The lie is built right into the name. Because there’s nothing “diet” about diet soda.
Sure, these soft drinks have no calories. But let’s be honest, have you, or anyone you know, actually lost weight gulping down diet soda?
Yeah, me neither. And now, a new report confirms that making the switch to diet soft drinks is one of the worst possible things you can do for your waistline.
It won’t help you lose weight. But even worse, it could cause you to pack on MORE pounds.
I swear, we should be allowed to SUE the crooks who make this garbage. But instead, millions of folks are still desperately knocking back diet soda.
Because they mistakenly believe switching to these full-sugar substitutes is a healthier choice. And that they can help them finally shed the extra pounds that have been stubbornly clinging to their waistline.
But it’s time to stop falling for this diet soda swindle.
The disturbing truth about diet soda
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sure no one thinks diet soda is a magical elixir that melts away unwanted pounds. (I wish.)
But most folks do believe zero-calorie sodas will at least help in their battle against the bulge. And that switching from regular to diet soda is vital to their effort to eat a little better.
Besides, at a minimum, the no-cal beverage replaces some empty full-sugar soda calories. Which means it won’t cause weight gain like they do, right?
Wrong. It turns out diet soda failed on even that most basic level in a recent experiment.
Volunteers were hooked up to have their brains scanned while they drank either a standard full-sugar soft drink or one with an artificial diet sweetener. And something disturbing was revealed.
The scans uncovered two critical changes in the brain within a couple hours of drinking a diet soda:
- First, after downing the drinks, the region in the brain that handles food cravings and appetite switched on in women and obese folks in general. But the signal was far stronger, lighting up like a house on fire, in the folks who drank an artificially-sweetened diet soda than in those who gulped down one sweetened with real sugar.
- Second, levels of the hormone responsible for your body recognizing you just ate or drank something and should stop (the so-called satiety signal) plummeted in women and those who were obese. While volunteers who drank a beverage with real sugar had a much more modest drop.
In other words, after drinking a diet soda, you’re far more likely to feel hungry and battle cravings than you are after drinking a regular soda made with real sugar.
Soft drinks can drive you to overeat
So with those two strikes against them, it’s easy to see how drinking diet soda can lead to overeating or indulging in high-sugar or high-carb foods you were trying to avoid.
The scientists also put the sodas to the test in a real-world setting. They let the volunteers hit the buffet after drinking their sodas to see what happened. And sure enough, the women and the obese folks who had the fake sugar diet soda ate more.
In this case, the new study used sucralose-sweetened (brand name, Splenda) diet soda. But earlier research has shown that the other artificial sweeteners aren’t any better.
In fact, some, like aspartame, may even be worse. Plus, artificial sweeteners are also associated with a rise in your risk for type-2 diabetes. Likely because of that tendency to cause us to overeat or indulge in cravings.
But don’t misunderstand. This ISN’T a reason to stick to sugar-sweetened soft drinks. Giving up diet soda WAS the right move. Full-sugar drinks are still the quickest path to weight gain and diabetes.
Just make better choices. Swap out the soft drinks… both the regular AND diet soda… for unsweetened water, coffee, and tea. Each has health benefits, and none of them will cause you to overeat or gain weight.
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