Your Diet Soda Weight Gain Time Bomb - Why is Diet Soda Bad for You?

Research into diet soda weight gain shows how your diet drinks makes you fat.

Diet Soda Health Risks

Regularly consuming fizzy diet drinks will only make you fatter, claims a recent diet soda study.

Despite having fewer calories, the drinks fail to stop you gaining weight - and may even trigger your appetite meaning you eat more.

This news comes as a bombshell for those looking to watch their health and expanding waistlines.


Photo courtesy of James Vaughan

Diet Soda Study

Scientists came to this conclusion following two important studies assessing the effects of diet soda related to weight gain.

• The first study involved over 500 participants, and discovered the consumption of diet soda drinks every day led to 70% larger waistlines after a decade when compared to those who drank none.
• These figures become more alarming when you consider how those who drank just two diet soda drinks a day put on almost 2 inches around their middles.
• In the second study, sweeteners which are widely used in soda drinks were fed to lab mice. After 3 months they exhibited dangerously high blood sugar levels.

Diet Soda Weight Gain

These findings were presented by professor Helen Hazuda at a diabetes conference in San Diego, California.

She went onto say: "If you compare people who consume no diet sodas to those who consume any, there was a dramatic difference."

She added: "Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised. They may be free of calories but not of consequences."

The researchers, based at the University of Texas, cannot claim with any certainty that the diet soda drinks are causing weight gain, but their findings add to a growing slew of studies that point to possible diet soda health risks.

Why is Diet Soda Bad for You?

So why is diet soda bad for you? One theory suggests the body uses taste to regulate hunger, and that artificial sweeteners like aspartame may be disrupting this sensitive mechanism.

Professor Hazuda's colleague Sharon Fowler said: "The thing about artificial sweeteners is that they could have the effect of triggering appetite, but unlike regular sugars, they don't deliver something that will squelch the appetite."

This is supported by bestselling author and biotechnology pioneer Barry Sears, Ph.D.

Writing in The Anti-Aging Zone, Sears explains how insulin levels can be compromised by artificial sweeteners: "Anything that interacts with the sweet receptors in the mouth (including artificial sweeteners) will signal for the early release of stored insulin into the bloodstream in anticipation that carbohydrates will shortly enter the system."

Pointing to the inherent dangers of food additives typically found in diet soda, Sears warns: "When aspartame breaks in the heat or upon prolonged storage, methanol (wood alcohol) is formed. Not a very pleasant thing to ingest if you are trying to reverse aging. Unfortunately, when you ingest aspartame, the same methanol is formed in your body. The fact that aspartic acid is an excitatory neurotransmitter that in excess can cause nerve death is another reason to avoid this food additive."

If this is true, we could all be facing a ticking diet soda health risks time bomb.

In Summary

Why is diet soda bad for you?

If your goal is to build a healthy and strong body, the time bomb of diet soda weight gain should be avoided at all costs.

To discover the low fat diet dangers in your food, see Risk of Dieting

Diet Soda Weight Gain to Ways to Gain Weight

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