Diet crap...I mean Diet Coke!

I hope this post will be the final wake up call for those of you that include soda in your diet. And I am talking about regular and diet soda!!

I dont even feel it is necessary for me to get into why drinking regular soda is bad for you, but I wanted to gear this post more towards the diet drinks. What a mixed signal this sends. If it has the word "diet" in the name and it is zero calories then whats the big deal!? The big deal is this...YOU ARE POISONING YOUR BODY. Did you know that the aspartame in those diet drinks turns into formaldehyde at the temperature your body is at! That cant be good!

I found this fascinating article – Artificially Sweetened Beverages Cause for Concern – recently published by David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, a Harvard professor and Founding Director of the Optimal Weight for Life (OWL) clinic at Children’s Hospital. He makes three important points, especially in the context of artificially sweetened drinks:


1. Our body gets confused by artificial sweeteners – the dissociation between sweet taste and calorie intake may put the regulatory system that controls hunger and body weight out of sync, thus sabotaging weight loss plans. A study on rodents showed that those fed saccharin actually gained weight compared to rodents fed sucrose.

2. We’re “Infantilizing” our taste sense – Artificial sweeteners are a hundredfold sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). By getting ourselves used to so much sweet, normal sweet flavors, of fruit for example, become bland and so do other healthful foods such as grains and vegetables, thus reducing our willingness to consume them and ultimately the quality of our diet.

3. Long term effects unclear – while there have been many studies on artificial sweeteners and disease such cancer, very few focused on long term weight gain. A seven year study, (San Antonio Heart Study), showed a relationship between diet drink consumption and obesity, but the causation is not clear. Consumption of artificial sweeteners is growing yearly. According to Ludwig,
If trends in consumption continue, the nation will, in effect, have embarked on a massive, uncontrolled, and inadvertent public health experiment. Although many synthetic chemicals have been added to the food supply in recent years, artificial sweeteners in beverages stand out in their ability to interact with evolutionarily ancient sensorineural pathways at remarkably high affinity.


Make the commitment and decision right now to cut this stuff out of your diet. I have a Boot camper who I gave this challenge to. He, in fact, was consuming over eight cans of diet soda a day. He cut it down to 1 a day and he will tell you that not only did he lose weight, but he feels like a new person. Here is a video clip which explains the dangers of aspertame a little further.