HOUSTON – You may think you're doing everything right opting for diet sodas instead of sugary ones. However, diet sodas may be to blame for weight gain because the sweeteners could be tricking your body.
Dr. John Higgins, a UT Health cardiologist, said they’re bad for you because diet sodas can still make your insulin spike (just like sugar). This is potentially dangerous for diabetics, and for everyone else it's similar to eating high sugar or starchy foods, even though there’s no sugar in the drinks. When your body makes too much insulin, it will stop burning fat until you lower your insulin levels.
“We know that both regular soda, which has lots of sugar in it and diet sodas, which while they don't have the same sugar in them, studies have actually shown that individuals who drink more diet sodas actually gain more weight because it has to do with the aftertaste and after effects of the diet soda. It gives them a temporary fill but it actually affects their insulin and other systems and they actually get hungrier later,” Higgins said.
Which means, no matter how many "no calorie, no sugar" labels there are, you could gain weight when drinking any kind of soda.
“The important thing is these are not healthy,” Higgins said.
He said one or two, infrequently, are harmless. However, he added, more than 400 mg of caffeine could begin to have negative side effects on your heart. Generally, that equals more than five 20-ounce sodas in one day, but Higgins’ recommendation is not to have these daily.
However, the American Beverage Association disagrees with Dr. Higgins.
In a statement to KPRC, ABA said, "Scientific evidence, including human clinical trials, has shown that beverages containing low- and no-calorie sweeteners can be a useful tool as part of an overall weight management plan. Low-calorie sweeteners have been proven safe by worldwide government safety authorities as well as hundreds of scientific studies."
