People have been led to think that drinking diet soda will help them shed the lbs. Shocking new research is proving otherwise. Doctors from University of Texas found that drinking a single can of diet soda on a daily basis will increase your risk of obesity 41% PER CAN! Drinking 2 cans a day increases your chance of obesity 82%! Drinking regular sugared soft drinks also increases your risk, but not by as much.

Unfortunately, many of the bottled “water” products are actually soft drinks in disguise. Many of the new flavored bottled water options on the store shelves have just as much artificial sweetener (or more) as soda. Don’t be tricked! “Water” is often a soda in disguise.

It may sound counterintuitive, but replacing the sugar in diet sodas and other foods with reduced- and no-calorie sweeteners may make weight control harder.

Rats in the Purdue University study that were fed regular feed and yogurt sweetened with no-calorie saccharin took in more total calories and gained more weight than rats fed regular feed and yogurt sweetened with sugar.

Researchers speculate that over time, reduced-calorie sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose condition the body to no longer associate sweetness with calories, thereby disrupting its ability to accurately assess caloric intake. This disruption may, in turn, lead to overeating, they note.

Another theory is that the sweetness of zero calorie sweeteners tricks the body into thinking that there is plenty of blood sugar floating around and needs to get rid of it (high blood sugar is something that the body does not want). So the pancreas releases insulin into the blood stream. If you remember, insulin is what allows sugar to be allowed into the cells and out of the blood stream. Insulin is sort of like the “key” to the lock that opens the door of the cells and lets sugar (glucose) in. When we have this insulin dump, it reduces the blood glucose levels which tells the body that it has too low blood sugar and needs to replenish the glucose by eating. It’s a vicious nasty cycle that puts our body on a blood sugar roller coaster.

“If this is the case in rats, there is little reason to think that humans don’t have this same response,” researcher Susan Swithers says. “It is possible that consuming these products interferes with one of the mechanisms that helps to regulate weight.”

Drinking diet sodas also increase your chances of developing high blood sugar (a factor in diabetes) 25% and lowers good cholesterol 32%.

“About 30% of obese people are binge eaters, and it may be true that for some eating artificially sweetened foods trigger binges,” researchers says.

To add insult to injury, another 7 year study on aspartame (NutraSweet) where rats were given the equivalent of 4-5 cans of diet pop each day developed leukemia, lymphoma, and other cancers much more than the rats not given aspartame in their diets.

The researchers determined that the carcinogenic effects may begin in humans at the equivalent of about 20mg. per day of aspartame. But according to the FDA, the current recommended safe limit is 50mg per kg. of body weight which is the equivalent of 20 bottles of soda for a 150lb adult.

That is 8 cups of sodas or 2 “Big Gulps” per day. That’s not that much for some people.

Many people are surprised to find out how many ounces of soda they are actually drinking throughout the day. I sometimes have people keep track.  Maybe 16 ounces at lunch with a refill, a couple of cans at work throughout the day, one with dinner and then another bottle at the game… it sneaks up on you and adds up.

Of course, critics have pointed out that these are animal studies and there has not been any conclusive evidence that artificial sweeteners cause cancer in humans. More research is needed.   (Because nobody uses rats in medical studies, right? )

If all that wasn’t enough, the urban legend about melting a nail by submerging it in soda seems to hold a grain of truth. In laboratory studies, researches found that regular cola soda will eat 5.9% of a tooth’s enamel off in 48 hours. They blame it on the phosphoric acid manufacturers use to give cola its zip. They suggest using a straw to help the caustic liquid bypass your teeth.

So what is the moral of the story? I’ll leave that to you to decide…