I’ve heard several people say that diet sodas (sweetened with aspartame, sucralose, etc.) Are “bad for you” or unhealthy. Why?
The artificial sweeteners have been around for years and I know of no credible studies to suggest that they dangerous. Are there any?
I suppose that the phosphoric and/or citric acid used in most sodas would promote tooth decay, but diet sodas would still be “healthier” than regular ones because of the lack of sugar, which also promotes tooth decay.
No cites (sorry), but the reasons I’ve heard are that:
See the Wikipedia section on Diet soda: Health concerns for more info.
(missed edit)
That said, I personally chose to stop (went from a couple liters per day or more to not a single drop) because even if they’re not BAD for you, they don’t do you any GOOD either as far as we know.
I don’t know if diet soda is healthier compared to regular soda, but neither is particularly good for you. They’re unnecessary addictions created by manipulative marketing.
It’s a bottle of liquid chemicals (the testing, synthesis and disposal of which may or may not affect other species at some point during the soda’s lifecycle), a waste of resources (manufacturing, transportation, landfill space) and a waste of money. Amplify the individual effects of a single drink by several million times all around the world and even these minor, indirect issues may one day detract from your health.
>1. Aspartame causes cancer in rats in extremely large doses
A large dose isnt the human equivalant of a six pack of diet coke, but of a few gallons of pure sweetener. Not to mention humans and rats are not the same species. Please see the link below for more information on this.
>2. They make you hungrier because they taste sweet yet provide no calories and your body doesn’t know how to deal with that
Your body isnt a thinking machine. It doesnt need to know how to handle things. Sweetners dont cause a insulin surge or anything. Your body does just fine.
>3. The long-term effects of artificial sweeteners is unclear (
Nutrasweet and other sweetners have been consumed by BILLIONS of people over a couple decades. I think the long-term affects are known, at least, known well enough as anything else in nutrition/food/health.
I think there’s just too many anti-science anti-intellectual anti-skeptic conspiracy loving goofs in the world and they control the debate with their scare tactics and illogical bullshit. If you want real facts you can read this:
I’ve read they’ve been linked to metabolic syndrome, the theory being that when your body detects the sweetness it sends a message to your pancreas to start pumping out insulin since there’ll be sugar showing up in your bloodstream, but of course there’s no sugar in the drink, and after doing this enough times you develop insulin resistance, or your pancreas stops bothering to produce insulin in response to sweetness, I forget which. Actually, they’re probably two different theories. Either way, you get diabetes. I doubt any of this is enough to say it’s “unhealthy” if you drink it once in a while, but regularly consuming large amounts of any sweet drink (sugary or aspartame-y) is probably not a good habit to have, if only because it accustoms you to having sweet things all the time. So maybe it’s not the drink itself that’s healthy or unhealthy, but the kind of diet associated with drinking the stuff regularly.
I see your point that there might be impossible to forsee health consequences of long term exposure to things currently recognizes as safe. Hormone replacement therapy was thought to be safe for what, 20 years?
This part I don’t get. Soda is addictive? Caffeinate soda might be, I suppose. But couldn’t this then apply to coffee, which contains far more and is aggressively marketed. Also, is there any evidence that soda advertisments increase consumption? I thought they were intended to cause consumers to switch brands. Can someone with marketing experience comment? I can’t remember the last time I saw a soda ad.
Couldn’t all of this apply to the mass-marketed orange juice or milk that many people drink? It seems that both involve chemical production (for fertilizer, insecticide, herbicide, hormones, and veterinary pharmaceuticals), transportation, landfill use, and habitat destruction from land clearing, runoff, and agricultural waste. Neither of these drinks are necessary for a healthy diet, and some might consider them unhealthy because of their sugar/saturated fat content and relatively high calorie count.
The results of my research indicate the following benefits: they taste nice and they quench your thirst.
One bad factor is that many (though not all) diet sodas are very high in sodium content.
PDF! http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/mail/goodanswer/soft_drink_nutrition.pdf
According to this, at most a Coke product (which seems representative of sodas) has 48 mg/8 oz, and the recommended daily allowance is 2400 mg. So, yeah, I guess a couple of cans is 6% of your rec. daily intake, but not “very high”.
I apologize if I made it seem like aspartame IS dangerous; I only meant to suggest that its safety is less than 100% certain. But you’re right in that there is also quite a bit of misinformation and fear-mongering out there.
I was going to mention this in my followup edit but I missed the window. It’s true that humans and rats aren’t the same species. It’s also true that we use them as lab rats nonetheless.
