With the recent introduction of Diet Coke Plus, you may be wondering if soda is now considered a health food. Vitamins, minerals and sweet sparkling cola—what more could you ask for? For starters, you deserve a beverage that does not increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, metabolic syndrome and perhaps even cancer.
Bursting the Bubbly
It’s no coincidence that a Coca Cola bottle closely resembles a slender and attractive woman’s body. Diet soda manufacturers, boasting $21 billion dollars of profit each year, would have you believe their products are a wise option for those trying to cut calories and lose weight. But an eight-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center shows that your odds of becoming obese increase by 41% for each can of diet soda you drink per day. Surprisingly, the risk is much higher for diet soda drinkers than for people who consume regular soda.
Scientists have offered several theories to explain the link between diet soda and obesity. Some in the medical community note the role of artificial sweeteners in increasing appetite and disrupting the body’s regulation of caloric intake. It seems that consuming sweet foods, especially those containing aspartame, causes us to crave carbohydrates and stimulates our cells to store fat. Other researchers point out that people who drink soda are more likely to eat fast food and make unhealthy dietary choices. Whatever the connection, it’s obvious that the diet soda industry has duped us.
Can of Controversy
Adding insult to injury, several studies highlight a relationship between diet soda and serious diseases like hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and cancer. A trial funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute revealed that people who drink just one daily diet soda raise their risk of metabolic syndrome by 34%. And though there has never been a definitive conclusion about ties between the aspartame in diet soda and certain types of cancer, many well respected health organizations have criticized the FDA for too quickly dismissing these possible connections.
If you enjoy a fizzy drink now and then, there’s no need to panic. Many companies offer carbonated beverages made with natural fruit juices that don’t contain artificial sweeteners or preservatives. However, if you find yourself hooked on diet beverages, check out this aspartame detoxification program and information about Splenda (sucralose). On the site, sweetpoison.com, there is an interesting press release from 2007, announcing how Coca-Cola will start to use Stevia in their beverages…which makes you wonder, why would they change a financially successful formula?
How often do you consume artificially sweetened food and beverages?
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thirsty for the Truth?
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1 comment:
As a registered dietitian whose professional life has been dedicated to helping people achieve and maintain optimal health and body weight through appropriate dietary and lifestyle choices, I applaud the objectives of the www.BalanceBoost site. Recognizing that you are striving to provide useful and accurate information to the visitors to your site, I felt compelled to address some misinformation in the recent posting, "Thirsty for the Truth."
Let me start by saying the news media does a disservice to the public and well-meaning bloggers like yourself when it publishes news about scientific research that is incomplete and misinterprets the results of the studies about which they are writing. I'm sure this is due to the fact most journalists do not have a good understanding of scientific methodology, but they are all very skillful at grabbing attention with headlines and sound bites.
That said, the truth is there are simply no properly conducted and verifiable research studies proving diet soda increases body weight or the risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes or the other diseases mentioned in your blog. Not one of the specific studies you cited was even designed to measure and compare the impact of drinking diet soda with a change in weight or health status, and the conclusions reported by the researchers conducting those studies clearly indicated that.
The reported "link" between diet soda and obesity or other diseases in these studies was discovered after the fact, meaning a large volume of information was collected from a group of people and upon analysis, certain "associations" were found. This does not make them "causal relationships." So while it may be true that the people who drank diet soda also had at higher incidence of developing metabolic syndrome, it may have been because they were already overweight and, therefore, more clinically at risk. The same can be said for the "associations" made between diet soda and obesity, diabetes mellitus, heart disease and certain cancers.
Since obesity is a primary risk factor for these and several other chronic diseases, any person who is overweight and trying to control their caloric intake by drinking beverages and eating foods sweetened with non-caloric sweeteners would skew any study that was just tracking diet soda use and disease rates. And unfortunately, 60% of Americans can now be classified as overweight.
The point is here, diet drinks did not make them fat. There are hundreds of well-designed, peer-reviewed, scholarly studies on the safe use of non-caloric sweeteners, and decades of use by populations around the globe. And while it is very difficult for people to accept the hard, cold truth that no single food or ingredient causes obesity, it is an easy fire to fan. Sadly, this may only serve to further distract overweight people from addressing what does work, namely improving their diets and increasing their physical activity to maintain energy balance.
I would be happy to discuss this topic with you further if you like and share some good studies with you that explain the role of caloric and non-caloric beverages in the diet. The sooner we all pull together to bring the discussion of obesity and its treatment back to center ground, the sooner we will be able to effect a change of course in this epidemic.
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