Diet Soda … Good, Bad or Deadly?
Some interesting facts on artificial sugars
Articles: What Diet Sodas and Artifical Sweeteners do to your Abs.
After reading many other 4 Hour Body blogs there seems to be a similar trend on many of them, the addiction to diet soda. Even Tim mentions in the book that his is a total Diet Coke “whore”. Personally I have never liked diet soda and after all the controversay surrounding the safety of artificial sugars I personally stay as far away from the stuff as I can.
Tim even mentions his negative opinions on artificial sugars in the book saying to limit diest soft drinks to no more than 16 ounces per day if you can, as the aspartame can stimulate weight gain (Page 74). And has a whole section on page 98 about Overconsumig Artificial Sweeteners, in which he states that anything over 16 ounces per day affects fat loss.
There have been many studies, Aspartame being the most widely studied of them all, and still there is no definitive answer whether it is safe and healthy or not. My question is would it be better to drink regular soda or diet soda? Searching the internet for a study comparing the two turned up a vast amount of contradictory information.
Lets break it down. Regular soda has high amounts of sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup. The health concerns with this are obesity and tooth decay.
Diet soda contains one or more of Aspartame, Cyclamates, Saccharin, Sucralose and acesulfame potassium. The health concerns with these are varied and conflicting between sources. Some studies claim that diet soda causes weight gain, other have links to cancer (which I did not link to because I did not find a credible one), one to fibromyalgia, and if you do a search on PubMed you will see over 100 papers on just Aspartame. There are also many people out there that believe artificial sweeteners are the devil, and have some decent facts to back it up (the list of side affects reported is scary).
While the real answer is drink water (lots of water), that is not the purpose of this article. Personally the fact that there have been so many studies on artificial sweeteners and there still is not definitive answer scares the shit out of me, and makes me think conspiracy (yes I have my tin foil hat on). This along with the fact that I find the taste of real soda better, I will still drink regular soda and not diet soda. Living in Canada I am lucky that regular soda does not containg high fructose corn syrup like soda in the US, just regular old refined sugar.
So do you drink soda? Do you prefer diet or regular soda? Agree or disagree leave a comment and let me know.
Related Reading
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/diet-soda-healthy/