I don’t think there is evidence linking it to cancer in humans. However, a lack of evidence is not the same as concluding it’s definitely safe – such proof may not be available (or even possible) for a very long time, until we thoroughly understand our bodies’ functions. But the same thing would apply to just about anything in the world, and needlessly worrying in the meantime may indeed constitute paranoia.
Personally, I believe it’s a negligible risk, but the very health-conscious may choose to play it safe simply because it’s artificial.
I don’t know enough about the details of this so the following is a question and not an argument:
It seems like the insulin thing is settled for the time being, but what about metabolic syndrome and other unknowns? The very existence of continued uncertainty causes, well, uncertainty.
The evidence so far is weighed heavily in favor of aspartame’s safety. So far…
I guess it’s a matter of how long you think it’s necessary to wait. A few decades really isn’t that long compared to how long people have been eating normal foods, and our bodies are complex enough that minor and/or complex effects may not be easily isolated.
I hope you’re right.
Not physically, I don’t think, beyond our natural sweet tooth. But it’s certainly a recent cultural phenomenon and we drink far more of it than necessary.
About the ads: Good point. I don’t know.
Yes. It may be a good idea to stay away from those too.
On the other hand, there is only so much culinary enjoyment people are willing to give up, and there are plenty of compromises available (low-fat milk, organic juice, farmers’ markets, growing your own stuff, buying in bulk etc.). I think Coke is even considering organic corn syrup for its sodas. In the end, how much you want to care is entirely up to you.
Maybe a little high compared to pure water, but not that high compared to your recommended daily sodium intake.
Diet sodas are really just water, CO[sub]2[/sub] and a relatively tiny amount of flavor and color chemicals.
In statistics we have a concept called confidence. The numbers of usage are huge. I am fairly confident that its safe. You need to think of safety as relative. The absurd standard people hold sweeteners too has never been held up to milk or orange juice. Everything has some level of risk. Remember, large amounts of water can kill you too.
Your comment is one of my pet peeves. You cannot sit on the fence when there is overwhelming evidence. Its like the people who think evolution is just this idea that probably isnt true. Actually, all evidence points to be it being true with a high level of confidence.
>I hope you’re right.
I trust government publications with cites and real research more than “bored guy on the internet full of bias and conspiracy theories.”
More or less correct. Some contain acids, which are not very good for your teeth if you drink a lot. OTOH, some fruit juices have an even higher acid content.
Is sodium consumption a concern for people without hypertension?
Edit: Nah, nevermind. Not fit for GQ.
Patently false. The acids in soda are by nature water-soluble and get washed away by your saliva within moments. Tooth damage from soda is primarily the result of sugar and its tendency to stick around and nourish bacteria.
Also, since this is about the fifth thread on this topic filled with the same parroted misinformation:
Cite for the assertion that sweet taste is enough to induce insulin release. By the way, guess what “metabolic syndrome” is? Insulin resistance. No sugar, no insulin release, no insulin resistance, no metabolic syndrome.
Enjoy your diet sodas.
Only in a very few cases. In some cases, reducing Sodium (along with quitting smoking, weight reduction, reducing alcohol intake, reducing stress, and increasing exercise can sometimes prevent hypertension).
Basically, ask your MD, but in 75% or so of Americans out there, it’s not a significant health issue. (But for 20%+, it’s fairly critical).
Based on my 25 years of personal testing, No, they are not bad for you.
Everything is unhealthy if consumed in large enough quantities. Several people have died from too much water. So the literal answer to the question, is “of course”.
Having said that, there’s inconsistent evidence suggesting diet sodas might be correlated with weight gain instead of loss. From what I’ve seen so far, the evidence is not very good in either direction, so I would be careful with diet soda as a weight loss aid.
Several posts in this thread seem to imply it would require an insulin surge for a diet soda to cause increased weight. But the thyroid is more important in body metabolism, and the process of feeling satiated, or “full”, is more complicated, and it’s possible that the sweetness of diet sodas interferes with it. As far as I can see, this is still poorly understood.
From reading a few of the links google gave me, it seems most people agree a few drinks a week of soda, and you are definitely fine. If you drink a few drinks a day, your diet probably has other health problems as well.
PS. I don’t think hormone replacement therapy is a good example to use here. Doctors always knew there were risks. It’s just that when the study was finally done, the risks where larger than anyone realized.
i got diabetes before I used fake sugar [actually the first fake sugar I could tolerate was equal, the pink crap tastes like shit. I didnt use fake sugar until equal came out and was readily available. I still dont drink diet soda unless it is as a mixer in something like a rum and coke.] I was diabetic in 1980, and didnt really start to use equal until in the 90s when it became more readily available.
And how do you explain insulin resistance from pre readily available fake sugars?