Sylvain sent me this link today that basically concluded that one or more cans of diet soda can lead to health risks such as the metabolic syndrome
“We found that one or more sodas per day increases your risk of new-onset metabolic syndrome by about 45 per cent, and it did not seem to matter if it was regular or diet,” Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, senior investigator for the Framingham Heart Study, said Monday from Boston.
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The study included nearly 9,000 observations of middle-aged men and women over four years at three different times. The study looked at how many 355-millilitre cans of cola or other soft drinks a participant consumed each day.
The researchers found that compared to those who drank less than one can per day, subjects who downed one or more soft drinks daily had a:
- 31 per cent greater risk of becoming obese (with a body mass index of 30 or more
- 30 per cent increased risk of adding on belly fat.
- 25 per cent higher risk of developing high blood triglycerides or high blood sugar.
- 32 per cent higher risk of having low HDL levels.
Those are all real bad. The researchers state at the end that they aren’t really sure why, but I’ve read enough over the last few years to have an idea why.
Last year I read a pretty interesting study about the effects of caffeine on the body. The researchers started with pop, and eventually went to caffeine supplements. What they found is that caffeine, in general, causes the body to over-react with insulin. That is, for the same amount of food, the caffeinated person will release far more insulin into their blood than the non-caffeinated person. Insulin, while vital to survival, hardens arteries, and makes it hard to lose weight (since glucagon, the hormone responsible for breaking down fat, will go low in response to the high insulin levels). Also, the current theory is that perpetually high levels on insulin can eventually lead to type-2 diabetes.
That being said, the researchers also noted that this caffeine effect did not seem to happen with coffee. For whatever reason, there is something in coffee that seems to negate the effect of the caffeine on the body.
So, while everyone points to sugar and high fat as the leading causes of obesity in North America (and for sure, they have contributed), there’s growing evidence (at least in my mind) that caffeine (which you can also look as as an almost necessary side-effect of the North America lifestyle) has played a pivotal role. I’ll post some links to studies tonight when I have more time.
Links of interest:
- America’s Caffeine Addiction Keeps Growing
- Glucose homeostasis remains altered by acute caffeine ingestion following 2 weeks of daily caffeine consumption in previously non-caffeine-consuming males.
- Comparison of Caffeinated Coffee with non-Caffeinated Coffee
- This is the original study I read a while ago — Caffeine ingestion is associated with reductions in glucose uptake independent of obesity and type 2 diabetes before and after exercise training.
[…] The researchers state at the end that they aren’t really sure why, … article continues at Duane Storey brought to you by diabetes.medtrials.info and […]
Well, I think I can vouch for that. When I finished high school i was the typical 90 pound weakling. Very skinny. I got a job in a restaurant and drank alot of diet coke, gaining significant weight in a year or two. I decided to knock that off in my early 20’s, and got pretty aggressive in the gym. I did lose most of the fat and gained a substantial amount of muscle mass till I got injured and just kinda lost interest about 6 years in. But I never quit the diet coke. I quit the gym, and even tho i was conscious of my calorie intake and reducing it, I ballooned. You know what I’m built like now. For the majority of my adult life Diet Coke was the main staple drink for me. I never drank a huge amount, but I drank it all the time. A few years ago I started getting real bad reflux. Went to the doctor and a bunch of things were off: My LDL was very low, my belly was fat and etc etc. About the only above symptom I’ve not had was the high blood sugar. So anyways, I got put on a diet to reduce other cholesterol and fix the ldl…I quit diet coke and within about a week the reflux was gone. Eventually I got back into the pop, and the reflux came back. More disturbing was that although I was getting substantially more excercise and eating substantially less fat, I was still gaining weight. So a few months ago I quit it again, only this time I decided to not banish it completely but allow myself the occasional one. It’s alot easier on the willpower, btw, to allow yourself the occasional cheat and be ok with it. Since I quit my daily diet cokes (I still have the odd one) and Fresca’s (again…the occasional one) I’ve noticed a few things. First, I’ve dropped some weight. I have a tankload to go. But I do notice that my percentage body fat is also coming down. Secondly, I have more energy. Third, and I dunno if this was related, but I’ve been able to effectively quit smoking, a monkey that’s been on my back for the better part of 2 decades. And fourth, my last cholesterol check showed my ldl levels back up (yay) and the bad cholesterol back down (double yay).
