This question seems ridiculous to me, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Over lunch yesterday, a friend of mine insisted that the carbonation in soda is what makes it fattening. My case, which I thought was a good one, was that it was the sugar. He insisted that even diet soda is fattening. :rolleyes:
Is there any shred of truth to the idea that the carbonation in soda somehow either causes people to gain weight or interferes with them losing it?
Carbonation does not add calories. It is the sugar that makes soda fattening, and diet soda is therefore not fattening. Diet soda may have a calorie or so from the aspartame and coloring agent, but that’s it. The only weight you will gain from diet soda is the weight of the water that the soda is made with. This will be excreted, unless you are dehydrated.
I’ve never read a study, or done one on this, but your co-worker’s claim seems a little nutty. Carbonation is saturated carbon-dioxide. You breathe that in all the time, admittedly in less amounts. I see no way that carbon dioxide could contribute to weight gain.
Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Obviously, if you have lots of carbon dioxide in your body you’ll be heavier.
Your co-worker is a moron.
Look at it this way. You extract calories from food by oxidizing it inside your cells. The result of this process is the production of–guess what–carbon dioxide. If you’re a plant, then maybe you should be concerned about your CO[sub]2[/sub] intake, after all, you want to keep that youthfully thin stem. But it passes right through animals, since the body expels it as waste.
Many weight-loss experts recommend that dieters avoid diet soda too. Some say that dieters should be changing their habits and looking for more healthful alternatives to any kind of soda. Some say that exposure to large amounts of artificial sweetener can trigger sugar cravings. There are even some that say that the carbonation is unhealthy in and of itself. But none of them say that there is anything “fattening” about diet soda!
I’d love to know where your friend got this idea.
I thought I remember reading that he carbonation in soda “stretches your belly”. Admittedly this is a little vague.
But why do heavy beer drinkers get that “beer belly”? Beer doesn’t have that many calories.
Bigger belly maybe means you are a bigger eater in general, ie feel the need to fill it due to cravings of some kind.
If the Calories in regular soda is considered to be fattening, there is no reason the Calories in beer shouldn’t be fattening too. Beer has just about the same number of Calories as regular soda (150 Calories per 12 oz. serving). The difference is that in the case of soda, all the Calories are from carbohydrate, while in the case of beer about two-thirds of the Calories are from alcohol.
150 Calories may not sound like much, but if you drink one extra soda or beer a day without compensating for it by eating less or excercising more, you would gain about 15 pounds of fat every year.
Actually, your body probably produces more dissolved carbon dioxide (carbonation) every hour of your life than a sixpack of soda. You know all that breathing you do? Well, if you want to lose weight, cut it out. Your body turns oxygen into water and CO2. Maybe your friend is one of the more misguided “low carb” dieters. Consider gently advising them -with drawings- ofthe corect meaning of “carbohydrates”?
Anyone mistaking this for medical advice deserves what they get.
Bibliophage, not to sound like an idiot, but does it work the other way? If you drop a soda or beer a day and don’t change any other habits, would you lose 15 pounds, or does some sort of “fat inertia” kick in?
Eh, sort of. Bibliophage is technically correct, however other factors than mere caloric intake versus activity level coem into play. Your body has a number of feedback mechanisms to try to balance things out. For one, if either your caloric intake or your activity level changes somewhat, your body tends to compensate for it by adjusting your metabolism levels. So, although you may gain or lose 15 pounds per year by consuming or not an extra soda or beer daily, chance are your body will compensate for the small shift in caloric intake. This is part of the reason why dieting is often so difficult, particularly losing the last several pounds or so.
Actually this makes some sense. People who train for eating contest (i.e. hotdog eating contest) frequently eat a lot in training to streach their stomach, allowing them to eat more durign the contest before being over-full.
Also I wonder if the pressure in the stomach casuses greater absorbtion.
Transmutation of elements?
As Q.E.D. said, your body’s metabolism isn’t static. But many people have acheived and maintained weight loss by simply cutting a source of excess calories. The trick is to not make up for it by eating too much of something else! So, no, you can’t expect to lose 15 lbs. in a year by drinking one less can of soda a day. But you can expect that you will slowly drop pounds and stabilize at a lower level.
So, if someone really needs to lose weight, they’ll have to do more than cut out one soda a day. But if someone sees his or her weight creeping up, cutting out that soda might be all they need.
**Q.E.D. ** responded
You mean the six beers/day I’ve been drinking for the last 20 years, in an effort to further research on this matter were for naught?. :eek:
Let’s see…6 x 150 calories/day x 365 days/year x 20 years…
Holey Moley!! Lookout! I’m Mr. Creosote!!