You know that drinking sugary soda is a great way to ruin your weight loss goals, so you order diet soda on the side of your burger and fries. It might seem that less sugar translates to fewer health problems. Actually, more evidence is linking the consumption of diet soda to adverse health effects. Some researchers even go so far as to conclude that diet soda may be even worse for you than the occasional sugary soda.
Higher Caloric Intake
Researchers at Purdue University discovered that rats eating yogurt sweetened with saccharin, which is an artificial sweetener found in some diet soda, consumed more calories and gained more weight and body fat than rats eating yogurt sweetened with regular sugar. The authors of the study concluded that the rats eating saccharin lost the ability to mentally make a connection between a sweet taste and how many calories they took in. Therefore, those rats lost their general ability to regulate how much they ate.
Higher Obesity Risk
A study at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio examined seven to eight years of combined data on over 1,500 subjects to find a correlation between the consumption of diet soda and obesity. The subjects who drank more soft drinks overall were more likely to be obese, but the subjects who drank only diet soft drinks were at an even higher risk of becoming obese than other participants. Subjects who consumed one to two cans of regular soda each day were at a 32.8 percent risk of becoming overweight or obese, and subjects who consumed the same quantity of diet soda every day were at a 54.5 percent risk of becoming overweight or obese.
Metabolic Syndrome
Some research links diet soda consumption with an increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome. People with metabolic syndrome exhibit danger signs such as high blood pressure, low levels of good cholesterol, and large waist circumferences, factors that make them more likely to develop health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A study by Lyn Steffen, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, examined the diets of 9,500 middle-aged to older adults in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The study found that, of all the dietary habits adopted by people at high risk for developing metabolic syndrome (like eating red meat) the people who drank at least one diet soda a day were at the highest risk of developing it. Steffen concluded that diet soda drinkers' additional 35 percent risk may not have had to do directly with the diet soda, but with factors associated with drinking diet soda such as a potential inability to regulate caloric intake.
Member Comments