Not too long ago I read in the paper where researchers spent ludicrous amounts of money and still couldn’t figure out why there’s been an increase in esophagal cancer over the past 20 years… which made me chuckle. If they want to give me the money I’ll let them know…it’s the pop. The problem is pop tastes good. And I think there’s some hormone in aspartame that’s gives some kind of high giving rise to a minor addiction, perhaps? You know how many dead Diet Coke soldiers there are in our office on any given day…
Anyways, I never did the research you did; I just have my own example to go by. And, from my own experience, I’m not so quick to blame it on caffeine, cuz I still get that from other places that don’t necessarily hurt as much. I also didn’t lose any weight at all when I quit caffeine for a while and still drank non caffeinated sodas. I do know that pop (all pop…cola, caffeine free stuff like 7up or Sprite, sugar free stuff like fresca) is bad bad bad and I don’t need to see a study to realize that it’s a major cause of north american obesity.
This could be very, very bad. But at the same time, it’s important to find balance with what you consume as with everything in life. Sure I have a can of Diet Pepsi pretty much every single day – two cans on bad days – but I also eat right, drink a LOT of water, walk great distances each day and stay quite active. I’m not going to let this deter me, that’s for sure!
Diet Peps drinkers unite, Duane!
Interesting! One thing that is not mentioned is the fact that people who choose to drink a lot of pop are often the same ones who usually wouldn’t drink plain old water if their life depended on it. Metabolism pretty much slows to a snails pace without water, making weight gain ultra easy. Most people I know don’t drink nearly enough of the stuff. I aim for 2-3 liters a day, and I won’t allow myself to drink anything else until my water quota is reached for the day. (the exception being the cup of coffee that kicks me into gear in the morning)
Interesting to note also is the fact that caffeine is in many weight loss supplements on the market….then again, we all know how well those work.
Hmm, I’m not sure I buy that fact.. Granted, water is healthier for you, but diet soda is just water with aspartame, some acid and caffeine. So you’re still getting plenty of water. And caffeine, while technically a diuretic (it leeches water from the body), is completely offset by the water that goes into the body by having something with it in (that is, the water that it leeches is pretty small compared to the 355ml of water you are adding in a can).
“diet soda is just water with aspartame, some acid and caffeine”
I’m not sure I buy THAT fact! Water your houseplants or any other living thing with diet soda instead of water and watch what happens! lol
I will add that I drank and still drink a ton of water throughout… I generally aim for 1.5 liters per day. I would go out on a limb and suggest, Keira Anne, that you’re one pop a day WILL catch up to you. It did me, and 1 a day was about what I drank (sometimes 2, sometimes more, sometimes none). If you get enough excercise and good eating to keep the metabolism up, the acid will still get you eventually. Plus, as we get older our metabolism does slow; I will be 40 later this year, and over the past 3 or 4 years i’ve seen some big changes in the way my body assimilates it’s various fuels. I’ve been forced to alter my diet to just to maintain; to improve is requiring some pretty big changes and pretty tight discipline. Which sucks, cuz I have so little of that…
Of course, all of it does have certain dependance on genetics and other life factors…my 20 years of smoking probably hasn’t helped me at all (and it will take a good couple of years just to start erasing the long term effects of that), nor the couple years on the road living on fast food and water and alcohol. Being adopted I don’t know my family history, but I’m guessing there is some prediliction to weight gain in early middle age…
“diet soda is just water with aspartame, some acid and caffeineâ€
Read the ingredients on the can 😛
I’m not saying it’s good for you, I’m just saying if you’re saying you can’t lose weight because you don’t get enough water, I don’t agree.. Water is just H20, and a can of pop has 355ml of that in it. Granted it has other crap in it, but once the water hits your stomach, it’s going to get even more crap in it.
Also, here is a link to someone talking about a school project where they used diet pop on plants:
Well I’ll be damned! The link doesn’t work though.
I fixed the link.
Now I totally want to try that experiment. But we’ll have to agree to disagree about drinking water. I’m a firm believer in drinking it as is. THEN I’ll have my diet coke.
