Found this on my Yahoo page today, amongst the usual nonsense.
It references a report about an 11-year-long Harvard Medical School study. I did not read the study, and would not have understood it if I had.
I like diet soda. I’m diabetic and its an easy sweet fix. I drink a lot of it. Am I killing myself?
I have a great deal of respect for the science involved…
But I also can’t help but wonder if they might be reversing cause and effect. It seems to me far more plausible that obese people drink diet sodas, rather than that diet sodas cause obesity.
In any case, there is a middle step to the process: diet sodas don’t cause obesity, but they might “trick” your body into craving more sugar. It’s that actual sugar consumption that causes obesity. So, even if they’re right, they’re oversimplifying.
This is what i had understood. Diet soda tricks your body into thinking its getting sugar, and when it doesn’t it just leaves you craving sugar.
Some people say it causes an insulin spike, but it seems like that would be an easy to thing to test, so I don’t really get that.
I don’t think it’s been established yet, but the only somewhat legitimate study I’ve seen indicates a higher insulin spike if carbohydrates are consumed shortly after Sucralose. And I think there were something like a dozen subjects comprising the study.
Some comments:
[ol]
[li]Cause vs. correlation confusions are easy to anticipate and I’m not sure they always do. “DIET MAKES YOU FAT!” can easily be reinterpreted to "Fat people drink diet because they (mistakenly?) think it will help.[/li][li]Misleading conclusions “Rotting Teeth”. They will say that diet is bad for your teeth, and people don’t realize that it’s not saying it’s worse than regular soda, but the acidity in both is bad. So don’t drink too much anyway.[/li][li]The way they explain pH of 3.2 vs 1 is misleading. pH is logarithmic, thus people who are unaware may underestimate the scale. It’s not a difference of more than 3x, but 100x (I think?)[/li][li]Do any of these address the different types of diet soda? E.g. sweetened with aspartame vs. acesulfame potassium vs. sodium cyclamate vs. others vs. a mix.[/li][li]The slide entitled “A Terrible Hangover”… they say that it gets you drunker like it’s a bad thing.[/li][li]Potassium benzoate (that’s bad) is a “mild irritant.” Look up sodium cyclamate that is sometimes used (not in the US). Although note that that’s not necessarily a mark against it - saccharin was thought to cause cancer (and still that UL floats around) because mice got it but humans have different physiology.[/li][li]If cravings are affected, then that doesn’t make diet worse if you avoid eating.[/li][li]BPA may be good, it may be bad. But it is in a lot of things, is recognized as safe by many regulatory bodies, and I notice that people who get obsessed with it tend to have a few screws loose.[/li][li]Drinking a lot of it is probably not good for you, depending on what is meant by “a lot.”[/li][li]All of you people who say pop are weird :)[/li][/ol]
Not for us type 1 diabetics
It seems my body is not that bright.
Agreed. 
Soder.