All Soda, Even Diet Soda, Makes You Fat

This is not going to make many of you happy but I need to say it.   I’m putting down some serious cooking information in this blog and suggesting that you eat real foods.   That includes dessert and some really tasty things.  But soda is not on the list.

Whether you drink regular soda or diet soda, it’s making you fat and it’s fact you cannot ignore.    Cutting out sugary drinks is one of my Top Ten Ways to Lose Ten Pounds This Month (at right) but there is a lot of data to support the fact that diet is just as bad.   So for all my diet soda girls, I have bad news.   Everyone I know who struggles with their weight drinks diet this and low fat that.  Not only is it not helping ( you know it) it’s actually hurting you.

Here’s what WebMD says about diet drinks (not a bad source):

People who drink diet soft drinks don’t lose weight. In fact, they gain weight, a new study shows.

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. Fowler reported the data at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego.

“What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,” Fowler tells WebMD. “What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.”

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% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day,” Fowler says.

And the best evidence I’ve seen about the reasons why diet soda is not going to make you lose weight so far, relates to the effect it has on pH in your body.   So forget about all of the calories you think you’re skipping or whether artificial sweeteners are bad.   What the soda is doing to your pH is causing you to gain weight and store fat.

ABCNews weighed in on this too, quoting a Purdue University study released in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience:

…rats on diets containing the artificial sweetener saccharin gained more weight than rats given sugary food, casting doubt on the benefits of low-calorie sweeteners.  ABC News’ medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard said another recent study, which included more than 18,000 people, found healthy adults who consumed at least one diet drink a day increased their chance for weight gain.

In the Purdue study, the rats whose diets contained artificial sweeteners appeared to experience a physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, which drove them to overeat.

“The taste buds taste sweet, but there’s no calorie load that comes with it. There’s a mismatch here. It seems it changes your brain chemistry in some way,” Savard said. “Anything you put in your mouth, your body has a strong reaction to it. It’s much more than counting calories. It seems normally with sweet foods that we rev up our metabolism.”

And from Wikipedia:

An independent study by researchers with the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts, has turned up results which indicate that the consumption of diet soda correlates with increased metabolic syndrome. Of the 9,000 males and females studied, findings stated that 48% of the subjects were at higher risk for weight gain and elevated blood sugar. The researchers also acknowledged that diet soda drinkers were less likely to consume healthy foods, and that drinking diet soda flavored with artificial sweeteners more than likely increases cravings for sugar flavored sweets.

Animal studies suggest that artificial sweeteners cause body weight gain, theoretically because of a faulty insulin response, at least in cows and rats. Rats given sweeteners have steadily increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity (fatness). Adding saccharin to the food of calves increases their body weight as well.

Soda, real or diet is about as bad as you can do in your diet.   If you don’t believe it, cut it out for a week and notice the changes in your weight and your diet.