🙂
Just thought I’d put in my 2 cents. First, although I generally don’t like to comments on studies that I have only read about in the news without having read the original research paper (as more often than not, when I do check the original, the reporter has screwed up something important about the study), I will point out that this study was looking at correlations and correlations are do not prove causation. So when they say that subjects who drank one or more can of pop per day “had a greater risk” of obesity/low HDL, etc., it’s misleading, because that sounds like they’ve shown that the pop *caused* the greater risk, which simply isn’t true. They showed that there is an *association* between the two things and that doesn’t mean one caused the other. It’s possible that something else is causing the association (e.g., maybe people who drink pop tend to exercise less/eat more poorly and that is what is increasing the increased risk… until someone does the appropriate studies, we can’t say anything conclusive about causation).
As for your caffeine hypothesis, I think it’s interesting (as an aside, I know one of the authors on those studies, as I did my Masters in Nutrition at Guelph… he was one of my references for my PhD program application). The news report doesn’t indicate whether the pop was caffeinated or not (perhaps the original research paper looked at this).
Regarding Clay’s story, I think it’s hard to tell just what is causing what because you have so many things going on (changing dietary patterns, changing exercise patterns, smoking)… you can’t really conclude that diet pop is causing all the health issues you describe, because too many things are changing to really pinpoint anything… and increasing age does result in decreasing metabolic rate, so you do have to eat less and/or exercise more to avoid gaining weight as you get older.
There’s definitely not any hormones in aspartame (believe it or not, aspartame is a very simple chemical, much smaller and simpler than a hormone) – but caffeine is well known to be addictive, so I don’t think you need to hypothesize an addictiveness to aspartame to understand all those “dead Diet Coke soldiers” in your office.
And one final comment, I got a good laugh when I read the article and saw non-diet pop referred to as “naturally sweetened soft drinks.” “Naturally sweetened”? I hate to break it to this reporter, but there is nothing “naturally” about the copious amounts of added sugar & high fructose syrup used to sweetened pop!
It’s true they don’t prove causation, but the whole medical research community is rather timid if you ask me. I’ve seen far too many research papers that really point to something bigger, even though the authors become chickenshit and say “we can’t make any conclusions, and thus more research is needed.” I’ve been reading about low-carb diets for about 5 years now, and every study acts like they are the first and that tons more research needs to be done on the same things.. why? Won’t somebody have the balls to stand up and say what it all means?
That’s why Michael J. Fox got sick and tired of the Parkinson’s research. He started his own group to try and identify areas that held promise, and presuade researchers to go down those paths instead of simply doing the same studies over and over again.
You’re right, it doesn’t prove causation, but it does warrant more aggressive studies in the area. Also, I’ve posted links to a few other abstracts that talk about caffeine’s negative influcence on the body, and you can easily find more on pubmed. While those studies don’t prove that the pop they consumed had those effects, I think the two together (and others in the same area) are enough to warrant people thinking twice about them. Nothing in science is absolute unfortunately.
Aspartame may be simple, but many molecules that are simple have drastic effects on the body, one of which is everyone’s friend — ethanol. A well known by-product of asapartame decomposition is formaldehyde, which is also that fun stuff that the frogs used to soak in back in biology class. So while simple, it does nasty things inside of you.
This whole area is a touchy subject for me because I’ve met so many nutritionists in my time that, although well intentioned, are clearly wrong and outdated by about 10 years. The caloric theory is dead in my mind. If people want to continue supporting it, they are welcome to, but I’ve read enough studies on carefully controller hypocaloric diets where the weight loss was completely dependent on macronutrient composition. And I think it’s embarrasing how much time and resources people spend on trying to invalidate those studies (considering how many of them there are). Ockham’s razor is generally right in my mind — the simplist solution is usually the correct one.. Which is more probable — that all those research papers are wrong, or that our current understanding of nutrition and food is not correct?
I once saw a nutrtionist years ago he said I was eating too much and that’s why I was gaining weight.. So I brought in a detailed food log and suddenly it’s “oh, you’re clearly eating too little, that’s why you’re gaining weight.” Either that, or they call into question your ability to keep a food log. I wrote a scathing letter to Canada Health years ago pointing out that refined carbs should not be at the base of any pyramid that promotes healty eating. I received a reply a few weeks later saying they were revising it, but that carbs would still be at the bottom.
