how bad are diet sodas?

gosh i'm addicted to all fizzy juice can drink nearly 2litres in a day but started today trying to have water or squash instead i know i'm gonna have major withdrawl syptoms but its a major vice i want to get rid of.

I like having my pleasure center activated every morning.

I start every day with a diet soda, then drink (Crystal Light flavored) water the rest of the day.

ooooooooooooo that sounds dirty :devil: I think i need my pleasure center activated lol

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?

7-8 year study that only comprised of Mexican-Americans and non Hispanic Whites(total of 622 participants) and obesity is linked to diet sodas. I would dare say that I would not pay any attention to this restricted study secondary to the fact that you could have given these participants Olive Oil and propably ended up with the same results. As an African or Asian or Native or Somoan American, what am I supposed to take from this study.

I like having my pleasure center activated every morning.

I start every day with a diet soda, then drink (Crystal Light flavored) water the rest of the day.

ooooooooooooo that sounds dirty :devil: I think i need my pleasure center activated lol

Blahahaha to funny!!

I have lost 54 lbs having a Chick fil A Spicy Chicken Sandwich, fries (or soup), and medium Dr. Pepper every Tuesday night. I plan to take my family to Chick fil A tonight where my wife (who has lost 47 lbs) and the kids and I will eat, the kids will do a Family Night activity and will play while my wife and I chat with our Chick-fil-A-family of other parents that come every Tuesday.

Moderation and enjoyment of life are good things. I enjoy a moderate intake of sugared soda, but my goal is this: never on consecutive days and always with my family on Tuesday night. This means no more than three a week for me. It's a food--not a healthy food--but still food.

On the other hand, artifical sweeteners are NOT foods. You can't grow something that is "artificial." If research hints* that a substance may be poisonous (or at least related to some health problems) and it's NOT a food, then why consume it on a regular basis?

Moderation is a key to enjoying life, but I can't see how you can moderate on poison. "Moderation" doesn't work with everything: Someone asked me once how much dog poop do I like in my chocolate chip cookies. I don't want ANY! I am certainly hard-lined when it comes to poop in cookies. So how much poison** do you want in your soda? For me, I'll have mine poison-free, and just do a few more push-ups to burn up the sugar from my Dr. Pepper and the peanut oil from my chicken sandwich.



*[The studies certainly don't produce a common narrative at this point.]
**["Poison" is an understood overstatement to make the point.]

this is just one in a million studies...... I had to give a presentation on how bad diet soda's are for you... especially the aspartame.. Did you know that the aspartame in diet soda's is also in rat poison?? That is why people that drink diet soda's get migraine headaches all the time... Aspartame is a cheap artificial flavoring, and since it is so cheep they keep using it...

Moderation is a key to enjoying life, but I can't see how you can moderate on poison.

"All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous." - Paracelsus

Diet drinks won't make you fat.

Giving in to the temptation to eat that diet drinks may give you may make you fat.

I can accept many of the criticisms of diet coke but not that it will make me fat. It won't. It gives me something calorie free to do with my hands and mouth instead of eating.

I loved Diet Coke for other reasons than most people love it... I just love the carbonation and burn in my throat.. so I didn't have much of a problem giving it up (never was addicted to caffeine or anything) and switching to Diet Rite (splenda instead of aspartame, no caffeine, no sodium, no calories, etc). ...still bad, but not as bad! I'm slowly trying to wean myself off of soda altogether, but I just need that burn! :P And am down to drinking 1 or 2 Diet Rites a day... huge progress from my upwards of 10 diet cokes a day (sometimes even more when I was getting 64oz fountain drinks at the gas station, on top of the others that I was drinking throughout the day at home).

I drink at least 2-3 diet cokes a day. I do get my 8+water in daily.This is only diet drink ! I do skip one day week with out my soda.

I certainly gained weight for drinking Mountain Dews.

I used to drink Mt Dew all the time and didn't gain weight. Then I got an office job, kept drinking the Dew, and gained weight.

Cubicles make you fat. :laugh:

Read this!!!!!!

