumption is a “marker” for the condition.

Metabolic syndrome

More recently, researchers have reported a correlation between diet soda and metabolic syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic describes thusly:

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Having just one of these conditions — increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat around the waist or abnormal cholesterol levels — isn’t diagnosed as metabolic syndrome, but it does contribute to your risk of serious disease. If more than one of these conditions occur in combination, your risk is even greater.

My husband and I have cut way back. Not because we feel it's horrible but we wanted break habits and addicitons in our lives. We were consuming 14 liters a week each. We are now down to 2 liters a week. It was helpful to us to use seltzer water. It has all the bubbles without any guilt.

Just remember too much of ANY one thing is bad for you.

Diet soda's are horrible for you!! If you look at studies they cause weight gain, osteoperosis, migraine headaches, increased blood pressure, increased cholesterol, etc... one of the most horrible things you can do to your body.... I am just going to post a small add here

Diet drinks and obesity

In 2005, Sharon Fowler and her colleagues from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio presented eight years of research data that explored the link between obesity risk and soft drinks. According to the WebMD summary of the study:

Fowler’s team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64. Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

26% for up to 1/2 can each day
30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day
32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.
For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.
For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%.

Obviously, there’s a difference between correlation and causation. This study is not meant to imply that diet soda causes obesity, just to point out that diet soda consumption is a “marker” for the condition.

Metabolic syndrome

More recently, researchers have reported a correlation between diet soda and metabolic syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic describes thusly:

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Having just one of these conditions — increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat around the waist or abnormal cholesterol levels — isn’t diagnosed as metabolic syndrome, but it does contribute to your risk of serious disease. If more than one of these conditions occur in combination, your risk is even greater.

Could you link to this study? Was it peer-reviewed? IRB-approved? What were the enrollment criteria? What were the exclusion criteria? Who funded it? What type of matching was used?

I believe than there are more studies that prove peanuts kill more people than diet sodas do
:-)

I used to drink tons of diet soda. I was the girl who had 4/5 12 pks in my grocery cart when they were on sale at the grocery store. I used to weight 347 pounds and now I weight 222. I chose to change my lifestyle completely and I chose to give up diet soda, along with sodium and processed foods I switched to flavored seltzer and unsweetened iced tea(Blueberry) instead.

What I am about to say is not meant to be offensive in anyway as I have walked in these shoes but when I go to the grocery store and I see people pushing a grocery cart with multiple 12 pks or 2 liter bottles of soda, most, not all, carry alot of weight in their midsection. I think eating things artificially sweetened makes you crave sweeter things.

Example:
As a diabetic, I was using Splenda to sweeten my coffee in the a.m. I found I was adding up to 2 even 3 splenda sometimes in my large cup of coffee in the a.m. and would have maybe 2 cups in the morning. By 10 a.m. I was hungry for something sweet after having a filling breakfast around 8 a.m. I experimented by cutting my splenda from 3 to 1 per large cup and I don't have the cravings I used to.

These are my personal experiences and again, I'm not trying to pigeon hole anyone or speak badly just stating an observation.

Wow. Diet sodas are worse than regular sodas? For petes sake people, where is the scientific support for this argument? Does it also warn you that if you drink too much water, you can die from water poisoning, also known as hyper-hydration? Hell, for that matter, diet sodas are worse than consuming alcohol, but we don't stop drinking wine. This argument is as old as Coca-Cola itself. Bottom line people, if you drink a lot of diet sodas, it can be harmful. If you drink a regular soda every now and then, you will NOT DIE!!!

And for the person who said that diet sodas activate your pleasure center and make you want to crave more, if that is such a bad thing, stop having sex. That is all.