Diet soda is no healthier than regular soda

[canada-man]

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Walking back to work after a trip to Chauncey Hill for fountain soft drinks, the two women had their health in mind.

Suzanne Payne had a regular soft drink, but knew it was a rare, sugary treat that she probably wouldn't finish. Susan Corwin chose a diet, caffeine-free drink.

Which soft drink — regular or diet — is the healthier choice?

That's the wrong question to ask, said Susie Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences and a behavioral neuroscientist at Purdue University. She said the real question is: What is our daily sugar intake?

"It's about the overall sweetening of our diets," she told the Journal & Courier.

A cultural shift has made having daily soft drinks acceptable, she said.

"It's really candy in a can. If people think of it as candy, they would say that they wouldn't have candy at every meal."

The message has been that diet soda is healthier since it has artificial sweetener and no calories, but Swithers said tracking sugar intake means limiting real and artificial sugars.

She reviewed recent scientific studies about the long-term link between artificial sweeteners and health outcomes.

"Findings from a variety of studies show that routine consumption of diet sodas, even one per day, can be connected to higher likelihood of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and high blood pressure, in addition to contributing to weight gain," she said.


http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/diet-soda-healthier-regular-report-article-1.1397209

 

[Cypher]

Diet soda is worse.

 

[swanky]

Between the regular and diet soft drink, diet must be the lesser of the two evils in all respect.

I think drinking diet soft drink must cause mix messages to be send to brain which may indeed affect your dietary habits, however as the article says if you're concerned about weight gain, it's all about the calories.

 

[spme]

5 reasons aspartame is bad for you

 

[rex_baner]

Anyone on a diet shouldn't be drinking anything other than water...

 

[Petzel]

Diet soda is worse.

To have it on the occasional basis is not worse. It's better than all that sugar adding empty calories and rotting your teeth! When I do choose to drink the occasional soda it has to be diet, because I have diabetes.

 

[K Douglas]

The chemicals in diet soda are far worse to your health than the sugar from regular soda. Drinking either on a daily basis however, is not good for you. Its not rocket science.

 

[Petzel]

The chemicals in diet soda are far worse to your health than the sugar from regular soda. Drinking either on a daily basis however, is not good for you. Its not rocket science.

Did you miss the part where I said occasionally?
Drinking any soda on a regular basis is not good but drinking it once in a while won't hurt.

 

[MattRoxx]

Diet soda is worse.

I don't know if it's worse, they're both bad in their own ways.

http://www.sugarstacks.com/beverages.htm

The chemicals in diet soda are far worse to your health than the sugar from regular soda. Drinking either on a daily basis however, is not good for you. Its not rocket science.

It's also bad because people are fooled into thinking that "diet" soda is somehow better for them and most of us are creatures of habit, buying soft drinks in huge bottles or cases of 24. When I was at my fattest I was going through a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke every 2-3 days.
Since cleaning up my diet several years ago, I only drink water tea and black coffee, and am much healthier.

 

[Petzel]

I don't know if it's worse, they're both bad in their own ways.

http://www.sugarstacks.com/beverages.htm



It's also bad because people are fooled into thinking that "diet" soda is somehow better for them and most of us are creatures of habit, buying soft drinks in huge bottles or cases of 24. When I was at my fattest I was going through a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke every 2-3 days.
Since cleaning up my diet several years ago, I only drink water tea and black coffee, and am much healthier.

You also missed the part where I said occasionally.

 

[yolosohobby]

the sodas w natural Stevia in them are pretty tasty and far more healthy

 

[Aardvark154]

Which doesn't change the fact that there is one hell of a difference between 150 calories and 4 calories per can.

 

[cuttysark]

the sodas w natural Stevia in them are pretty tasty and far more healthy

Where can they be purchased?

 

[yolosohobby]

The Big Carrot and I would imagine similar type stores like Noah's etc ....

 

[Petzel]

The Big Carrot and I would imagine similar type stores like Noah's etc ....

Some Shoppers Drug Marts carry it but stevia is expensive.

 

[D-Fens]

Damn... I drink alot of diet soda..

 

[tar503]

At the risk of the diet drink haters jumping on me and beating me with cans of diet drinks, I feel I should offer a bit of a defence of diet drinks here. I did do some reading awhile back about aspartame, mostly out of curiosity since I used to drink diet coke and had heard all these rumours about it being bad for you. I wasn't able to find anything from a credible source (or at least, a source that I deemed credible) that said it was dangerous to your health, and also nothing that claimed it was worse than regular soda. The worst thing I've read about it that has been coming up in studies seems to be that people who feel they've been "healthy" by avoiding calories with diet drinks can tend towards making those calories up and more in other foods. Maybe a bit like "oh, I stopped drinking regular coke so it should be fine for me to eat these two big macs instead!" (ok that's probably a gross exaggeration, but you get the point). There may be some other more subtle biological things going on but I really do think they're subtle, and not nearly the risk some people make it out to be.

