Diet Soda Bad News

As much as I love my self-imposed, five-day-a-week creative writing assignment, I’ve decided to take a few days off. While you’re all tripping out on tryptophan today, I give you this post from Thursday, October 2, 2008. Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers. Have an extra slice of that pumpkin cake for me!

About nineteen years ago I finally decided to deal with the empty calories being delivered into my body regularly in sixteen ounces doses. (Of course, back then I called it “pop” since I lived in the Midwest. But a drink by any other name would taste as sweet.)

It seemed like a good plan, but with one small problem: artificial sweeteners. If I’m allowed to quote a story about one man’s first experience with saccharine:

My first introduction to diet sodas happened a few years earlier, when I dropped a quarter into a vending machine, pressed the COKE button, and a pink can of something called TAB rolled out. I had no idea what it was (and it certainly wasn’t what I wanted) but it was a hot summer day, and I was thirsty. I popped the top, took a swig, and immediately spit it out. I couldn’t imagine what sort of people thought kerosene was a reasonable substitute for a cold beverage.

That was when I was a kid. By the time I was twenty-three, things hadn’t improved much. I still hated the taste. Of course, any right minded person would just give them up altogether, but no, I just had to drink this crap, so I kept at it and kept at it until eventually I liked it.

Fast forward to last year when the news broke, “Hear ye, hear ye! Diet Sodas Make You Fat!” What?! What the bleep are you talking about? Diet sodas are good. Diet sodas broke my empty calorie habit. It took years and years of training to finally like them—then this? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Well, here’s what happened. Apparently they put a box full of rats on a diet of saccharin and another box of rats on a diet of Super Sugar Crisp, and wouldn’t you know it, the low-calorie rats gained weight. The sugar-laden rats died, but at least they weren’t fat.

So here we go, yet another flipping paradox delivered to us from on high, just to further muddy the already turbulent waters of the diet world. Thanks. The idea (and I’ve talked about this once or twice in other posts, but I’m too lazy to look them up) is that the body tastes “sweet” but doesn’t get the actual calories it expects to receive with that taste. So it decides to make up for it by forcing you back to the kitchen a half hour later for a bowl of sugary cereal. Ergo, it’s not the artificial sweeteners, per se, causing the weight gain, but subsequent behavior down the road based on the body not getting what it was promised.

Does that mean you should quit drinking diet sodas right now? Not exactly. First, this article does a pretty good job of explaining the rat thing. Second, like all studies, they’re just talking general odds. Your mileage may (and probably will) vary. Lastly, you know yourself best. Do you eat more because you drink sodas? If so, stop it. If not, don’t worry about it.

Me, I’ll keep on drinking them. Not because they’re good (or bad) for me, but because I like them and they make me happy.