drinking cola etc makes a good diet futile!

Ive personally have never heard of that... maybe theres some truth to it but maybe not enough to make a difference...

No expert, but I'm pretty sure the stomach is more acidic than soda. I don't think a soda is powerful enough to do that.

There is probably some truth in it. We all know that pop/soda/carbonated drinks are bad. All the chemicals, the sugar, etc is just not natural. I have even heard that drinking a lot of artificial sweeteners in diet pop causes hormone imbalances and causes your body to store fat...but I can't say for certain. I can probably see some truth in it tho...but you'd probably have to be drinking a lot of it... An occasional treat of pop is fine, but your best bet is to drink water.

Hi

One of my friends told me that drinking carbonated drinks destroys acid/enzymes in the stomach, thereby making anything healthy that you do eat Futile as the nutrients will not be extracted properly.

Please can someone add to this or clarify?

Nope. There's absolutely no scientific evidence to support this idea. And- no offense meant to you or your friend- but it's a pretty crazy idea.

There might be other reasons to abstain from carbonated drinks, but this should not be one of them.

The acid in your stomach is HCL- a chemical "salt" composed of an equal mixture of two ions- hydrogen and chloride. You can't 'destroy' it anymore than you can "destroy" water. You can neutralize it and you can use the ions (hydrogen, chloride) for chemical reactions. However, ingredients in carbonated drinks aren't going to do either.

Carbonated drinks contain acid to. One definition of an acid is that it's a proton donor. Hydrogen ions are protons. Carbonated drinks just donate more protons to your stomach juices. So worse (or best?) case scenario, it means your stomach has to work less hard to get the right number of protons into the digestive soup.

The enzymes in your stomach function best at pH 2. They're not destroyed by acid at all. In fact, they love acid and will not work if the pH isn't acidic. There's nothing in carbonated drinks that will harm those enzymes at all.

Even if, hypothetically, they did somehow harm the enzymes... really, all that would do is slow your digestion down a bit. There's no way it would make it "futile" to eat other nutrients. Our systems are incredibly robust- there are redundancies in our system designed to protect us.

So... feel free to drink your cola. Account for the calories in your food diary. And enjoy your life.

From what I've heard soda, diet or reg, can not be digested by the kidney. Therefore food you've eaten isn't digested eventually end up being stored as fat instead. Hence you gain weight.

From what I've heard soda, diet or reg, can not be digested by the kidney. Therefore food you've eaten isn't digested eventually end up being stored as fat instead. Hence you gain weight.

I'm not trying to pick on you... but this information is not correct. None of it is.

First and foremost, the kidneys don't digest anything. That's not their job. They don't break down nutrients. Food is broken down in the stomach and the intestines. It then enters the blood and is carried to various tissues in the body. A lot of those nutrients and non-nutrient compounds like aspartame are then processed by the liver. The kidney filters the blood- it retains the stuff you need, it gets rid of the stuff you don't along with the water in your urine.

I don't actually know how aspartame is processed, but if I had to guess, your body sees it as an amino acid, and it's probably broken apart and then excreted by the kidneys just fine.

I will, however, do some digging to make sure I'm right.

As for food that isn't digested ending up as fat... again, no, that's not how it works. Any food that isn't digested gets excreted- that's your feces, poop, whatever you want to call it.

If it enters your system, it's because it HAS indeed been digested.

What is true is that unused fat and sometimes unused glucose can end up as fat. I'd have to dig to find out if protein is ever converted into fat. I really don't know.

I know I jump into these diet soda threads a lot... I'm not really a crusader for diet soda. I drink it, but I think it's fine if someone else chooses not to drink it. However, the myths surrounding it drive me nuts.

Soda... diet soda... It seems people like to believe in boogiemen almost as much as they like to believe in superfoods. But soda and diet soda aren't boogiemen. I don't think I'd ever say "they're good for you" but you don't have to quake and tremble at the thought of drinking one either.

There is probably some truth in it. We all know that pop/soda/carbonated drinks are bad. All the chemicals, the sugar, etc is just not natural. I have even heard that drinking a lot of artificial sweeteners in diet pop causes hormone imbalances and causes your body to store fat...but I can't say for certain. I can probably see some truth in it tho...but you'd probably have to be drinking a lot of it... An occasional treat of pop is fine, but your best bet is to drink water.

Natural doesn't mean healthy, neither does unnatural make it unhealthy. Arsenic, cyanide, ricin, anthrax and botulism all occur "naturally" and could be considered "organic."

I've hard the hardest time trying to give up diet soda. Even though it has zero calories the sweetness tricks your brain into thinking you are consuming sugar. It also effects how your stomach tells you if it is full or not. Plus the aspartame is horrible for you.

I lost 60lbs drinking the stuff and never starved or felt any increased desire for sweets or anything else. And aspartame has not been proven to actually have any harmful effects. http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Carbonated drinks contain acid to. One definition of an acid is that it's a proton donor. Hydrogen ions are protons. Carbonated drinks just donate more protons to your stomach juices. So worse (or best?) case scenario, it means your stomach has to work less hard to get the right number of protons into the digestive soup.

I am familiar with the donor definition. Just slightly confused about the... mention of hydrogen, in carbonated beverages. As you know the formula -log(H), which determines the pH. From my understanding it's CO2 gas, doesn't contain H+. Or are you just talking generally about acids?

I was speaking generally... but also literally. Diet coke has phosphoric acid in it, which is H3PO4. So it does have a literal proton donor in it. The CO2 can also become a proton donor when it's dissolved in water. CO2+ H20 <---> H2CO3 (carbonic acid).