I believe that everything in moderation is the way to go. However there have also been studies on artificial sweeteners causing cancer as well. So i don't encourage my clients to drink or eat it - but to drink/eat more natural/organic and to watch labels when shopping. If they must, then limit it to 1 serving per day and that doesn't mean a whole can or bottle of diet soda.

I would be very curious to see more research findings on this study. What about the lower calorie count in diet soda. I know people that have lost weight by simply switching from regular soda to diet soda. Besides what's the ratio amount one would have to drink to be effected?

Switching from regular soda to diet soda may be helpful, but would they have done even better if they drank no soda! Ask your clients to stop drinking soda altogether and see what the results are. Run your own study!

I believe anytime we put chemicals into our bodies that do not belong there, we will see unexpected effects to our homeostasis. Get rid of the diet stuff and eat real food and no soda!

For a number of years now there have been artticles stating that artificially sweetened, low-calorie foods thwart the ability to regulate metabolism and may create carbohydrate cravings. This has been referred to as "low-calorie sabotage". These articles have been based upon the Purdue University research study that was conducted on rats over four years ago and published in the International Journal of Obesity. There may be some other serious concerns about artificial sweeteners. If interested, try googling "aspartame & poison".

I have been a dentist for 32 years and the biggest problem with regular soda is rampant decay-I have seen this over and over with children that had no previous decay problems and then went off to college and picked up the habit of sipping a regular soda all day-regular soda has caused more dental problems than any other single source-just my observation-32 year dentist in Anchorage, Alaska

Sugar (including "natural" Tubinado), is made from sugar cane or sugar beets. These are the two most ively bred and genetically engineered organisms on earth. Then it is refined and processed using a host of chemicals, many of which are lethal. The end product has had all of the nutrients removed. What's left is then processed, packaged and shipped. We evolved the attraction to sweets because in nature, sweet usually means nutritious (think fruits). What sugar manufactures produce is not natural, and is added to foods to "trick" our bodies into consuming. This is the same approach that cigarette manufactures got in trouble for with their use of nicotine! When you eat something that contains sugar, your body release insulin in preparation to store all of the nutrients that it thinks are coming. And guess what? There is nothing there but empty calories, so your body stores this as fat. This constant fooling of your bodies hormones eventually might get to the point where your body quits responding to its own insulin. Sorta like the boy who cried wolf. We call this condition Type 2 Diabetes, and it's becoming a huge health problem along with the obesity caused by storing all those empty calories. 100 years ago before the widespread use of sugar, it was unheard of.
Artificially sweeteners have raised concerns. But I have actually read the abstracts on the research (most people haven't) and will give you a quick synopsis:
• Aspartame (Nutrasweet) will break down in your body to aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. Aspartic acid and Phenylalanine are essential amino acids - so you have to have them. Methanol is found naturally in some vegetables and fruits, but is toxic at high doses. 12 oz. of tomato juice has six times more methanol than 12 oz of diet soda sweetened with aspartame. The real problem is when you heat aspartame, it breaks down to diketopiperazine which is also toxic at high doses. You would die long before your body could reach that temperature (142°F), but don't use aspartame to cook with or add to hot beverages. Also Aspartame cannot be metabolized in a minor portion of the population with a generic disorder called phenylketonuria (PKU). The sweetener has therefore had to live with a PKU information statement. Many legitimate controlled studies have been done that showed individuals claiming to have negative effects from aspartame experienced NO negative effects from aspartame when they didn't know they were taking it. Talk about power of suggestion. The only place I can find negative information on aspartame is in the various "fanatical" health publications that are floating around. [200 studies over 20 years]
• Saccharin (Sweet 'n Low) does increase the incidence of bladder cancer in male rats by a factor of 1.6. This is at the human equivalent dose of 298 cans of diet soft drink a day for 57 years. This is one of the longest studied artificial sweeteners, and there has never been one confirmed case of it causing cancer in humans. Saccharin was marked with a carcinogenicity warning label for years until Congress passed the Saccharin Warning Elimination via Environmental Testing Employing Science and Technology Act in late 2000, removing the label and affirming the product's safety. [4000 studies over 80 years]
• Sucralose (Splenda) is the only non-caloric sweetener made from sugar. It is simply a carb that cannot be digested by humans, so you receive no calories from it. Remember that fiber (which is vital to your health, and most people do not get enough of it) is also simply a carb that cannot be digested by humans. [100 studies over 15 years]
• Acesulfame Potassium or Acesulfame K (Sunett) same as sucralose but not made from sugar. [90 studies over 15 years]
• Polyols (sugar alcohols) are found naturally in foods, but are not a sugar and not an alcohol. They still have calories, but less than table sugar. The digestion process in humans causes the production of Methane in your GI tract, so gas can be a problem. [300 studies over 40 years]
• Stevia is a plant found in South America which has been used for centuries as a sweetener. But the use was of whole leaves, not a refined extract of the stevioside (molecule that makes it sweet). In the US Stevia cannot be sold or labeled as a sweetener because it has not been granted a clean bill of health by the FDA, so it’s sold as a dietary supplement in health food stores. It has no calories for the same reasons as Sucralose and Acesulfame Potassium – the human body cannot digest it. But long term legitimate studies of the stevioside extracts effect on human health do not exist, no matter what the people who stand to profit from it say. [studies in progress]
• As always, go back to common sense. How many people do you know that are either obese or suffering from Type 2 diabetes (hint-35% of the US Population is obese, which is 18 million people). Now compare them to all the people you know who have had brain damage or cancer from artificial sweeteners (hint-none but more than 163 million people in the US regularly consume artificial sweeteners). Get the facts, do the math and decide what is a bigger threat to your health.

this is in response to the comment on the caloric content of sodas. Calories are not always what you need to look at- No one got fat off drinking unlimited amounts of water and eating unlimited amounts of veggetables and fruit (Good Carbs). Too low a caloric intake below 1800 for women and 2000 for men automatically slows metabolism and starts the fat storage process.

