Diet Soda Only Adds To Your Belly Fat, Says A New Study
Trending News: You Can Blame That Belly Fat On Diet Sodas
Why Is This Important?
If you're putting anything into your body then you want to know what the long-term effects are.
Long Story Short
New research suggests that drinking diet soda regularly — or even occasionally — can actually increase the size of your waistline rather than helping you to lose weight. It's a complicated picture though, and other scientists have warned against rushing to conclusions about the effects of diet soda.
Long Story
It's not easy being a diet soda: Because you position yourself as a healthy alternative to the regular, full-fat sodas, there are always plenty of studies and reports looking to take you down a peg or two. The latest is a piece of research from The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging, which claims that drinking diet soda means putting on substantially more belly fat.It turns out that occasional diet soda drinkers put on three times as much belly fat as those who didn't drink diet soda at all over a period of 10 years, and the more you drink the worse it gets. Over the decade, occasional drinkers gained 0.83 inches (2.11cm) of fat, daily drinkers gained 1.19 inches (3.04cm), and non-drinkers gained just 0.30 inches (0.77cm). It's hardly the most resounding vote of approval for Diet Coke and beverages like it.
The study has just been published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. It covered 749 Americans aged 65 or older, and other factors such as age, exercise and smoking were factored out of the equation. Of course, belly fat isn't just unsightly — it also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, a risk that grows with age.
"We're being naive if we only look at the number of calories in the label. People may be sabotaging their own health if they use diet sodas to protect themselves from gaining weight," said study author Sharon Fowler of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Other scientists welcomed the research but said it was difficult to draw conclusions about the link between diet drinks and expanding waistlines. "When it comes to body weight and storage of surplus calories, all foods (and drinks) count," commented dietitian Catherine Collins. "It would be worrying if the take-home message for dieters would be that you may as well have the additional 200kcal or so a day from sugar-sweetened drinks instead of choosing zero calorie drinks instead."
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question: Will there ever be a study that all scientists agree on?
Disrupt Your Feed: We owe it to our bodies to think long and hard about what we put in them.
Drop This Fact: Diet sodas are becoming less popular: Diet Coke sales have fallen by 6.6 percent over the last 12 months.
-
Healthy Diet
Nutrition
obesity