Is Diet Coke bad for you? »
Joi
Oct 26, 2002 - 14:08 UTC » Categories:
Health and Medicine
Gosuke sent me this interesting link. It is about the dangers of Aspartame. Nutrasweet in the US and "Pal Sweet Diet" in Japan are Aspartame. Aspartame is an active ingredient in Diet Coke which I drink A LOT of. I am going to definitely take dive into the links on this page. If what this page says is true, I probably should stop drinking Diet Coke today...

I have attached some of the highlights from the page below, but I would go to their page which has a lot of links if you currently drink a lot of diet soda products.
Continue reading Is Diet Coke bad for you?.
Here are some highlights from the page:

Aspartame is poison!
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet is not very sweet in itself, that may be why Equal puts Dextrose (sugar) and maltodextrin as the first ingredients, so that it tastes sweet.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet is a brain drug that stimulates your brain so you think that the food you're eating tastes sweet. If you pay attention you'll notice that when using Aspartame/Nutrasweet, everything you eat at the same time also tastes sweet! This may be why Aspartame/Nutrasweet causes you to crave carbohydrates. Hence, you won't lose weight using it.
BTW, cyclamates got pulled off the market in the 70's in the US (but not Canada or the rest of the world) because the sugar industry saw too much of their market disappear.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet (aspartylphenylalanine-methyl-ester) breaks down to its poison constituents at 86 degrees (Aspartic Acid 40%, Phenylalanine 50%, and Methanol 10%). Remember your stomach is at 98.6 degrees! Therefore you should never use Aspartame/Nutrasweet in hot beverages or cooked foods such as Jello. How the FDA allows this remains a mystery. There is mounting evidence that the "Burning Mouth Syndrome" experienced by the Desert Storm troops was actually Methanol poisoning from the Diet Coke they drank lots of, after being exposed to desert temperatures.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet's 10% Methanol appears in the body quickly and is the same alcohol (wood alcohol also in lacquer thinner), that your mother correctly warned you could make you blind. Many skid-row alcoholics had major problems with this cheap but deadly form of alcohol.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet's 40% Aspartic Acid is an "excitotoxin" in the brain and excites neurons to death, i.e. it kills brain cells and causes other nerve damage.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet triggers Migraine Headaches This even happened to me!. The Usenet is filled with posts by people who have pinned their migraines down to aspartame/Nutrasweet consumption.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet's breakdown products attack the bodies tissues and create Formaldehyde which builds up in the tissues forever. Remember the smelly, eye watering fumes from the frogs you dissected in school? They were preserved with Formaldehyde! Formaldehyde is thought to cause cancer.
The American Bottlers Association did not want the FDA to approve Aspartame/Nutrasweet because of what the test report showed. But the FDA approved it anyway!
•Airline pilots stay away from Aspartame/Nutrasweet because they are well aware of the documented dangers.
•Aspartame/Nutrasweet also breaks down to diketopiperazine [DKP] which is proven to cause Brain Tumors! Brain Tumors used to be rare. Several of the rats in the original study formed brain tumors during their Aspartame/Nutrasweet exposure. The researchers surgically removed the tumors and returned the rats to the study and discounted the tumors.

This is from the american cancer society


2.Is there an association between artificial sweeteners and cancer?
Questions about artificial sweeteners and cancer arose when early studies showed that cyclamate in combination with saccharin caused bladder cancer in laboratory animals. However, results from subsequent carcinogenicity studies (studies that examine whether a substance can cause cancer) of these sweeteners have not provided clear evidence of an association with cancer in humans. Similarly, studies of other FDA-approved sweeteners have not demonstrated clear evidence of an association with cancer in humans.

3.What have studies shown about a possible association between specific artificial sweeteners and cancer?
Saccharin

Studies in laboratory rats during the early 1970s linked saccharin with the development of bladder cancer. For this reason, Congress mandated that further studies of saccharin be performed and required that all food containing saccharin bear the following warning label: “Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.”

