They presented two studies: The first looked at diet-soda consumption among 474 older adults in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging (or SALSA) over a period of 10 years. The results were rather startling: Diet-soda drinkers experienced 70 percent greater increases in waist circumference than non-drinkers. Those downing the most diet sodas (2 or more a day) saw 500 percent greater increases in waist circumference than non-consumers. Researchers adjusted their results for factors such as diabetes, physical activity level, and age.
The report didn't explain why diet soda plays a role in weight gain. It could be that people feel like they are allowed to eat more because their drink is calorie-free. Other research has shown that your brain expects you to be taking in a lot of calories when foods taste sweet or fatty, so when diet foods don't fulfill that promise, your brain gets confused, which can lead to your body storing more calories as fat or eating more to finally feel satisfied.
The second study the researchers presented found that diabetes-prone mice given aspartame and a high-fat diet for 3 months had higher fasting-glucose levels (an indication of a pre-diabetic or diabetic condition) than mice on the same diet high-fat diet not given artificial sweetener.
Personally, I drink a lot of water, home-brewed green or herbal tea, coffee, and unsweetened seltzer water. I don't feel like I'm missing anything without soda. Except maybe a few more extra pounds.
2 comments:
I've been going to Weight Watcher meetings since I'm trying to be more aware of what I'm eating and eat healthier, etc. I have to admit that it kind of bothers me that diet soda is "zero points" on the WW system. I mentioned in a meeting that I'm struggling to stop drinking soda (I have managed to cut back to only once or twice a week) and everybody wanted to know why I didn't just drink diet. Personally, I am suspicious of artificial sweeteners, and research like what you're talking about here makes me think that it's better to drink "the real thing" and try to cut back on it than "go all out" with the aspartame-sweetened version.
Yeah, not only to artificial sweeteners not make sense, I think they just taste awful. I'd rather drink water any day. I've read that certain people just can't take the taste of it, and I'm pretty sure I'm one of them. I know some people are super-suspicious of aspartame, and as an engineered food additive it's hard not to be, but I don't think it necessarily causes cancer or is "toxic" - just something to attempt to avoid.
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