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Diet soda fizzles in health study

Provided by: Sun Media
Written by: DR. RICHARD BELIVEAU
Oct. 8, 2007

Diet soft drinks appeared on the market some 25 years ago and were seen as an alternative to soft drinks loaded with sugar and calories.

But are they really a good alternative?

The answer seems to be no.

Regular soft drinks contain an astronomical amount of sugar -- about nine teaspoonfuls (150 calories) per 355 ml can.

It's believed these soft drinks play a major role in the current obesity epidemic, especially in youths.

From 1977 to 1997 the popularity of soft drinks increased more than 100% among children and teens, with nearly three youths out of four consuming them every day.

For some, soft drinks account for up to 10% of their daily calorie intake.

That's an incredibly large amount when you consider soft drinks provide absolutely no nourishment to the body. Worse still, they tend to replace healthier drinks like milk or pure fruit juices.

In theory at least, replacing regular soft drinks with diet soft drinks should lead to a lower calorie intake and to less damaging health consequences like diabetes and hypertension. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

According to a study published last July in Circulation, a publication of the American Heart Association, a team led by Dr. Ramachandran Vasan set out to understand the role of soft drinks (regular and diet) in various metabolic disorders.

There are five possibilities which can appear simultaneously:

- Excessive weight (risk of obesity).

- High insulin level (risk of diabetes).

- High counts of triglycerides (risk of cardiovascular disease).

- Low counts of good cholesterol (risk of cardiovascular disease).

- High blood pressure (hypertension).

Dr. Vasan's team found that for people who drank a can or more of soft drinks every day, the risk of developing a metabolic disorder was up 45% compared with those who didn't consume any at all.

These conclusions didn't come as a surprise to researchers. They were expected, considering the high sugar content of regular soft drinks.

What surprised them was that diet soft drinks didn't seem to improve the situation.

In other words, soft drinks were a health risk, with or without sugar.

Changing the kind of soft drink you swallowed didn't help much.

You needed to change your lifestyle and that meant adopting new and better eating habits.

Our body, and our brain in particular, require considerable amounts of sugar to function properly.

In nature, sugar, which is found mostly in fruits, is hard to come by. We have developed a sweet tooth over time.

But nature never prepared us for the vast quantities of sugar available today, and the result is obesity and other health problems.

Therefore, we need to hold back our natural craving for sugar.

Some studies indicate regular consumption of diet soft drinks stimulates our appetite and can lead to an increase in body weight.

In short, the only way to reduce health risks brought on by sugar is to 'put a cap' on our sweet tooth and reduce our overall desire for the sweet stuff. And there is one kind of diet drink that can do that every time: Water.

DR. RICHARD BELIVEAU HOLDS THE CHAIR IN THE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF CANCER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEBEC AT MONTREAL, WHERE HE IS A BIOCHEMISTRY PROFESSOR.

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