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On Sunday, I went over to a friend’s house for a marathon board-gaming session. I ate too much home-made chili (Will is from Texas) and drank too much ginger ale.
“Do you have any diet coke?” I asked before choosing the soda.
“No,” said Will. “And besides, that stuff is awful. It’s worse for you than regular soda!”
“Come on,” I said. “I know it’s bad, but worse than regular soda?” I was thinking of the two giant diet cokes I’d had with my greasy hamburger a couple days before. I was thinking of how I used to drink two or three diet sodas every day.
“I’m serious,” he said. “That stuff will give you diabetes. Look it up.” And so I did. Turns out Will was telling the truth. Sort of.
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.
Basically, metabolic syndrome describes risk factors for diabetes and heart disease. According to The New York Times, this recent research indicates:
The one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.
Of course, the best solution is to forego pop altogether. Diet soda leads is associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Regular soda is dense with calories. Water has none of these drawbacks.
I did a good job of sticking to only water for a couple of weeks, but I’ve allowed myself to slip. I find that when I do the water-only thing, I feel better, weight-loss is easier, and I make better choices all around.
Mac
15 responses so far ↓
1 Lauren Muney // Feb 12, 2008 at 11:09 am
Here’s where I’ll get all scientific:
‘When people tell you that something is bad for you, they usually can’t name all the reasons why it’s bad for you. But truly, if there’s one small thing in it that’s bad, there’s probably a whole bunch of other secret things about its awfulness.’
I know, that doesn’t help you make decisions, does it? This is why it’s SO much easier to say, “EAT REAL WHOLE FOODS”. It’s a ‘positive’ statement which doesn’t keep you guessing. I know, “whole foods” lets out all the ‘fun stuff’ you are craving, the crap that those faked food-like substances are actually making you crave.
What to know a secret…? Ssssshhhh….
The REASON why you crave all those ‘fake foods’ and junk is that your body is UNDERNOURISHED. Really? YES. Your body CRAVES real nourishment so it won’t be hungry, thirty, under-energized, or under-nutriated: it will MAKE you want more food…
…but, the craving person thinks that what the body needs is more [fake] food. So it blithely fills its belly with more sodas, pizzas, Taco Bell, candy, etc etc, THINKING that it can get its needed nourishment. Instead, the cells get gunked-up by the crap –and the outcome is dis-ease (’disease’): diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders, metabolic disorders.
Metabolic disorders? That’s a fancy word for “the body cannot function in its normal manner of growth/energy/waste/burn-off”.
Again, where does diet soda fall in this category of “better than regular soda”? Nowhere. Diet Soda is CHEMICALS with gas (CO2) and coloring (more chemicals). Please don’t ask what it does to your brain: phenylalanine (read the back) is converted to the amino acid tyrosine in the brain, which, in anyone who has any depression, mood issues or anxiety, can really f a person up. SERIOUSLY.
I know I’m a coach and I shouldn’t be talking so hard, but PLEASE, anyone who is listening, get AHOLD of yourself when it comes to your ‘craving desires’ and realize that CHANGE comes from the first step of REALIZING THEY ARE CRAVINGS. The next steps can be done in easy gentleness.
2 dingbat // Feb 12, 2008 at 11:49 am
And then there’s the problem of phosphoric acid in all sodas, which literally leaches the calcium right out of your bones.
3 Josh // Feb 12, 2008 at 1:54 pm
There have been a slew of articles written about the “people-who-drink-diet-drinks-gained-more-weight-studies”, the bottom line is that the people in the studies who drank diet drinks ate more, they consumed more calories.
It’s psychological and physiological.
People rationalize they can eat more (a lot more) because they are drinking a diet drink. Also, diet drinks have been shown to spike insulin levels just like real sugar (the sweet taste is the real culprit, a la Shangri-La diet). This last point is sort of what Lauren is saying. Diet drinks make you hungry for real food.
People quote this article a lot implying that diet drinks alone make you gain weight. However, this is false. If person A eats 1500 calories plus 3 diet drinks every day and person B eats 1500 calories per day plus 3 normal sodas, person B will lose less weight. I don’t think this is arguable.
Very thought provoking though.
-Josh
4 dingbat // Feb 12, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Josh reminds me of another study I read a few years ago which suggested that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda increase the hormones that make you feel hungry. I recall reading this and having an a-ha moment, since I would get hunger pangs so intense I feared I’d pass out before I got to eat again. And whaddya know, since quitting the diet coke I haven’t had hunger like that again. Except for those days here and there when poor planning has me waiting 8 hours between meals.
5 AB // Feb 12, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I used to drink regular soda. I drank about a 2 litre a day. I ended up weighing 221lbs at 5′5 (female). I was miserable. Of course, there were other factors to my weight, but I read an article that told me how many calories were in soda. So I quit drinking regular soda and switched to diet, drinking the same amount pretty much though. Guess what? My weight dropped to 201lbs within 6 weeks. No other changes at that time, mind you. I was still eating the same junk, still not exercising.
I don’t really drink much diet soda anymore. I’ve since gotten in shape and cleaned up my eating (and am down to a healthy weight). But if I do want soda, I drink diet.
Take correlations like this with a grain of salt. Also, drink water. But occasional diet soda isn’t going to make anyone fat. Eating too many calories will make you fat.
