Sunday, Dec 2, 2012
Garza County News

Diet or Regular?

Published June 30, 2011 @ 10:57 p.m.

If you are thinking that the “diet” in your favorite diet soda will help you keep a trim figure, you might need to think again.  According to the results of recent studies at the Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, your diet soda could actually be increasing your appetite and waistline 

The study followed 474 people between the ages of 65 and 74 for almost a decade.  “Diet soft drink users, as a group, experienced 70 percent greater increases in waist circumference compared with non-users. Frequent users, who said they consumed two or more diet sodas a day, experienced waist circumference increases that were 500 percent greater than those of non-users.”  500 percent?  Seriously? 

Researchers believe that our taste buds tell us there is no difference between artificially sweetened foods (such as diet soda) and foods sweetened with natural sugar; however, our brains don’t register satisfaction with the fake stuff and crave more.  This, in turn, leads us to overeat.  If this is true, drinking diet soda actually makes you hungrier.

So, if you are a multiple diet soda per day person, how do you react to this information?  Ignore it?  After all, if you wait a few weeks, there is likely to be a report about the benefits of diet drinks.  Or, decide to wean yourself away from fake sugar sodas?  For now, I’m going to aim for the latter.  After a trip to the grocery store, we now have water, club soda and Topa Chio (none of which was on sale) in the fridge.  Sure was hard to pass up the “buy 3, get 1 free” offer on 12-pack Diet Cokes!  I’m just sayin’…   

(Visit www.uthscsa.edu for the complete findings from the studies referenced in this article.)

 
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