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(CBS) Sorry, soda lovers - even diet drinks can make you fat.
That's the word from authors of two new studies, presented Sunday at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego.
"Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised" Dr. Helen Hazuda, professor of medicine at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said in a written statement. "They may be free of calories, but not of consequences.
Consequences like weight gain.
For one study, researchers at the center followed 474 diet soda drinkers, 65 to 74 years of age, for almost 10 years. They found that diet soda drinkers' waists grew 70 percent more than non-drinkers. Specifically, drinking two or more diet sodas a day busted belt sizes five times more than people who avoided the stuff entirely.
And as waist size grows, so do health risks - including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic conditions.
Just how does diet soda make you fat? The other study may hold the answer. In it, researchers divided mice into two groups, one of which ate food laced with the popular sweetener aspartame. After three months, the mice eating aspartame-chow had higher blood sugar levels than the mice eating normal food. The authors said in a written statement their findings could "contribute to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and the risk of diabetes in humans."
8 minutes ago (11:27 AM)
SO ???
38 minutes ago (10:57 AM)
I don’t know if anyone has told you, but anecdotal evidence is not the same thing as science. Ok? Ok.
35 minutes ago (10:59 AM)
Same….diet soda and splenda in my iced tea. I can have the occasional junk food splurge and not really pay attention to portions but I am really active.
At work (an amusement park) I see hundreds of overweight people carrying little soda kegs. It doesn’t matter if the soda is diet. The fact that they can drink all that and then refill it is indicative they overdo their portions.
45 minutes ago (10:49 AM)
Yeah, so THERE! I drink them and my waist is 32 inches around . . . but then again I usually order a cheeseburger and fries along WITH my diet drink . . . hahahaha – lots and lots of people do that, too!
1 hour ago (10:10 AM)
There you have it folks, the research is flawed!
2 hours ago (9:35 AM)
I drink diet sodas and my waist is 26 1/2 inches around.
2 hours ago (10:03 AM)
"And people who drank diet soda the most frequently — at least two diet sodas a day — had waist circumferences that were 500 percent greater than people who didn’t drink any diet soda, the study said. "
What a bunch of malarkey.... how does this establish causality?
45 minutes ago (10:50 AM)
Spot on Mary! Not all diet sodas should automatically be lumped together. Also, most of the studies that link artificial sweeteners with diabetes and obesity only compare diet soda drinkers to people who drink no soda at all. I think that the more important comparison is between drinkers of diet soda and those who drink sugar-sweetened soda. That calorie difference is pretty significant especially if you drink a lot of soda. What I know from personal experience is that a lot of people don’t want to "drink their calories". They consume diet soda so that they can eat more. The problem is that if they are not careful they can easily eat more calories than they saved by drinking the diet soda. Lastly it’s important to realize that the rodent studies described in this post were done in mice that were already prone to diabetes. It leads one to wonder what the results would have been for normal animals.
1 hour ago (10:14 AM)
Not ALL diet soda is sweetened with aspartame. So I am glad to hear the Nutrasweet is the problem, not diet soda per se. I drink a diet soda now and then, sweetened with Splenda. A brand called WaistWatchers….ironic huh? lol
59 minutes ago (10:35 AM)
this is junk science at best. ad libitum diets? how are they determining diet sodas are the cause and not excessive caloric intake? if they really wanted to make such statements they should have had 2 groups, both given the exact same caloric intake and macro nutrient breakdown and have one group consume diet sodas and one group not consume them.
oh and from the actual study which failed to make the article
"beverage-only AS dose calculations significantly underestimate total exposure, because over 6,000 products—including foods, beverages, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals—contain aspartame alone (3). Users’ AS doses from "lite" foods were probably substantial; "nonusers" almost certainly consumed AS, knowingly or otherwise, to varying degrees."
and then they admit to various confounding variables
"There may be no causal relationship between AS use and weight gain. Individuals seeking to lose weight often switch to ASs in order to reduce their caloric intake. AS use might therefore simply be a marker for individuals already on weight-gain trajectories, which continued despite their switching to ASs. This is the most obvious possible explanation of our findings. Increased fast food consumption among soda users might further confound apparent associations"
48 minutes ago (10:47 AM)
People should note that this is an epidemiology study.
Diet sodas are associated with thicker waistlines. That could be because those are people who are already overweight or over-eating and that is why they are using diet soda as their alternative. That could be because they are people who already crave sweet tastes…which diet soda provides...but which could also result in eating high-calorie foods.
This is not a cause-effect study, nor does it provide a reasonable suggested mechanism for such a cause-effect.
Eat a reasonable and healthy diet. Don’t focus on one thing being the cause or the solution for obesity.
40 minutes ago (10:55 AM)
You don’t like artificial sweetener but you drink diet soda? That doesn’t make a lick of sense, sweet pea.
47 minutes ago (10:47 AM)
LOL! The reason the people with the biggest waistlines drank the most soda is because they have food issues and aren’t eating properly, or maybe they like the taste (like I do) and over-drink which goes along with over-eating – compulsive behavior! The conclusions made here are wack. I don’t like articificial sweetener though. That’s some scary stuff. We need a compromise – lower sugar pop for all. :0)
29 minutes ago (11:05 AM)
No kidding.
47 minutes ago (10:47 AM)
This was pretty obvious. Someone who drinks diet soda is more likely to live a couch potato life style. Didn’t need a study to prove that. Drink WATER!
2 minutes ago (11:33 AM)
just from observing friends,relatives, coworkers some prefer diet soda to regular soda that are usually normal sized. to them artificial sweeteners just taste better than hfcs, but i don’t know how you could separate that from all else and claim they gained weight just from diet soda.
any food/nutrition study has this big foggy gray area of pragmatism — like pretending drinking diet soda is a diet. even in this article its mentioned as "a healthy alternative" when there is nothing healthy in any soft drink.
24 minutes ago (11:10 AM)
Couldn’t it just be that people with weight problems tend to drink diet soda in order to shed pounds. If you don’t have a weight problem you might never drink a diet soda. Association does not equal causation. I’d like to see an interventional study in which subjects were forced to substitute either water or diet soda for their sugary drinks and see if there is a difference in outcomes.
15 minutes ago (11:19 AM)
The danger of diet soda and how it makes you fat was revealed over 2 years ago here http://spirithappy.org/wp/?p=847