Tag Archive for: diet soda

The Actual Effects of Sucralose

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Continuing the examination of the study on diet drinks and appetite, let’s get into the details of the study. The MRI portion of the study is difficult to interpret for the layperson. The researchers seemed to think that based on the brain response, obese women would be more susceptible to overeating after consuming a drink with sucralose than sucrose. Did they eat more? More important, did their blood values vary abnormally?

Blood Response to Sucralose

To me, the most significant finding was that there were no abnormal physical responses to sucralose. A prior study suggested that sucralose raises blood insulin in anticipation of sugar following a drink sweetened with artificial sweeteners, but that didn’t happen in this study. There were no differences in blood sugar, insulin, glucagon-like peptide-1, or other measures in response to sucralose that differed from drinking water (the placebo). That in and of itself is a significant finding.

Eating Response to Sucralose

The average buffet intake two hours after consuming the drinks was about 900 calories regardless of whether the subjects had the drinks with sucrose, sucralose, or plain water.

It should be noted that the food intake varied by +/- 450 calories. When analyzed by weight class and gender, obese women ate about 100 calories more after the sucralose drink, but that’s still fewer calories than if they’d consumed a 300-calorie sugar drink. The subjects served as their own controls, meaning they were tested under each drink condition.

In this case, seeing the raw data for every subject might have helped. The subjects were tested in random order but by the third exposure to the same buffet items, they might have decided to eat more or less of their favorite snack foods.

More

The NPR science writer chose the title “Diet soda may prompt food cravings, especially in women and people with obesity.” In a television courtroom drama, they’d call that “assuming facts not in evidence.” Here’s why that title was particularly misleading: there was no diet soda used in this study. The drinks weren’t soda and they weren’t carbonated—they were more like Kool-Aid. It’s tempting to extend the idea to diet soda, but that wouldn’t take into account the effect of carbonation.

There was also no measure of food cravings. People were offered food and they ate it or they didn’t, so the headline was doubly misleading.

The Bottom Line

The study did contribute to the knowledge about artificial sweeteners, especially as they impact blood sugar and insulin. If you use sucralose, there’s no reason to stop. If you don’t, you have to decide for yourself whether you want to use it or not. Artificial sweeteners can be part of a weight loss effort, but the only way they help is if you don’t eat more to make up for the calories you’re not getting when using them. “I’m getting a diet soda, so I’ll get the large fries”—if that’s how you’re thinking, you’re missing the whole point of diet drinks. If you can maintain or decrease your caloric intake of all other foods and drinks but substitute sucralose for sugar, then you’ll be ahead of the game.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References:
1. Allison Aubrey YOUR HEALTH NPR. Diet soda may prompt food cravings, especially in women and people with obesity. October 7, 2021.
2. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(9): doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.26313

Does Diet Soda Increase Appetite?

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“Diet soda may prompt food cravings.” If you regularly drink diet soda with non-nutritive sweeteners such as sucralose, that headline would give you pause. Could drinking drinks with artificial sweeteners cause you to compensate later for being cheated out of calories? That’s what researchers attempted to find out in a very complex study conducted at the University of Southern California.

When I say complex, here’s what I mean. The researchers used an MRI to perform brain scans in response to photographs of different types of foods and non-foods. The 74 subjects were all tested under three conditions: after drinking 300 mL (1.25 cup) of water, 75 grams of sucrose (sugar) mixed in 300 mL water, or 300 mL of a sucralose drink matched for sweetness to the sucrose drink. Blood was tested before and after drinking the fluid at regular intervals up to two hours afterward. Then the subjects were allowed to eat as much as they wanted at a snack buffet with high-fat, high-sugar choices as well as healthy choices.

The researchers found differences in the way men and women responded to the drinks as well as the way normal, overweight, and obese subjects responded, both in the brain scans and in how much they ate at the buffet: obese women responded by eating more at the snack buffet than men or other weight classifications.

Is it time to stop drinking diet soda? A little more information from the study would be helpful before you clean out the fridge and go buy a case of Coke.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References:
1. Allison Aubrey YOUR HEALTH NPR. Diet soda may prompt food cravings, especially in women and people with obesity. October 7, 2021.
2. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(9): doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.26313

Diet Soda and Your Waistline: The Bottom Line

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Let’s finish up our look at the recently published paper on diet soda and waist circumference (1). Should you stop drinking that diet soda or energy drink? You decide after you read this.

It’s obvious the researchers came in with a point of view: diet soda makes people fat. They had published or presented at least two other papers over the years that said the same thing using some of the same data. I can overlook that.

What is more difficult for me to accept is that the researchers believe this study means something in the real world . . .

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Diet Soda and Your Waistline

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We’re continuing our look at the role that diet soda may be playing in increasing your waistline especially over 65. While the study made for sensational headlines, was the attention deserved? In my opinion, no.

The premise of the paper is that as waist circumference increases, so does the risk of cardiometabolic disease: diseases associated with visceral fat (1). That would include heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and others. Visceral fat seems to be more metabolically active (or in simpler terms, the fat under the muscle and around the organs seems to be hungrier) and thus contributes . . .

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Is Diet Soda Making You Fat?

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A week or so ago we were greeted with headlines that said that diet soda will make you fatter if you’re over 65 (1). If that doesn’t make you curious just about nothing will, especially if you’re carrying extra weight and drink diet soft drinks. Let’s see what the study was all about.

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center have been conducting a multiethnic study called the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging or SALSA for short; sometimes I think more effort goes into creating the name than designing the study. When the . . .

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