Diet Sodas Increase Your Waist Line!

[WhiteTara]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/diet-soda-weig...

A study presented at a American Diabetes Association meeting this week shows that drinking diet soda is associated with a wider waist in humans. And a second study shows that aspartame -- the artificial sweetener in diet soda -- actually raises blood sugar in mice prone to diabetes.

Snip

Researchers found that the diet soda drinkers had waist circumferences 70 percent greater than those who non-diet soda drinkers. And people who drank diet soda the most frequently -- at least two diet sodas a day -- had waist circumferences that were 500 percent greater than people who didn't drink any diet soda, the study said.

Diet soda didn't produce any better results in the second study in mice. Researchers for this study found that diabetes-prone mice that were fed a diet that included aspartame for three months, had higher blood glucose levels than mice not given aspartame.

This isn't the first news illuminating diet soda's health risks. A study published earlier this year found people who drink the beverage every day have a higher stroke and heart attack risks. And UK researchers found earlier this month that sugary drinks can dull taste buds, leading consumers to crave the sweet stuff even more.

[DrDan]

1. 500% - that can't possibly be right

say those that don't drink diet soda had a thin 32" waist - those that have at least 2 diet sodas have an average of 160"?

no way

(couldn't access the article through that link, btw)

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Crappy reporting by Huffington Post - so, no change there (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. Turns out it was *increase* in waist, over 10 years or so

Thanks to RC for providing the working link in reply #8, and also the link to the press release before the (amateur?) PuffHost writer mangled it.

Since it's about increase over a long period, it does look like an interesting study.

[DrDan]

28. good heavens - what shoddy reporting by the HuffPo reporter

the actual study does make some sense.

[Bake]

2. Which begs the question:

What were the "non diet soda drinkers" drinking? Two regular sodas per day? Or just water?

Bake

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. (a) your link is broken (b) did they try to work out cause and effect

For instance, people with large waists may have decided, or been told, to drink diet sodas.

[KurtNYC]

23. The Harvard Nurse Study released data years ago showing that

there was a correlation between diet soda and weight gain. The first thought for many was: as people gain weight they switch from regular to diet soda but the data didn't fit. Further studies pointed to 2 mechanism at work:

1) drinking diet soda fakes out the body and you get ready to digest a bunch of sugar that isn't there. This produces a craving for real sugar in diet soda drinkers. But after a period of habituation...

2) the body learns that sweet tastes do not equal real calories and the body's satiation mechanism recalibrates so that sweets no longer trigger satiation as easily(!)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18298259

[originalpckelly]

36. Wowza!

Am I glad that I never touch that shit.

If I want fewer calories, I either drink less soda per can, in other words, buy the small cans, or I drink water.

[Brickbat]

5. I have read that stuff that uses low-cal artificial sweeteners confuses the brain; the sweet taste

makes the brain think it's getting a bunch of calories, the body feels like it isn't getting any calories (because it's not), and then the brain tells the body, "well, then go find some calories! I'm getting foggy up here!"

Made sense to me. I'm not a biologist, though, so there may be some holes in my analysis. :D

[ejpoeta]

6. my thinking is they might not even be linked at all. but maybe i am wrong.

first of all, i drink diet pop. i have in recent months started a policy of not drinking pop at home at all (have recently though i am not going to lie). i generally only drink pop when i eat out which is maybe once a week or at family events which isn't very often. and i have been surprised that it hasn't even been that much even then. but i digress.

I am overweight. I used to not be. But I had kids and had trouble losing the weight and here I am. My thinking is that as with low fat foods, people tend to think they can eat or drink more because it is sugar free or low fat thus making it even worse for themselves. Nevermind the possibility that the fake sugar in this stuff may be causing problems we don't even know about. I am probably wrong, but I have seen people who will do it. Since it's low fat or diet something... well then I can have two.

[surrealAmerican]

16. That could well be a factor, but ...

... the study with the mice would indicate that there is more going on than just that.

[RC]

7. You pretty well described the situation in a sentence.

[bhikkhu]

10. The explanation I have heard (on NPR the other day):

is that when you eat or drink something that tastes sugary, whether it has actual sugar in it or not, your body responds by producing insulin, which lowers your blood sugar levels.

If you've eaten sugar, that balances things out naturally; if you haven't eaten sugar, the result is low blood-sugar levels.

The natural response of the body to low blood sugar levels is to stimulate hunger, particularly for sugary foods - so diet soda screws up your metabolism and makes you crave junk food, basically.

