(The image Diet Mr. Pibb by Austing 128 via Wikimedia Commons)

by

Joseph

Diet soft drinks aren't very helpful in the battle of the bulge, new research suggests. According to research published in the American Journal of Public Health, people who drink diet sodas tended to pack on more pounds instead of shedding them. These findings suggest the public should look for healthier alternatives than diet sodas to lose weight.

Researchers led by Sara Bleich of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analyzed more than one decade of data collected from 23 965 adult men and women who participated in National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2010.

Bleich and her team were looking at national patterns in drinking of dietary soft drinks and the number of calories consumed by body weight status. In other words, the researchers wanted to know how much weight people gained as a result of drinking diet soda pop.

People Who Drink Diet Sodas Tend To Eat More Food

You would think that drinking diet soft drinks would help people lose weight. Afterall, common sense says that when you consume foods and drinks with less calories,  you're bound to lose weight. Well, it turns out that's not quite the case.

In fact, based on the NHANES data used in the study, Bleich and her colleagues learned that people who drank diet sodas didn't lose weight. Quite the opposite, they actually gained weight. Yes, that's right, folks who consumed diet soft drinks added body fat, instead of losing it.

The researchers noted that while 11% of average weight, 19% of overweight, and 22% of obese adults drink diet soft drinks, overweight and obese adults gained weight as a result of consuming such beverages.

Was something else going on to facilitate the weight gain? When Bleich et al looked at obese and overweight diet soft drink consumers they found these folks took in a lot of calories from solid foods. In fact when comparing overweight and obese adults who drank diet pop to those who drank sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs), it became obvious that drinking diet soda increased weight gain (overweight: 1965 kcal/day vs 1874 kcal/day; obese: 2058 kcal/day vs 1897 kcal/day).

The researchers concluded that "Overweight and obese adults drink more diet beverages than healthy-weight adults and consume significantly more solid-food calories and a comparable total calories than overweight and obese adults who drink SSBs."

The weight gain experienced by overweight and obese diet soft drink consumers begins to make sense if you stop to think about it.

People drink diet soda because these beverages are lower in calories. A lot of these folks will then fall into a bit of a mind trap: if they take in fewer calories from one source, it then means they don't have to be so cautious about the calories they would take in from a different source.

So they take this to be a green light to eat extra helpings of solid foods e.g. cheeseburgers, pizza, spaghetti, candy bars, ice cream, pie, doughnuts, etc.

Overweight and obese folks who drink sugar sweetened beverages don't tend to take in as many calories as folks who drink the diet sodas because of the very reason mentioned above.

In fact, when Bleich and her team compared the total caloric intake from sugar sweetened beverages to that of diet sodas, the sugared soft drinks brought in more calories (2351 kcal/day vs 2203 kcal/day).

Moreover, average weight adults actually took in a greater amount of calories as a result of drinking SSBs than from diet sodas (2302 kcal/day vs 2095 kcal/day).

In writing about the results of their analysis, Bleich and her team said that "Heavier US adults who drink diet beverages will need to reduce solid-food calorie consumption to lose weight."

So what does that tell us? It tells us that it's not the soft drinks in themselves that cause the weight gain, it's the other stuff that goes along with it.

Jesus warns us to always be on the alert lest we be deceived by the enemy. The adversary of humanity uses a variety of enticements to lead us astray. God wants us to lead holy lives and to take care of our bodies. God created us to need and receive enjoyment from food but not to overdo it. Nor should we fall into the deceptive mind trap that we can eat more food simply because we're consuming artificially sweetened beverages, all that does is make the body put on more fat weight.

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Article Reference

Bleich SN, Wolfson JA, Vine S, & Wang YC (2014). Diet-Beverage Consumption and Caloric Intake Among US Adults, Overall and by Body Weight. American journal of public health PMID: 24432876

"Drinking Diet Soda Makes You Fatter" copyright © 2014 Living Fit, Healthy and Happy_(SM). All Rights Reserved.

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