Why Diet Drinks May Be Making You Fatter

Making the switch from full-flavored, full-sugar drinks is supposed to help you lose weight, but researchers are claiming the opposite is true. A ten-year study of almost 500 American men and women linked low-calorie soft drinks with dramatic weight gain – almost five times the average rate – even when the beverages were consumed in small quantities.

Surprisingly, if you can’t give up soda entirely, switching from diet to regular may actually be healthier.

Professor Helen Hazuda, from the University of Texas’s health science center, explains that diet sodas are much more addictive because they have a sugary flavor but are less filling- this means they can distort appetite and hunger cues. These distorted hunger signals can leave drinkers feeling hungry and craving more sugar. As one researcher explained: the artificial sweeteners used in these beverages trigger appetite but unlike regular sugars they don’t deliver something that will fulfill the appetite.

Diet pop threatens more than your waistline though. Aspartame, an artificial sweetener used to flavor diet sodas, has also been linked with “the sort of damage in the pancreas that can occur early in diabetes.”

So what’s the final takeaway from these results? Easy- drink more water!

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