6 greenman2001 // Feb 12, 2008 at 3:16 pm
J.D., Lauren is making an enormously important point. We can argue all day — just like food processors argue with the FDA — about what exactly is bad about processed foods, if anything, what the mechanism is, what an acceptable risk level is, and — who knows? — it may be that none of these processed foods are bad for you in the slightest. But your body needs an extraordinary array of nutrients in order to function, and it’s built to get those nutrients from whole foods hunted and gathered in the environment — or, in modern human existence, around the perimeter of the grocery store. Processed food either strips away many of those nutrients, or is built up from a fraction of the ones you need — either way, your body isn’t getting what it needs. What happens next is really anybody’s guess: do you crave Lucky Charms because you’re hungry? Because your blood sugar is low? Because a TV ad convinced you? Because the government’s food pyramid says to eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast? Because you have no time to scramble a couple of eggs?
When you commit to eating whole foods that you prepare yourself, on a schedule that feeds your body calories in a steady stream to minimize your appetite, and turn your back on the world of processed foods and all of the cultural baggage that goes along with it — fashion, advertising, “experts,” coupons, “convenience” — all of these issues go away, and you’re faced with a very simple task: find recipes. Cook. Eat.
You’re a busy guy. Imagine: you don’t have to think about the potential problems associated with processed foods, research them, talk about them, listen to other people talk about them, read about them, or pay attention to them ever again. What would you do with all that time you’re now spending thinking about this? Probably reading cookbooks and cooking from them and loving the food that you’re making.
7 Josh // Feb 12, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I know from personal experience that diet drinks knock me out of ketosis when I’m on Atkins and using the urine strip things. Google Seth Roberts (psych phd prof at UC Berkely and author of shangri-la diet which I’ve actually read) he has a neat blog of his research areas. He goes as far as to suggest that when you eat anything sweet to use nose plugs to cut down on taste. My personal, unfounded, theory is that sweeteners may increase insulin even more than sugar since they are so much more “sweeter”. I suppose gram for gram — if one buys into the sweet=insulin and therefore hunger panges — aspartame, splenda, and stevia will have a greater effect. I wonder if there is a meter for sweetness that can be found for, let’s say, Diet Coke versus regular Coke? Is Diet “sweeter”? If so, then we’re on to something.
With all that said I likely drink more diet drinks than almost anyone. I have had between 5 and 7 diet drinks today, my employer has them for free! It’s one of my last “bad” habits. But I don’t think it’s as bad as December 07 when I’d eat over 3000 cal a day and not exercise.
This is probably me rationalizing but at work I can get bottled water instead of Diet drinks, for free. However, I don’t trust water bottled in the same state I’m in. It does not have to meet any goverment regulations as long as it doesn’t cross state lines. Paranoia or dumb rationalization so I can drink my Diet drinks, I’m not sure, probably both.
8 Jeff // Feb 12, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I don’t much like drinking plain water - even if it’s been filtered or bottled. I decided to put a splash of low sugar cranberry juice in with my water. It doesn’t taste like juice, but it doesn’t taste like water anymore. My ratio is about 1 part juice to 9 parts water. A half-gallon of juice will last me more than a week.
9 em // Feb 12, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I have two suggestions:
1) Get a Nalgene bottle and carry it around with you. I keep one at the office and one at home. It’s so much easier to get in the habit of drinking water when you have a bottle right there to simply refill. And think of all the soda bottles that you will keep from the trash!
2) Read Michael Pollan’s _In Defense of Food_and you will learn a lot, as Lauren said, about eating the real stuff. Maybe you can do a book review!
10 Womens Health Mag // Feb 12, 2008 at 8:51 pm
My friend has been drinking diet pop every day for as long as I’ve known him. He’s diabetic and hates to drink water. He does not care about the dangers.
11 Brigid // Feb 13, 2008 at 8:51 am
I’m glad dingbat brought up the point about calcium and phosporus. That little factoid sometimes gets overlooked. As a woman - calcium becomes a big concern especially as you get older. I don’t have any facts on hand to back me up, but I would hazard a guess that woman are bigger consumers of diet pop than men. That’s a bad combination!
I think a lot of the pop issues stem again from portion. Remember back in the day when Coke was sold in 8 ounce bottles? Now a “normal” single serving is a 20 ounce plastic bottle.
A friend of mine went to Spain a few years back and she said when you ordered Coke, you got basically a juice glass that was not refillable. The people there were flabergasted when they found out you could go into almost any American restuarant and essentially order a small wastepaper basket full of pop AND get a refill if you wanted.
For me - I’m sensitive to all artifical sweetners. They give me terrible headaches, so I drink regular. I might have on or two a week if that. I figure for the few I have, regular pop is fine.
12 Anca // Feb 13, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I tend to only drink soda (Diet Coke only) at restaurants, depending on how yucky their water tastes and how much I’m craving the sweetness of Diet Coke (which probably just means I don’t realize I’m very thirsty). I’ve only starting drinking soda again (after many years of just water) this year because my boyfriend often orders it and I drink some of his. I think I’m going to propose that we drink no more soda for a whole month and see how it goes. (At home I drink filtered water with a squeeze of lemon/lime.)
13 FFB // Feb 15, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Read UltraMetabolism by Mark Hyman! Great book about proper nutrition and metabolic syndrome. He talks about the effects of fake sugars as well as high fructose corn syrup. What it comes down to is most soda is just bad for you!
14 Kenneth Barr // May 2, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Remember those studies are correlations. Do you think it is possible that people drank more diet soda because they were putting on more weight and didnt want the calories of the regular stuff?
Though the studies dont prove anything, there may be some substance. Lots of water is good, even if only because it hydrates far better than soda.
15 Ben // May 3, 2008 at 6:20 am
Don’t listen to WebMD, I mean, its true that diet sodas are bad, they do do alot, but WebMD is owned by several pharmeceudical companies, pharms are the most profitable companies in the world, and keep profits up by marketing drugs, all I am saying is that your looking for an unbiased view on the effects of diet soda, and the pharms will probably only tell you one side of things, its called having a conflict of interest.
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