Subsequent studies in rats showed an increased incidence of urinary bladder cancer at high doses of saccharin, especially in male rats. However, mechanistic studies (studies that examine how a substance works in the body) have shown that these results apply only to rats. Human epidemiology studies (studies of patterns, causes, and control of diseases in groups of people) have shown no consistent evidence that saccharin is associated with bladder cancer incidence.

Because the bladder tumors seen in rats are due to a mechanism not relevant to humans and because there is no clear evidence that saccharin causes cancer in humans, saccharin was delisted in 2000 from the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens, where it had been listed since 1981 as a substance reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen (a substance known to cause cancer). More information about the delisting of saccharin is available at http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/eleventh/append/appb.pdf on the Internet. The delisting led to legislation, which was signed into law on December 21, 2000, repealing the warning label requirement for products containing saccharin.

Aspartame

Aspartame, distributed under several trade names (e.g., NutraSweet® and Equal®), was approved in 1981 by the FDA after numerous tests showed that it did not cause cancer or other adverse effects in laboratory animals. Questions regarding the safety of aspartame were renewed by a 1996 report suggesting that an increase in the number of people with brain tumors between 1975 and 1992 might be associated with the introduction and use of this sweetener in the United States. However, an analysis of then-current NCI statistics showed that the overall incidence of brain and central nervous system cancers began to rise in 1973, 8 years prior to the approval of aspartame, and continued to rise until 1985. Moreover, increases in overall brain cancer incidence occurred primarily in people age 70 and older, a group that was not exposed to the highest doses of aspartame since its introduction. These data do not establish a clear link between the consumption of aspartame and the development of brain tumors.

In 2005, a laboratory study found more lymphomas and leukemias in rats fed very high doses of aspartame (equivalent to drinking 8 to 2,083 cans of diet soda daily) (1). However, there were some inconsistencies in the findings. For example, the number of cancer cases did not rise with increasing amounts of aspartame as would be expected. An FDA statement on this study can be found at http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2006/ucm108650.htm on the Internet.

Subsequently, NCI examined human data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study of over half a million retirees. Increasing consumption of aspartame-containing beverages was not associated with the development of lymphoma, leukemia, or brain cancer (2).

Acesulfame potassium, Sucralose, and Neotame

In addition to saccharin and aspartame, three other artificial sweeteners are currently permitted for use in food in the United States:

Acesulfame potassium (also known as ACK, Sweet One®, and Sunett®) was approved by the FDA in 1988 for use in specific food and beverage categories, and was later approved as a general purpose sweetener (except in meat and poultry) in 2002.


Sucralose (also known as Splenda®) was approved by the FDA as a tabletop sweetener in 1998, followed by approval as a general purpose sweetener in 1999.


Neotame, which is similar to aspartame, was approved by the FDA as a general purpose sweetener (except in meat and poultry) in 2002.
Before approving these sweeteners, the FDA reviewed more than 100 safety studies that were conducted on each sweetener, including studies to assess cancer risk. The results of these studies showed no evidence that these sweeteners cause cancer or pose any other threat to human health.

Worst then regular sodas and that says it all!

I suggest you read on Aspartame if you think they are better then regular's.

Yes, Aspartame is really bad, which is why I stopped drinking Diet Coke. However, when I talked to my Dr. about my love for diet soda, she suggested drinking Diet Dr Pepper because the sweetener in it is much less harsh and it is the "safest" diet soda and causes less water retention and has less sodium than other soda's. Now it's the only soda I'll drink except for occasionally if we go out to eat and they don't have it.

I don't know of any scientific proof that diet sodas are bad for you but I have felt better since I stopped drinking them. I used to drink them A LOT. One day a few months ago I decided I didn't want anything with artificial sweeteners anymore so I just stopped drinking them. That includes things like splenda, not just aspartame and I feel much better. Also, like someone else said my skin has improved. The no artificial sugar thing is hard but entirely possible. Although that mostly just leaves me with water, coffee and beer to drink. Could be worse I guess :drinker:

And everyone I know seems to be terrified of aspartame. A smoker friend of mine was yelling at me the other day about drinking a diet Pepsi because of the aspartame. Really?? WTH!