Is it safe to drink non-sugary drinks (like coke zero) while on a diet? Or do the artificial sweeteners just make you fat in some sneaky way?
In: Chemistry
They are considered pretty safe but you are right in your suspicions, lately there’s been increasing evidence that they can adversely effect metabolism and trigger issues that plain sugar can too.
So moderation as ever, is best.
From https://www.forksoverknives.com/wellness/artificial-sweeteners-can-make-you-gain-weight/
“Do we have direct evidence that diet beverages can adversely impact body weight? Yes. If you swap out diet beverages for water, there theoretically should be no difference in weight control since they both provide zero calories, right? Well, when researchers put it to the test, overweight and obese individuals on a diet randomized to replace diet beverages with water lost significantly more weight, about 15 percent more over six months.”
Here is an older study just on the nature of most sweeteners, but it is not a critique as such https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198517/
Zero calarie sodas have zero calories in the., meaning they won’t “make you fat” however some people believe that the sweetness of diet sodas causes you to crave other sweet things. But strictly speaking if you were on a deserted island and there was no food and you found a shipping crate of diet 7-up washed up on shore, you would still starve to death no matter how much of it you drank
Also, diet sodas have aspartame as an artificial sweetener. Aspartame has been linked to migraines, and might make them worse for migraine sufferers.
While limiting your sugar and caloric intake is good for you, diet sodas are by no means a proven method for weight loss.
Welcome to the wonderfulworld of nutrition, where we can’t test people in labs, so we don’t know very much for sure.
Some people think that drinking a zero-calorie drinks makes you feel like you did something “good”, so you let your guard down and end up eating more food later as a reward. Some people also think that too much artificial sweetener makes the good germs in our tummies sick, which isn’t good for us.
Hotly debated. Get ready for a firestorm.
What is known is that people who drink diet or sugar free sodas do not on average show any demonstrable health benefits compared to drinking sugared drinks. The artificial sugars still give you an insulin spike, which is the thing that is “bad” for dieting. It makes you feel hungry.
However, there are fewer calories in a sugar-free beverage. In terms of pure calories in calories out, and excluding all other factors, changing from a sugared drink to a sugar-free drink and changing nothing else at all can have a large impact on your weight.
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