14 DAY TRIAL // Diet soda is not all that different from regular soda, at least as far as its impact on an individual's health is concerned.
A new study published in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism documents the health risks associated with diet soda, and its findings are not in the least encouraging.
Scientists say that, though this might come as a bit of a shock, diet soda can cause the same health problems as regular soda.
“The negative impact of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages on weight and other health outcomes has been increasingly recognized; therefore, many people have turned to high-intensity sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin as a way to reduce the risk of these consequences,” the researchers write in their paper.
“However, accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,” they go on to say.
Specialists explain that, whenever a person drinks diet soda, their body is tricked into thinking that it is being offered sugar when it fact it is not.
Naturally, the body gets ready to process it, but soon learns that there is no sugar to deal with.
In time, this “peek-a-boo” could lead to the body's losing its ability to recognize and metabolize real sugar. As a result, insulin levels in the body could go haywire.
“You've messed up the whole system, so when you consume real sugar, your body doesn't know if it should try to process it because it's been tricked by the fake sugar so many times,” researcher Susan Swithers says, as cited by International Science Times.
Scientists also warn that people who regularly consume diet soda might actually be ingesting more calories than their body needs.
This is because they work on the assumption that, since they are consuming no-sugar beverages, it is OK to reach for another food serving.
“We've gotten to a place where it is normal to drink diet soda because people have the false impression that it is healthier than indulging in a regular soda. But research is now very clear that we need to also be mindful of how much fake sugar they are consuming,” Susan Swithers stresses.