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Diet Soda?
HolyHesus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I drink coke and mountain dew every now and then, but decided to go on a light diet/ healthier life style.
I have always wonder if diet sodas actually are a lot better since they don't have real sugar. Just curious if they do help you loose weight or any other facts about it.
Thanks!
I have always wonder if diet sodas actually are a lot better since they don't have real sugar. Just curious if they do help you loose weight or any other facts about it.
Thanks!
HolyHesus on
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However there's a lot of controversy over the artificial sweetners, etc.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=25655
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The calorie difference is the big one. A can of soda has, what, 140 kcal? If you have a few cans a week, it's not a huge difference. If you have one a day, that can be the difference between losing weight and staying the same weight.
Here's a quickie website covering the calorie differences and weight loss:
http://www.prevention.com/article/0,5778,s1-4-60-105-2589-1,00.html
the tl;dr: people who drank sugar sodas gained 2lbs, those who drank aspartame ones lost 3lbs.
There's a lot of scare tactics out there about aspartame, mostly from conspiracy theorists and non-scientists. I personally can't stand the flavor of aspartame or sucralose -- aspartame has an odd marshmallowy flavor and sucralose has a cloyingly sickly-sweet flavor, both of which I dislike -- so I simply drink maybe a can of soda once a week? twice a week? Depends on if I actually bought any. Fruit juices also have calories, a substantial amount, but the flavors are usually more interesting as long as they aren't full of high fructose corn syrup.
Now some studies have placed that safe cut-off somewhat lower, at 20 mg/kg. That would be 96.5 oz (8 12-oz cans or 6 16-oz bottles). That's still a lot of diet soda.
You've already said that you don't drink soda every day, so you'll probably be fine. If you were drinking 8 cans of diet soda per day, I'd be worried about the acid rotting your teeth more than I'd be worried about you getting cancer.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I quit drinking diet beverages for this reason.
The catch 22 is, if you dont drink much soda the aspartme is harmless. But then again, if you only drink like one soda a day, it wont be nearly as helpful to switch to diet as someone who downs like 5-10 cans a day. Still, it will help.
But again, you can google the issue and see if the artificial sweeteners will act as a trigger for any conditions you may have. Cause apparently it does for a lot of things
No no no no no no no no.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp
For me though it's just a taste thing. I'm used to the way diet sodas taste and I actually prefer them. So if you like the taste, why not change if it'll save you a couple calories too?
I found it at my store for the same price as Diet Coke, and it tastes basically the same. So, something to consider when going diet.
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I think there are other reasons, but I'm not really all that science-y.
Whatever. A couple years ago I went cold turkey on soda drinking and I havent looked back. I drink a ton of water. I recommend this to everyone. It's cheaper and healthier. Not saying I don't drink a soda occasionally - by that I mean I might have one when I go out for dinner with friends once a month or something, but I generally don't. I just stick to water.
I don't have cravings for drinking anything, water gets me by.
The big difference to me is that HFCS just tastes "sweet." Like it doesn't have any actual flavor of its own. The cane sugar soda tastes, well, like sugar. Like they used table sugar to sweeten a soda. It's kind of a weird feeling, but makes it taste more familiar.
Another good way to cut down on the amount of soda that you drink is to take a moment to reflect on what it is you like about the beverage. Taste? Sweetness? Carbonation? Thirst-quenching? Once you figure out what the main reason you're drinking sodas is, you can find alternatives that will also hit that spot.
No no, HFCS is very easy to process -- which is the problem. You don't feel full from it, and you get a sugar-rush and subsequent crash. Sucrose (table sugar) is a combination of glucose and fructose, and HFCS is a monosaccharide. That's also why many people will chug soda after soda, and why the caffeine content is relatively high (and why super-sweet "energy drinks" include so much caffeine).
It's similar to gorging on fast food -- the amount of fat, calories, and grease consumed with no real nutritional value leads to a "food coma" for many people. The fact that it's processed isn't what's bad -- it's that the processing makes it easier to digest because it's no longer complex molecules, but rather mostly flavoring and sugars.
Not only will it not make you feel full, your body will process HFCS faster than it can use them, so they are almost always converted to fat.
I don't like the taste of tap or bottled water (regardless of the source). It just tastes wrong. I like the taste of it if it's from an actual mountain spring or melted glacier or whatever, but it's not exactly practical for me to drive 3-5 hours every time I want a drink.
So for me, the question is "what can I find to drink that gives me enough fluids, but is as inoffensive as possible otherwise?" I used to drink a lot of regular soda pop, but switched to diet because of the calories. Now I mostly drink some stuff Safeway sells called Clear that I mentioned in the other thread. That and tea.
http://www.thelostworlds.net/
Yes. Not only does it give you fluids, it's also really good for you. Just don't put too much sugar in it.
I've always been a big soda drinker, since Jr. High, and it made me put on a few extra pounds, even though I was active playing basketball and swimming. I drank probably 3-5 cans of soda per day in college since soda was free from the cafeteria and I also kept cans in my dorm. My mom started dieting at home and would only buy Diet soda, so I either had to keep my own soda at home or drink diet.
I decided I needed to force myself to make the switch. I hated the diet taste so I had to find the right soda to do it. I didn't like Diet Coke... people said Diet Dr. Pepper tasted like regular Dr. Pepper, but I drank that all the time so it was really easy for me to notice the difference.
Then I tried Diet Coke With Lime. That did it! The added lime flavor was enough of an alteration to the Coke flavor that I could focus on that and ignore the diet flavor. I bought a 12-pack, got rid of all of my regular soda, then forced myself to drink the Diet Coke With Lime whenever I wanted a soda since that's all I had in my dorm. It worked! By the time I finished the 12-pack (took about a week) my taste buds had adapted to the diet flavor. So I got some Diet Dr. Pepper and made the switch permanent.
I now enjoy Diet Dr. Pepper as much as I used to enjoy regular Dr. Pepper. The regular stuff is too sweet to me now, so it's easy to stay away from regular soda. This is totally a good thing because soda is free at work and I'd probably weigh 20 lbs more if I hadn't made the switch. >_<
Aspartame can cause joint pain very similar to fibromyalgia, my sister was affected by this and several studies (I posted them in another thread, ask and I'll get them) have found that removing it from the diet completely alleviates symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. My sister was drinking 3 diet mountain dews a day though, which is a lot more than most people.
One of the problems with pure fructose is that your body doesn't know what to do with it. When you get fructose from fruit you also get a good amount of sucrose. Sucrose is what triggers your body to release insulin and take the sugar out of your bloodstream (an equal amount of fructose only elicits a quarter of the insulin response). I am not sure what the end effects are but I doubt they are good.
In addition, the primary enzyme in glycolysis (PFK) that regulates whether you are breaking glucose down for energy or not is bypassed by fructose. So fructose sort of "jumps" in line and your body produces pyruvate even if its not needed. Excess pyruvate is converted into fat.
If you HAVE to drink soda, find an organic one that uses real sugar instead of fructose.
Someone having a bad reaction to something =/= that thing being bad for everyone. Otherwise, we shouldn't be drinking water, because some people are allergic to it.