They wouldn’t be branded diet otherwise, woulld they?
Sadly, it’s not as simple as that.
Diet drinks are legally allowed to be labelled as diet drinks because they’re usually low in calories.
The normal sugar or corn syrup that would be be used to sweeten the drinks – and which definitely pile on the calories – have been replaced with artificial sweeteners which have close to zero calories but near enough all the sweetness.
Which sounds almost too good to be true.
And which is why so many people buy diet drinks to help stop them drinking so many calories.
After all, regular soft drinks are packed with sugar.
We’d be horrified if we saw someone adding 7 teaspoons of sugar to their tea or coffee.
But that’s what’s in a regular UK can of Coca Cola.
And that’s one of the lower sugar soft drinks – Old Jamaica ginger beer has almost double the amount at 13 teaspoons in a 330ml (11 ounce) can. Yikes!
Which means a lot of people turn to the diet versions of soft drinks to avoid drinking so many calories.
At first glance, the idea makes sense.
After all, consuming less calories should make you slimmer, not fatter.
The trouble is, our bodies haven’t had chance to adapt themselves to these new fangled sweeteners.
Our bodies are used to regular sweeteners – mostly fruit sugars.
So the internal reaction is based on the (incorrect) assumption that we’re consuming something sweet.
After all, it tastes sweet.
Our bodies have been consuming sweet things as long for as we’ve found them growing.
So if it tastes sweet, it must be sugar based.
Simple logic.
Flawed logic as well – but our bodies don’t know that and genetically won’t know that for thousands of years.
So we’re doomed to work with what we’ve got.
Which is a sugar response when we drink something sweet.
Independent studies are hard to find – there are too many vested interests for that not to be the case.
And studies that only focus on one food are almost impossible to find.
After all, even if it was medically safe to do so, none of us are likely to consume only one food for long enough for a study to find out whether we gained or lost weight consuming it.
Most people consume diet drinks alongside other things – crisps/chips, chocolate bars, meals, popcorn, etc.
It’s by no means an easy feat to isolate the effect of just one of the things we consume in any given day.
So real studies are as rare as hens teeth.
Wikipedia links off to a handful of these studies.
One performed at the Texas Health Science Center suggested there was a correlation between diet soda and weight gain.
Correlation basically means “there’s a good chance something is linked but we’re not sure quite what and we can’t really prove it”. And if you’re a mathematician, apologies for that explanation.
It’s one of many terms in maths that means “best guess”.
Another test they quote, from the Framingham Heart Study, didn’t find much difference in weight gain between regular soda drinkers and diet soda drinkers.
But it found it hard to get much deeper into the problem because the people who drank diet soda were generally less healthy eaters than the ones who drank regular soda (that should give you a big clue about diets in general).
It also found that people who drank diet sodas were more than likely to get sugar cravings.
Which means that even if the diet drinks didn’t make them fatter, the added pounds from the extra sugar they consumed due to their cravings probably did.
A more recent study has found that diet soda drinkers consume more calories overall.
Part of this was due to a less healthy diet.
And part was due to the diet sodas messing up our body’s self calibration system and disrupting our control over our appetite.
The next time you reach out for a diet soft drink, give yourself time to think and ask yourself whether you’d be better with a healthier option.
That healthier option could be water (always a good option!).
Or it could be a full-sugar soda – you’ll probably drink less, you may even feel slightly guilty when drinking it.
And you definitely should ask yourself if any normal, sane. person would willingly add between 7 and 13 teaspoons of sugar to a can that hold just 330ml.
One more thing.
Don’t just swap to fruit juice instead of soda.
That’s got a high concentration of naturally occurring sugar in it.
Diet drinks are legally allowed to be labelled as diet drinks because they’re usually low in calories.