Studies have shown that when a person ingests sweet drinks (includes fruit juice, Gatorade, suger water, or water sweetened with artificial sweetners) that the body does not turn off the hunger switch and you actually eat more. Also, artificial sweetners are not metabolised efficiently by the body and cause the hunger switch to be left on and they turn on the fat storage switch.

Even though diet drinks fall in line with keeping blood sugar low, they can cause a person to store the calories as fat especially if their body Fat percentage is greater than 25%.

my comment is i believe'' that diet soda are bad because all un natural chemical''when am at the gym i see so many people drinking diet soda's what do say....nothing !!

This is in response to Mark and his "facts."
#1 All of the research you site is bought and paid for by the company that produces the products you are endorsing.
#2 85% of all complaints to the FDA are made in regard to aspartame/Nutrasweet so if the only negative info you could "find on aspartame is in the various 'fanatical' health publications that are floating around" then you did not look very hard.
#3 Aspartame/Nutrasweet was rejected 3 times by the FDA because it is so toxic in the human body. #4 After the third time the head of the FDA appointed 4 of his own people to the review in order to get aspartame/Nutrasweet approved (4-3). Within 2 years all 5 people involved were working for Monsanto (the parent company for aspartame).
#5 It takes 10,000 - 100,000 years to make more than a 1% change in the human species. These artficial sweetners have been around for how long?
#6 There are plenty of safe no/low calorie natural sweetners out there such as erythritol, xylitol, oligofructose and Stevia that the use of dangerous artificial sweetners is really not needed.
#7 Stevia is not approved by the FDA because of serious lobbying by the makers of the artificial sweetners you believe in. They even had it banned from the US while they built their market share.

I seriously could go on and on since books have been written on the subject. The bottomline is that a healthy body is not a fat one. If you can get the systems of the body healthy it will be lean. That is just not possible with artificial sweetners. I know there are plenty of people who use artificial sweetners that are some of the leanest people on earth. Are they healthy though?

Why would drinking carbonated chemicals ever be good for you?
When I heard that I stop drinking sodas.

people are fatter now and more out of shape now than ever before. We have become obsess with diets and fast food junk has taken over the sit down at th table and eat dinner. Over the years of being a health professional I have seen study after study contradict what we should or should not be eating or drinking. There is now so much information out there they ever before but people are still getting sick and obesity is at it's all time high's why? We just need to slow down MORE is not better we just need to understand that stress is the number one killer and it trickers everthing else to go wrong in our bodies cancer/diabetes/ the list goes on.Once we learn to rest as much as we exercise and laugh and have fun daily I truly believe we wonder need to eat as much for comfort and emotions. Let jsut tell our clients to relax so your body can do what it does naturally. "HEAL IT'S SELF" and eat to live not live to eat enjoy life. If you agree with me I would love to hear you comments. I know ther is someone out there that has experienced some things and realized that its all a state of mind on how you feel and how you health is affected.
Staying Healthy...is a choice lets choose to live better and get in touch with our bodies.
NInette(Master Trainer Austin Texas)

POSTED by PFP staff from an email response: I heard about this story, and find it very inaccurate IMO...I wanted to attach a couple photos of myself taken a few weeks ago, in which I DO drink diet Pepsi every day and use Splenda as a sugar substitute. I believe using sugar substitutes have nothing to do with gaining weight. (see attached photos). I currently am training for the Arnold Classic bb show in Columbus, OH.... Only 14 days away now. The bottom line is what you're current eating lifestyle is like, not trying to blame one product for weight gain, like sugar substitutes. I would like to know what else these 18000 people were eating during the time of the study? We'll probably never know that, however. I get very irritated at the media for putting stories out like this which IMO have very little truth to them. I have been training for over 15 years and have competed naturally the past 5. People always want to blame someone for their own weight issues, instead of looking in the mirror. That is a big problem in this country with obesity levels the way they are. I do enjoy most of the articles on your website, however, and I realize this was just passed on from another source. Just wanted to add my two cents though.

Could someone please supply the reference to the original article? As usual the stupid news article neglects to mention this minor detail.

Thanks

Mark Alderdice
markalderdice@juno.com

In an ideal world, drinking no carbonated beverages would be the best thing to do...(I do drink over a gallon of water each day, so I hope the 1 or 2 diet Pepsis I drink aren't very significant), but then look at alcohol consumption in this country??? That's a whole other topic, and I'm glad I don't fall into that category. I think one thing is that if people would be responsible for their own actions, and stop blaming all these products out there, which are being "researched to death" about how they make you gain weight, then maybe the obesity levels in the US "might" come down a little. It's a choice everyone can make, if they want too. There is too much of a "convenience factor" where buying fast food, Starbuck's and Duncan Donuts on every corner, and in general eating out all the time seems to have become the norm. That needs to change if the "average American" doesn't want to be overweight or obese. It's all about choices.....

NMT David. Where are the references to support your allegations? I couldn't even see one. Unsubstantiated claims such as yours ususally do more damage than good as they have no scientific validity and tend to do nothing more than help to distribute misinformation to the less educated among else