That chain mail I used to get every other day about it causing all kinds of terrible diseases seems to be complete bullshit (if you consider Snopes a trusted source, which I do):

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

And there's also the fact that an immense amount of research has been done on it by people who know orders of magnitude more than me or anyone else on this board about the actual technical details of this substance and how it works in the body, and they haven't found it to be dangerous either. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the link between large amounts sugar and things like obesity, heart disease and diabetes to name only a few are pretty scientifically solid. So you have one thing that has solid evidence for being bad for you, and another thing that has largely unproven, sketchy and anecdotal evidence of being bad for you. I know which one I'd pick.

But hey, as in all things moderation is key and even better if you want to eschew both diet and regular sodas and just drink water, that's also a great choice and one I myself have recently made as well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Safety_and_health_effects

The safety of aspartame has been studied extensively since its discovery with research that includes animal studies, clinical and epidemiological research, and post-marketing surveillance,[37] with aspartame being one of the most rigorously tested food ingredients to date.[38] Peer-reviewed comprehensive review articles and independent reviews by governmental regulatory bodies have analyzed the published research on the safety of aspartame and have found aspartame is safe for consumption at current levels.[8][37][39][40] Aspartame has been deemed safe for human consumption by over one hundred (100) regulatory agencies in their respective countries,[40] including the UK Food Standards Agency,[41] the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)[42] and Health Canada.[43]

 

[Anynym]

Just because something has less sugar doesn't make it healthy, or even healthier than the drink that has more sugar.

If I offered you your choice of two cups of tea: one with ten spoonfuls of sugar, the other with arsenic, you could tell that the sugary drink is the healthier of those two.

Sure, the artificial sweeteners aren't poison (and even if you consider them to be bad for you in large quantities, you'll agree that they aren't as bad as arsenic is in even a small quantity).

A "diet" drink is not merely the same as the "regular" drink with the sugar removed. It is a different formulation altogether, and how healthy one or the other is cannot be evaluated on just by being a "diet" drink.

 

[MattRoxx]

You also missed the part where I said occasionally.

No, I saw your post.

At the risk of the diet drink haters jumping on me and beating me with cans of diet drinks, I feel I should offer a bit of a defence of diet drinks here. I did do some reading awhile back...

Me too.

Side effects of drinking diet soda

Kidney Problems

Here's something you didn't know about your diet soda: It might be bad for your kidneys. In an 11-year-long Harvard Medical School study of more than 3,000 women, researchers found that diet cola is associated with a two-fold increased risk for kidney decline. Kidney function started declining when women drank more than two sodas a day. Even more interesting: Since kidney decline was not associated with sugar-sweetened sodas, researchers suspect that the diet sweeteners are responsible.

Messed-Up Metabolism

According to a 2008 University of Minnesota study of almost 10,000 adults, even just one diet soda a day is linked to a 34% higher risk of metabolic syndrome, the group of symptoms including belly fat and high cholesterol that puts you at risk for heart disease. Whether that link is attributed to an ingredient in diet soda or the drinkers' eating habits is unclear. But is that one can really worth it?

Cell Damage

Diet sodas contain something many regular sodas don't: mold inhibitors. They go by the names sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate, and they're in nearly all diet sodas. But many regular sodas, such as Coke and Pepsi, don't contain this preservative.

That's bad news for diet drinkers. "These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it--they knock it out altogether," Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology and biotechnology at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., told a British newspaper in 1999. The preservative has also been linked to hives, asthma, and other allergic conditions, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Since then, some companies have phased out sodium benzoate. Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi have replaced it with another preservative, potassium benzoate. Both sodium and potassium benzoate were classified by the Food Commission in the UK as mild irritants to the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes.

Rotting Teeth

With a pH of 3.2, diet soda is very acidic. (As a point of reference, the pH of battery acid is 1. Water is 7.) The acid is what readily dissolves enamel, and just because a soda is diet doesn't make it acid-light. Adults who drink three or more sodas a day have worse dental health, says a University of Michigan analysis of dental checkup data. Soda drinkers had far greater decay, more missing teeth, and more fillings.

Simple, tasty alternative:

 

[larry]

let's face it. people who drink pop of any kind regularly are not concerned about their health. that's the easiest first step to change. one thing we can be sure of is that plain sugar in appropriate quantities can't hurt you. for some the right amt might be low, for some, like athletes, it might be high.