[IndyPragmatist]

13. So if you had a diet soda with a meal, it wouldnt matter?

If NPR is correct, then I would think that digesting actual sugars while having a diet soda would cancel out the negative consequences. I guess it makes sense if you are drinking a soda by itself. It just seems like drinking it with a meal wouldn't cause the negative effects that you mentioned. So with meals, diet sodas may be beneficial to people looking to cut calories or lose weight.

Anyone else think my logic is correct on this?

[originalpckelly]

35. But the problem is that you would still be getting a false input.

The important part would be how strong the input is over how long a period of time. Your brain would think you've have 1000 calories, but you've really had less, say 850, because the soda simulated the input of 150 calories. Do it enough, and you get a problem over the long run.

[RyanPsych]

21. It also tricks the pancreas

into thinking that the body is taking in sugar- so it produces insulin...which makes the person hungry....epic fail

[RC]

8. Try this link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/diet-soda-weight-gain_n_886409.html

And this one:
http://www.uthscsa.edu/hscnews/singleformat2.asp?newID=3861

[david_vincent]

9. If any of you are interested and have the time,

investigate what happened when the FDA approved aspartame for human consumption. It's a horror story that will make your jaw drop. It was railroaded through far faster than normal, and in approving it, the FDA countermanded the recommendation of its own chief medical officer.

I never, EVER ingest anything with aspartame in it. I won't even chew gum that contains it.

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. Self delete. Wrong placement. n/t

[Evasporque]

20. Rumsfeld had his hand in aspartame

Using his washington connections Donald Rumsfeld as CEO of Searle got the FDA to approve Aspartame in soda in 1983. Searle sold to Monsanto in 1984 and Rumsfeld pocketed 12 million in the deal...Monsanto spun off Searle's aspartame operations as NutriSweet.

Rumsfeld moved on.

[handmade34]

33. good decision!

it is corporations making big profits by exploiting people and their health... why would any thinking person support that?

[Odin2005]

55. WOO ALERT!

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. I don't doubt the thrust of these findings. But

When I was thin I never even considered drinking diet soda. That only became a tempting option for me as I gained extra weight. I think these statistics are a bit skewed. People with large wastes tend to drink diet soda. Those with narrow wastes tend not to. Chicken and the egg.

[Johonny]

14. pretty much

[surrealAmerican]

18. Your post is unintentionally very funny.

"Waste" and "waist" have different meanings.

[originalpckelly]

34. I was unaware that mice did this?

You could imagine that for humans people who'd dare touch the shit would already be prone to being overweight, but in the mice, they were selected in a controlled way to eliminate this variable.

[krabigirl]

15. I never could stand diet sodas. On the rare occasions that I drink soda, I like the real thing.

[ejpoeta]

17. i drank diet pop in Arizona because drinking regular pop gave me a stomach ache.

You get accustomed to the taste. I try not to have it here at all because if it isn't here I don't drink it. If it is here I will drink it.

[shanti]

19. i hated diet sodas too

before i became diabetic. now i never touch a regular soda, only diet. there go the rum and cokes!

[Pithlet]

49. I'm with you Diet soda is vile. I could never get used to that taste.

So chemical and bitter. Blech.

[yawnmaster]

22. Not sure I see the cause/affect here, only the corelation. If I'm fatter, I am probably...

more likely to drink diet soda.
That doesn't mean the diet soda caused my waistline to enlarge.

[jberryhill]

24. This has got to be the winner for "worst writing of the week"

The OP indicates that larger people drink diet sodas.

Yeah? So? Isn't that kind of what you'd expect?

People trying to quit, smoke low-nicotine cigarettes. Does that mean it is harder to stop smoking low nicotine cigarettes?

When this story grows a clue, let me know.

[Yavin4]

25. Or, It Could Be That Diet Soda Drinkers Are More Likely To Eat Poorly

Thinking that drinking the diet soda saves them some calories.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. My diet soda of choice these days is.... WATER

We only drink soda when we go out... or RARELY when I get a craving... like the ones I got at the price club, fruit flavored, they are good, they are tasty, but not getting them again, I found them at the store, so if I get a craving, like once a year... get two bottles.

[cbdo2007]

29. Or if you do get soda, at least get the ones with real sugar.

Or corn syrup is even better than the aspartame and other fake sugars.

