I am ignorant in this topic, but why do americans seem to drink soda( pop as they call in cinema) excessively ? I live in India and flavoured soda is considered luxury item here. We just drink water with everything, unless its a festive occasion or with alcohol. What makes soda so attractive that US customers consumes it so heavily. The only points I can think of is the cheap price and concentrated sugar which is found to be addictive.
everyone points to a "hunger response" or something similar with non nutritive sweeteners and then these effects don't materialize in actual outcomes: <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13020" rel="nofollow">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13020</a><p>"Grouping by nature of comparator revealed that NNS vs placebo/no intervention and NNS vs water produced no effect."<p>so like, there's a food craving, and then ???? you don't gain weight. who cares! maybe you eat more in the next meal, and then it's not clear this persists into a real caloric surplus.
I was hooked on Pepsi Max in the early 2000s. A high pressure tech support role at an antivirus vendor was the perfect environment for me to blast through a 2 litre bottle on a typical work day. That habit almost broke me physically, ended up binging and had a mini nervous breakdown within 2 years. Not recommended.
Tricking your body into thinking you ate sweet things does not sound like a winning strategy in the long run.<p>I heard a speculation recently from a science vlogger, I think he was citing a paper, but as a side comment to the fact that humans have taste buds elsewhere in our bodies, that it's possible that when the artificial sweetener is in your intestines, your body makes an effort to absorb the 'sugars' that it senses, but in the process ends up absorbing some of the ambient sugar in your GI tract that otherwise would have not been captured, or used by gut microbes, throwing the whole balance off in the process. So in effect sugar free foods still have a caloric cost from a diet perspective.<p>Then there's sugar alcohols, which are edible by bad gut microbes but not by you.
The key is to only drink it during a meal, and not outside of meals perhaps then.<p>The amount and kinds of artificial sweeteners in each drink could well be reduced and varied by manufacturers, but time and time again they choose not to, but if you look at the alternatives of water every time or drinks that are also very high in sugar on the inverse, diet drinks are a blessing for many people.
I had to go completely cold turkey for months before I was able to break away from diet soda.<p>My #1 tip: Do not have it in the house. If it's there, your body will find its way to it and will perpetuate the habit, the addiction, the cravings.
Just want to add this here, artificial sweeteners are a blessing, specially for people with slower metabolisms. Food in the US is loaded with sugars, its nice to have a way to minimize consumption while satisfying cravings. You cannot argue that being obese is better than consuming artificial sweeteners. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy</a>
It has been known for a while that people who switch from regular soda to diet soda (and make no other changes) do not lose weight.
This is a crazy result given the calorie difference, so there must be something going on.<p>Somehow the body is reacting badly to the dissappoinment of not getting all the promised calories that it tasted. Either triggering cravings that drive people to make up the deficit elsewhere or causing the digestive system to change gear in some way.
It is now known that there are sweetness receptors in the gut, so this flow of what the body thinks is undigested sugar may make things go haywire. Anyway, it's not my field, but I find it interesting.
I drank soda throughout my childhood and really ramped up how much I drank when I got into college and finally had a bit of disposable income. At a certain point I was easily drinking a gallon per day. The thing that finally got me to stop was that I started getting throat ulcers every time I drank it. I'd been getting them for years up to that point, but much more sporadically. Once I stopped drinking soda, no more throat ulcers. When I need a carbonation fix I go for seltzer water now.
I don’t doubt that diet soda is terrible for you. I would however like to point out that the particular study cited had 74 participants. This seems a bit low but to me, though I realize it may not be the only study showing some similar effects. I’d love to see a larger study.
> The "diet" in diet drinks may be a false promise for some soda lovers.<p>Now that's a surprise! Seriously - okay if you like the aspartame taste of your diet coke, go ahead. But if you actually think diet coke is "healthy" in any meaningful way - then I'm sorry, nobody can help you!
If you want to cut sugar, but want something sweet, stay away from sucralose, splenda, aspartame.<p>Some good alternatives are stevia, monkfruit, and the sugar alcohols (xylitol, erythritol, etc). I don't especially like the taste of stevia, but stevia + monkfruit blends aren't so bad.
Not so much the food, but I am heavily addicted to Coke Zero. I tried on Monday to quit it after a 2 week focus to prepare and I failed within 2 hours. I have previously quit nicotine for example so it's blown my mind why I can't handle stopping this simple drink.
This article is nothing new, we've known this. Body sees sweet thing, releases insulin in anticipation, but there's no calories to process. And now you've just increased your insulin resistance.