Can artificial sweeteners cause you to gain weight?

Question

My friend told me that drinking 3 to 4 liters of diet colas is worse for my health than drinking sugared soda drinks. She said it probably caused me to gain weight.

Answer 1

Your friend is right! it is WORSE for your health than drinking sugared sodas, even though sodas in general are horrible for your health! And surprisingly, yes, you can gain weight (which is why you always see fat people drinking diet soda & not lose a pound - granted, they're drinking that & still eating horribly). Unfortunately, consuming foods that contain artificially or naturally sweetened substances can cause serious distortions in your biochemistry.

A study revealed that eating artificially sweetened foods and drinking sweetened beverages might hinder your body's ability to estimate calorie intake, thus boosting your inclination to overindulge.

Also, artificial sweeteners, being chemicals, can cause a slew of diseases.

You can find a lot of info on mercola.com - just search for "artificial sweeteners" and there is a ton of enlightening stuff on the subject, or any subject about health for that matter.

Happy reading ... and put the diet soda down!

Answer 2

Depending on the sweetener, there can be some caloric content. If you drink 4 liters of "zero calorie" soda, you might actually get a few calories. However, it's not going to be nearly what you'd get from sugar.

Soda don't contain fat, in general.

So, there's basically nothing in diet soda that would cause you to gain weight.

Carbonation, however, can cause bloating and 4 liters of any liquid will add (temporarily) to your weight. At most, the actual weight of 4 liters of soda.

Other health effects, sure? But not weight gain.

Answer 3

Artificial sweeteners can make some people bloat and gain water weight. I tried drinking diet drinks and using Splenda in my coffee, but it caused stomach aches and bloating. I suggest drinking regular sodas and just cutting back on how much you drink.

Answer 4

It's not entirely clear what effect diet soda has on people, though certain things have been established:

1. Consuming large amounts of aspartame has a similar effect on your metabolism and blood sugar levels as consuming a similar amount of sugar. Obviously the difference is there are no calories, but from an Atkins perspective, this is bad because high blood sugar levels must eventually drop: It's _that_drop_ that causes people to be hungry.

2. Consuming large amounts of soda, cola in particular, will dehydrate you. Those drinks actually cause you to become _more_ thirsty! This is not only bad because they cause you to drink more of them, but because Americans are chronically dehydrated. In fact, most Americans cannot distinguish thirst from hunger, so they eat. (It's one of the hundred reasons why we're the fattest country in the world.) So dehydrating yourself will probably make you "hungry" even though you don't need food.

3. The contents of sodas, and colas in particular, are pretty nasty. Cola is so sickeningly sweet, for example, that they have to add large amounts of phosphoric acid to offset the cloying taste. Phosphoric acid is primarily used by semiconductor companies to ETCH their chips, as well as to clean boilers, and to etch glass. Adding large amounts of acid to your stomach could aggravate existing ulcers. (Not cause them, though: Ulcers are caused by bacteria, not acid. The PAIN is caused by stomach acid.) Why don't they just reduce the amount of sugar instead of adding phosphoric acid? Go ask the guy who invented "New Coke." Cola companies screw with their recipes at their own peril.

4. Colas contain godawful amounts of acid, enough that the danger to your teeth from the sugar in regular cola is incidental. Drinking cola is like gargling in a solution of phosphoric and carbolic acid, so you're not doing your teeth any favors either.

Point is, you're probably not WORSE off drinking diet cola, but it's not a whole lot better for you either. Most of the things that make regular cola bad for you are every bit as present in diet.

Answer 5

If you are drinking sodas, it is the high fructose corn syrup that is making you gain weight. Go to this site and click on the link that says dangers of Aspartame (artificial sweetener). It is very detailed and should provide answers for you of what it does. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Christig is right , but if your're going to drink soda ANYWAY, diet will save you thousands of calories over the course of a week to say nothing of saving your teeth from all that sugar.

I suspect your friend is saying that because she doesn't want to switch.

Answer 7

Here's the thing. The sodas themselves won't make you gain weight but they will make you crave other sugary things like candy, cookies, ice cream etc. It's those extra cravings that make you gain weight.

Answer 8

No thats not real..... splenda is the final..... the the remainder of the sweetners u point out r crap and make u ill splenda is solid...... yet sure do not use plenty... it does not reason maximum cancers, and it does not sluggish ur metabolic value....... I easily have a private coach who pronounced it to me so im not gonna tell u that if i wasnt helpful and ofcourse pronounced via a expert....