Artificial Sweeteners, Diet Soda and Weight Control

People who drink diet soft drinks don't lose weight. In fact, they gain weight, per recent studies. The findings come from eight years of data collected by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.

It is not surprising that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity. However, the surprise was that the risk of obesity was even higher among people who drank only diet soft drinks. In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

"There was a 41 percent increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day," Fowler says.

More Diet Drinks, More Weight Gain

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 percent for up to 1/2 can each day
÷ 30.4 percent for 1/2 to one can each day
÷ 32.8 percent for 1 to 2 cans each day
÷ 47.2 percent for more than 2 cans each day.

For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:
÷ 36.5 percent for up to 1/2 can each day
÷ 37.5 percent for 1/2 to one can each day
÷ 54.5 percent for 1 to 2 cans each day
÷ 57.1 percent 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 percent.

A study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity. More likely, it shows that something linked to diet soda drinking is also linked to obesity. One possible part of the explanation is that people who see they are beginning to gain weight may be more likely to switch from regular to diet soda. But despite their switching, their weight may continue to grow for other reasons. So diet soft drink use is a marker for overweight and obesity.

Why?

Take a look at what your eating, not just what you are drinking. Have you ever noticed people who order the biggest burger and fries and then choose a diet soda?
Soft drinks by themselves are not the root of America's obesity problem. If you don't do anything else but switch to a diet soft drink, you are not going to lose weight.

Perhaps our bodies are smarter than we think. People think they can fool the body, but the body isn’t fooled. If you are not giving your body the calories you promised it, your body will retaliate by wanting more calories. Some studies suggest that diet soft drinks stimulate appetite.

The Theories:

The Confusion Factor: When you use artificial sweeteners, you and your brain become confused about the calorie content of the food you eat. You may actually find yourself eating more in an effort to satisfy an internal urge, and this urge may be related to the assumed “fact” that the sweet dose you just drank didn’t have that many calories, so neither does this cinnamon roll. Actually, before artificial sweeteners, our bodies were pretty good at relating calorie content to food based on the sweetness. This development of internal calorie estimating occurs in childhood. Early use of artificial sweeteners could cause over ingesting of sweet foods later in life, and therefore struggles with weight.

The Sugar Trap: The body is very complicated and has a huge number of inter-related, synergistic processes that respond to stimuli. It has learned to begin various body processes when something sweet is detected. The digestive system is prepared to receive a certain type of fuel, but when you ingest artificial sweeteners, our system gets confused and our internal messengers start “asking” for food. This is the trap. You end up ingesting the calories anyway.

Caffeine and Dehydration: Many of the artificially sweetened drinks we consume contain caffeine. Caffeine is a diuretic, which means it dehydrates you by causing your body to lose water. When you are dehydrated, your body’s metabolism slows down. This means that your body functions on fewer calories, and the rest is stored as fat. As you could imagine, this will lead to weight gain, not loss.

The Bottom Line:

Avoid artificial sweeteners and diet sodas. Replace artificially sweetened beverages with water to best fuel your body and assist in weight loss. If you crave something sweet to drink, opt for 100% fruit juice.

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