[originalpckelly]

39. Corn syrup is better, because although it isn't sugar is the equivalent of such.

In table sugar the glucose and fructose are bound together, in high fructose corn syrup they are free.

You can imagine that this is probably the reason why people like the one kind of sweetener more than the other.

[yawnmaster]

44. corn syrup is mainly glucose. eom

[backscatter712]

51. I prefer soda with real sugar.

Mexican Coke, Pepsi Throwback & Mtn Dew Throwback, that stuff.

Yes, it's sugar and calories, but the body recognizes it as sugar and calories, which isn't quite the case for HFCS, so you're not gonna drink an entire 2-liter in one sitting.

And no, I'm not overweight.

[Shagbark Hickory]

30. +! NAturally flavored carbonated water is a good alt. 0 cals, 0 sugar, 0 everything.

[originalpckelly]

40. Yep, I don't know if they still make it, because I just drink water now...

but I used to drink H20H! and it was pretty good stuff.

[yawnmaster]

43. You do know what fish do in water, don't you? eom

[Cleita]

31. That might explain why many of the people who ordered

diet sodas, when I was a bartender, were fat. I just used to think it was because they ate fattening foods and the diet drinks were the only thing that were diet that they imbibed.

Although I do use fake sugar on occasion, I've taken to using stevia. I wonder what the drawbacks are for it?

[handmade34]

37. none officially recognized

Stevia seems relatively safe but I don't like the taste... I use xylitol (not from corn, from trees) exclusively for sweetening... I figure anything except natural sugars in the raw (fruits, veggies, etc) are not necessarily good.




"A (10(-9) M) increased the ATP/ADP ratio significantly, while it did not change the intracellular cAMP level. Rebaudioside A (10(-9) M) and stevioside (10(-6) M) reduced the ATP-sensitive potassium channel (K(ATP)) conductance in a glucose-dependent manner. Moreover, rebaudioside A stimulated the insulin secretion from MIN6 cells in a dose- and glucose-dependent manner. In conclusion, the insulinotropic effect of rebaudioside A is mediated via inhibition of ATP-sensitive K(+)-channels and requires the presence of high glucose. The inhibition of ATP-sensitive K(+)-channels is probably induced by changes in the ATP/ADP ratio. The results indicate that rebaudioside A may offer a distinct therapeutic advantage over sulphonylureas because of less risk of causing hypoglycaemia..."


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18435771

http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/stevia-report_final-8-14-08.pdf

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. :-( n/t

:-(

[ileus]

38. water for me....

[RebelOne]

45. Same here. That or fruit juice, milk or V-8. I haven't had a soda in years. n/t

[BlueIris]

41. Wow--no way. Next you're going to tell me that eating too much

also contributes to that problem. Shocker.

[originalpckelly]

42. That actually would not have been a completely easy thing to see.

There are no calories in these sweeteners, only through an indirect method does this happen.

So, no, it was not a no brainer.

[eridani]

46. Couldn't be because people inclined to gain weight are more likely to drink diet soda?

This assbackwards reasoning reminds me of research on sunscreens, whose users are more likely to get skin cancer. Because there is a cancer-causing ingredient in sunscreen, or because people who use sunscreen deliberatly seek out sun exposure and they don't use enough sunscreen? A simple correlation doesn't say.

[applegrove]

47. Now I know. I'll have to quit my diet soda addiction soon.

[lunasun]

48. i have been telling this to folks for years only to get the 'crazy ' look

also all the bad jeebies from aspartame aint too good besides getting fatter

& who orders tons of fatty food along with a 'diet coke'?....I see that a lot

[WhiteTara]

50. I went to wikipedia today about this

and the Corn Industry says it's safe. FDA says nothing. Websites selling health decry it, but they are for profit so there is nothing to say it's bad and that's bad.

Lot's of people order diet thinking "well, I'm doing one good thing even though my burger has 1200 calories, my soda has "none."

[Aristus]

52. I discourage my patients from drinking ANY kind of soda, HFCS or diet.

They're all bad for you. Drink water, and more of it. Drink milk. Coffee & tea are okay. But no sodas!

[Cowpunk]

53. Interesting. I have an alternative theory

Fat people drink diet soda because they are fat and would like to lose weight.

Skinny people drink regular soda because they are skinny and know diet pop tastes like shit.

[Odin2005]

54. Bullshit.

[donheld]

56. I've drank 1 diet coke a day for 3 years. I've also LOST 70lbs in that time.