One of the most active research communities in the area of food and nutrition, as you well know, is at Harvard, and years ago they came to the conclusion that the food guide adopted by most countries not only didn’t promote good health, but in many people, especially those that are hyperinsulinemic, it actually can deteriorate their health. You can read about the new food pryamid they advocate here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/pyramids.html
I also recommend everyone read this article, even if you don’t agree with any of it, because I think it raises awareness on alot of the fallacies with the current state of food and nutrition.
Also, I will try to include the actual full text from the studies from now on for articles like this is it will help promote discussion.
Also, this is fairly informative study on caffeine and insulin: here.
to Beth: When I said hormone, perhaps it was the incorrect word…I was speaking specifically of Phenylalanine, which I (pehaps incorrectly) considered a hormone. It’s in aspartame, and we do know it messes up serotonin production. I believe I read somewhere once that it gives a brief increase in brain activity, a bit of an intellect high if you will, which is why people in brain heavy jobs drink so much diet coke/ diet pepsi. Of course, I have no links, and that’s all hearsay that could be completely out to lunch. It does make sense experientially though. If this messes up serotonin production, could the hypothesis then also be made that drinking aspartame rich drinks would lead to depression and various personality disorders?
I have the same exact problem. I have been drinking a ridiculous amount of diet pops, like 4-8 a day for years. I run a lot and diet and never lose weight. I will lose a little but it will stop. I am extremely frustrated. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it’s the Diet Coke.
So, 3 days ago, after reading everything I could find on the internet, I stopped drinking all Diet sodas and and Slim Fast (also has sweetener). I noticed an immediate difference in energy and an initial drop in weight. I can’t yet conclude that it was the diet pops that were keeping my weight stagnant, but I don’t know what else it could be.
You’re right, it doesn’t prove causation, but it does warrant more aggressive studies in the area.
Yup, in my opinion, that is sort of the point of these epidemiological studies – you look for patterns in populations that suggest further studies that can be done to establish causation. I know it’s frustrating that every scientific paper says, “further studies are needed” in the discussion section, but this really is how science works – no one study can answer all our questions, and one study, while answering one (or a few) question(s), raises a dozen more questions to explore.
Aspartame may be simple, but many molecules that are simple have drastic effects on the body, one of which is everyone’s friend — ethanol. A well known by-product of asapartame decomposition is formaldehyde, which is also that fun stuff that the frogs used to soak in back in biology class. So while simple, it does nasty things inside of you.
I didn’t mean it to sound like I was saying that simple molecules can’t have drastic effects. I was merely pointing out that that aspartame is not a hormone. As for the formaldehyde that results from the metabolism of aspartame – you actually get six times as much formaldehyde from a glass of tomato juice than you do from a glass of diet pop. Your body breaks down this formaldehyde to carbon dioxide.
I once saw a nutrtionist years ago he said I was eating too much and that’s why I was gaining weight.. So I brought in a detailed food log and suddenly it’s “oh, you’re clearly eating too little, that’s why you’re gaining weight.â€
That’s pretty funny. Out of curiosity, was this nutritionist a registered dietitian (RD)? The title “nutritionist” is not a regulated one, so anyone can call themselves a “nutritionist” (even someone who has never read a scientific paper in their life!), whereas to be a “registered dietitian” you actually have to go through a university education in dietetics, an internship to get practical experience in the field and you have to keep yourself up to date to maintain your certification. I’m not saying that all dietitians are always right, but at least you know what the educational background of a dietitian is, whereas anybody can call themselves a nutrition. And I’m curious how many people see “nutritionists” as opposed to “dietitians.”
When I said hormone, perhaps it was the incorrect word…I was speaking specifically of Phenylalanine, which I (pehaps incorrectly) considered a hormone. It’s in aspartame, and we do know it messes up serotonin production.
Phenylalanine, an amino acid, is a component of aspartame; as with anything, if you get excessive amounts of phenylalanine, there could be problems. But the amount of phenylalanine that you get from aspartame is so small that there is no danger of getting excessive amounts of it.
And since I’ve been harping on sources of info, I thought I should provide the source of mine – Source: Whitney & Rolfes. (2005) Understanding Nutrition. 10th edition. Thomson Wadsworth: Belmont, CA.