Turns Out Diet Soda Appears To Be The Lesser Of Two Evils

If you’re trying to kick sugary sodas, some scientists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both recommend swapping them out with a diet soda. After all, the sugar from soda is strongly linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes and dental cavities, while diet soda has no sugar in it at all. But one strange thing about diet soda is that the people who drink it are actually more likely to have larger waist sizes (a measure of belly fat) than those who drink regular soda. Diet soda drinkers are also more likely to have type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome than people who didn’t drink diet soda at all. At this point, you might suspect that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda are causing drinkers to gain more weight, but these studies don’t demonstrate cause. Instead, they merely show an association between diet soda and poor health that needs further research. Paul Jacques, director of the Nutritional Epidemiology Program at Tufts University, published a study in 2015 comparing the effects of regular soda and diet soda on fatty liver disease risk (a condition in which fat accumulates in the liver and can cause scarring and inflammation). He found that while regular soda consumption increases one’s risk of the disease, especially in overweight and obese people, diet soda doesn’t. However, he hesitated to recommend diet soda as a better alternative to regular soda."We know sugar-sweetened beverages are unhealthy but we don't ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news