I sometimes drink a diet cola and find the taste acceptable. I don’t seem to need the caffeine, so I prefer the caffeine free varieties. So, here is a no-calorie, caffeine-free drink with an acceptable taste - a seemingly harmless product.
However, I’m not naïve enough to think that this comes without some catch. What are the health risks associated with diet sodas?
Acidity, primarily. It can be bad for teeth (although most of what I’ve seen lately implies that the limited contact time makes this a relatively minor issue), and some folks have gastro-intestinal problems with high-acid foods.
There’s also a large, mostly-lunatic, fringe that will claim that <insert whatever artifical sweetener you like here> will cause everything from cancer to male pattern baldness, but these claims haven’t held up under scientific scruitiny in general. (Exception is sacharrine and cancer, but even there the dosages tested don’t correspond with any amount you’d ever rationally consume, and sacharrine isn’t used very often in diet drinks any more.)
There’s also a particular medical condition that most of the drinks warn you about, because they contain Phenylalanine in the sweetener. If you don’t have the condition, this is apparently nothing to worry about.
From a practical position, many artificial sweeteners break down quickly into non-sweet forms when heated, so these drinks are less stable in warm environments. This is a taste, not a health issue, though.
Phenylketonuria (allergic to ketones).
There is also a fair number of people who feel that carbonation, artificial flavors, and artificial coloring are all bad for you, so drinking sugary rather than diet doesn’t necessarily get you off the hook, either.
It’s called PKU (phenylketonuria). Really only a concern during childhood when the brain is growing and for pregnant women with PKU. Diet drinks containing Nutrasweet are the major culprits here.
Nutrasweet has been shown to raise blood sugar. Not really a problem if you don’t have diabetes, but if you do, it kind of defeats the purpose.
Some hypotheses have been put forth stating that when diet soda is consumed, the body is ‘fooled’ into thinking actual calories are being consumed, gears up to deal with them, and then when the calories are not forthcoming, sends out cues calling for delivery of those damn calories! End result is greater hunger and a greater likelihood of calorie consumption than might have been ingested had not the diet soda been consumed.
I’m not stating this hypothesis as fact, or even as likely. But it is out there and being studied.
But this would be just a craving issue, correct? Does it just tell the body to feel hungry, or does it actually cue the body to change its metabolism? (allegedly)
I’ve heard this as well, and I’m interested to see if anything comes of it.
All I’ll say (and I’m aware that anecdote*X != data) is that switching to diet soda and Splenda in sugared drinks (iced tea, Kool-aid, etc.) is probably the biggest change I made before losing 20-25 pounds over the course of a year.
The acidity problem isn’t just about upsetting your stomach. Drinking acidic sodas all day long can contribute to low-grade chronic metabolic acidosis, which can lead to bone and muscle loss.
However, this would be a great advantage if you were exposed to a virus from outer space that wiped out everybody in your town except you and just before the whole laboratory was self-destructed scientists suddenly figured out it was because you drank too much Diet Coke. 
I was lecturing the kids (not my kids - the second-year medical students) on renal failure. I said if you had bad kidneys, you gotta stay away from phosphorus, but God only knows what kinds of food phosphorus is in; something about peas and beans - Og, I have such a hard time with all this live-people stuff.
Anyway, while I was saying it, some smart aleck born to wear a bow tie with a white coat pointed out the Diet Coke in my hand, and called out, “Lots of phosphates in that!”
Oops.
He was right.
Now I use diet Coke (and other diet sodas) as an example of what people with some degree of renal failure need to avoid – along with Tylenol. (right Qadgop?)
Shouldn’t be a problem if you have normal kidneys though.
Anyone have any idea if this is real? Daffyduck’s page doesn’t seem particularly clinical, and I don’t have access to the referenced journals. It also has a named diet system associated with it, which in my experience usually means “quack.”
None of the first fifty hits in google on “metabolic acidosis” mention it being caused by drinking anything; several of them basically say the opposite: that it’s always an indicator of underlying disease – and fairly serious ones at that.
Anyone with more information want to weigh in with real data?
Yeah, I’m calling quackery too. I’ve heard these sorts of claims before, and it’s always coupled with “alternative medicine” and pumping coffee up your butt to clean you out and whatnot. I’m guessing it’s pure nonsense.
I had read a similar claim in a book called the Magnesium Factor. The author did not call it metabolic acidosis (or at least I don’t recall it so) but she did say that it can lead to bone and calcium loss. I am in no position to verify the book’s accuracy.
With that same disclaimer, I have also read in the book Potatoes Not Prozac that diet soda will adversely affect your blood chemistry (in ways that I did not understand well enough to feel confident enough to repeat accurately.) Again, I am in no position to verify the author’s accuracy, but I will say that since I have started following the book’s advice, I have drastically reduced my mood and energy swings and have been able to give up chocolate (no cravings anymore.)
I first read of this when I read Dr. Atkins’ book. Then I realized that if I was not particulary hungery and my lovely wife said dinner would be in 20 minutes or so. If I drank a Diet Coke I was starving by the time she served dinner. This is the reason Dr. Atkins recomonded only drinks sweetened with sucralose.
Pural of story is not fact, of course, and YMMV.
I have also heard that one major problem with soda is that it makes you feel full, and consequently you tend to forego eating what would almost certainly be something more nourishing.
Incidentally, here is an informative cite with regard to aspartame:
http://www.rense.com/general33/legal.htm
and another about a bill to ban aspartame in New Mexico:
http://www.rense.com/general69/procs.htm
So, with all due respect, I would say that this comment from TimeWinder is something you might want to take with a grain of salt.
“There’s also a large, mostly-lunatic, fringe that will claim that <insert whatever artifical sweetener you like here> will cause everything from cancer to male pattern baldness, but these claims haven’t held up under scientific scruitiny in general. (Exception is sacharrine and cancer, but even there the dosages tested don’t correspond with any amount you’d ever rationally consume, and sacharrine isn’t used very often in diet drinks any more.)”
My eldest brother has epileptic seizures if he consumes anything with Nutrasweet. Not sure what the mechanism is that causes that, but if he doesn’t touch the stuff, he doesn’t have any problems.
Yeah, the major health problem Americans face today is simply not taking in enough calories, because they just don’t want to bother eating. I bet soda makes that even worse.
With all due respect, I’d suggest you look at where you get information from more carefully. There’s a lot of people, as TimeWinder said, that for some reason have a particular bug up their asses in regard to artificial sweetener. That doesn’t make it true, any more than all the other wacky dietary fear-mongering out there is true.
If Diet Soda is meant to be bad for you because of the acidity, then it stands to reason that Orange juice is almost as bad. Diet Coke has a pH of 3.1, Orange Juice has a pH of between 3.3 and 4.
So, Excalibre, you’re saying that, because the facts about aspartame with respect to the FDA and its initial trepidation about approving it, appeared on a website which for some reason you consider “wacky” (okay, some of the stuff on there is very wacky), they just go away, or lose their validity entirely? What about all the studies listed? * All* these scientists were quacks?