drtbear1967
Musclechemistry Board Certified Member
Researchers in Texas once reported that diet sodas made people fat, saying that every can of soda you drink increases your chance of being fat by 41%. They had several theories. First, they said that exposure to sweetness (in artificially sweetened drinks) might increase the psychological desire for sweetness. Second, they figured that people, upon feeling all proud about having banked some calories, would then overcompensate by eating an entire Bundt cake. Others thought that the artificial sweeteners, despite lacking any calories, might have an insulinogenic response and cause people to physically crave more sugar. All their guesses seemed plausible. Too bad they were all wrong.
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A 2014 study compared diet drinks to sugar-sweetened drinks and found pretty much the opposite of the Texas study – people who drank diet sodas lost more weight than the sugar drinkers. Of course, there was a huge difference in the amount of calories ingested. So it could be said that the calorie deficit was so great that it overshadowed all those hypothetical psychological/physiological cravings theorized by the Texas group. Ok, so let's look at another study. Peters did a one-year study comparing the effects of a group that drank diet sodas to a group that drank water. The group that drank diet drinks lost more weight during the 12-week period. They also had greater reductions in waist size than the water group. Why didn't the water drinkers lose as much weight as the diet-soda drinkers? It must be that people who drank water ended up jonesing for sweetness. In other words, water drinkers felt hungrier and they often succumbed to that hunger, which is the opposite of the effect theorized by the Texas group.
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Just recently, another researcher took a look at all the studies comparing sugar-free soft drinks to sweetened drinks and all the arguments, pro and con, and concluded that the calorie reduction you get from drinking diet drinks is more important than any of the theories about how diet drinks could supposedly make you ingest more calories. In short, diet soda doesn’t make you fat.
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A 2014 study compared diet drinks to sugar-sweetened drinks and found pretty much the opposite of the Texas study – people who drank diet sodas lost more weight than the sugar drinkers. Of course, there was a huge difference in the amount of calories ingested. So it could be said that the calorie deficit was so great that it overshadowed all those hypothetical psychological/physiological cravings theorized by the Texas group. Ok, so let's look at another study. Peters did a one-year study comparing the effects of a group that drank diet sodas to a group that drank water. The group that drank diet drinks lost more weight during the 12-week period. They also had greater reductions in waist size than the water group. Why didn't the water drinkers lose as much weight as the diet-soda drinkers? It must be that people who drank water ended up jonesing for sweetness. In other words, water drinkers felt hungrier and they often succumbed to that hunger, which is the opposite of the effect theorized by the Texas group.
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Just recently, another researcher took a look at all the studies comparing sugar-free soft drinks to sweetened drinks and all the arguments, pro and con, and concluded that the calorie reduction you get from drinking diet drinks is more important than any of the theories about how diet drinks could supposedly make you ingest more calories. In short, diet soda doesn’t make you fat.