The diet soda puzzle
February 10, 2008
Diet sodas, which are just water plus one or more artificial sweeteners, ought to save tons of calories and help people manage weight and metabolic imbalances, right? You might think so, but that’s not how the research is turning out. A big, complicated study of the effects of diet on “metabolic syndrome” (meaning multiple risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, etc) finds diet soda to be one of the factors associated with predisposition. OK. The study was based on food frequency questionnaires and other results are also hard to interpret but this isn’t the first study to find diet sodas coming out on the wrong side. The artificial sweeteners might be at fault but my guess is that diet sodas are a marker for some of the less healthful dietary practices. You know my rule from What to Eat: never eat anything with anything artificial in it.
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I’m only speaking for myself here, but I know that diet soda causes, for me, many of the same reactive hypoglycemia symptoms that sugar causes, though on a smaller scale. I don’t think it’s the caffeine, because coffee (unsweetened) does not provoke this response in me.
I think our old friend Pavlov has part of the answer - the sensation of sweetness sends a signal to the brain, which in turn signals the pancreas that some carbohydrates are coming, and it’s time to produce insulin. And we know that circulating insulin will cause both carbohydrate and fat to be stored in the adipose tissue in preference to being metabolized. So even if you ate a meal with virtually no carbohydrate, adding a diet soda could cause the fat consumed straight to your hips. As far as I know, this is just a hypothesis - I don’t know if it’s been tested.
It’s also possible that everyone (me included) is confounding cause and effect here, too. Maybe diet sodas don’t cause obesity; maybe obesity causes diet soda. That is, people who are fat gravitate toward diet drinks because they are more self-conscious about the calories they consume.
Comment by Migraineur — February 10, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
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Possibly it is not just the non-nutritive sweetener, but when it is consumed that also makes it a problem. Can artificial sweeteners promote weight gain? If someone is skipping meals and consuming something with caffeine, especially with art. sweet., they aren’t giving the body the energy it needs at that time, and will probably eat more calories at the next time they do eat, which are likely to be sweet high calorie foods.
I like the What to Eat recommendation–avoid the lab produced additives of artificial sweeteners; enjoy eating real food.
Comment by Daniel Ithaca,NY — February 11, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
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Since the received wisdom is ‘excess calories, and only calories, of any type, are what cause weight gain,’ then the ONLY acceptable spin on this story is:
People who drink diet sodas consume more calories than people who don’t. It is either bad behavior (eating too much) or ignorance (they don’t realize they are eating too much) or gullibility (they are fooled into eating too much.) Or, people who drink diet sodas don’t move enough.
Any other answer flies in the face of what nutritionists say is a known fact.
Comment by Anton — February 13, 2008 @ 3:15 pm
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