Are Diet Sodas Really a Diet Food?

"I'll have a diet soda with my French fries and double bacon cheeseburger. Oh! And one of those apple things," he added, pointing to a pastry. The guy giving the order then looked at me as I waited my turn to order coffee at the highway restaurant rest stop. "Might as well save some calories, " he laughed as he patted his prominent abdomen. I nodded to him as I asked for my coffee to be sweetened with a packet of the blue non-calorie sweetener. We all seem to do it: eat a high-calorie meal but drink a no-calorie beverage sweetened with something artificial, munch on a bag of potato chips along with a diet soda, dig into an obscenely rich dessert but add a non-calorie sweetener rather than sugar to our coffee or tea, and drink alcoholic beverages without concern for their calories but "freak out" if we discover we are drinking real soda, rather than the diet stuff. But do we really think of our coffee sweetened with an artificial sweetener as diet coffee? If we add diet quinine water to a gin and tonic, is the drink now a diet drink? Is artificially-sweetened bottled cranberry juice or flavored iced tea a diet beverage? Do hard candies sweetened with a sugar substitute qualify as diet candies? A petition just filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by a California-based group, U.S. Right to Know, wants companies to stop using the word "diet" on products that use artificial sweeteners. The petition states that: "Consumers are using products -- Diet Coke and Diet ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news