Don’t Use Diet Soda in an Effort to Lose Weight

Artificially sweetened beverages are not the answer to circumventing weight gain. Artificial sweeteners actually promote weight gain. I know this seems counterintuitive. Since a major purpose of artificial sweeteners is to avoid added calories, you are right to wonder how these no-calorie sugar substitutes could increase your potential to gain weight. Let me explain.

Artificial sweeteners have been associated with weight gain, increased appetite and an elevated risk for diabetes.

In the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), drinking diet soda at least once daily was associated with both a larger waist size and a 67 percent increase in risk of type 2 diabetes seven years later.¹   Similarly, during the 1970s, saccharin use was associated with weight gain during the following eight years in the Nurses’ Health Study.² In the San Antonio Heart Study, normal weight participants who consumed 21 or more artificially sweetened beverages per week almost doubled their risk (a 93 percent increase) of being overweight or obese eight years later.³

Are You Drinking Diet Soda to Save Calories?

Many women tell me that they drink diet soda in order to save calories. For example, a woman might drink a diet soda with dinner to allow herself dessert. However, it has been shown that often this banking of calories to be used later is an inaccurate ideal. Instead, consuming artificially sweetened foods can lead to overcompensation with an increase in the total amount of calories you consume. It is the exact opposite of what you want.

How Might Diet Soda Be Harmful?

Just because diet soda is no-calorie, doesn’t mean drinking it has no effect on your body. Some research has even suggested that increased use of artificial sweeteners increases appetite or cravings for sweets. Similarly, there is evidence that consuming artificially sweetened beverages between meals (in the absence of calories) increases appetite and food consumption during your next meal.⁴

In addition, consuming diet soda promotes the desire for, and the dependency on, your taste for excessive sweetness. The sweeteners used in these products are hundreds or thousands of times sweeter than table sugar, which is itself unnaturally sweet. These excessive sweet tastes are unnatural. Throughout human history, our bodies have been accustomed to the more subtle, natural sweet taste of fruits and starchy vegetables like squashes and corn. Those who consistently consume artificially sweetened foods or beverages are training their taste buds to prefer excessive sweetness. Therefore, artificial sweeteners in sodas and other foods are counterproductive in that they keep the body craving excessively sweet flavors rather than enjoying naturally sweet flavors. Sweet tastes also produce reward signals in the brain, and there is some evidence that artificial sweeteners produce ‘incomplete’ reward signals, leading to incomplete satisfaction which, in turn, ramps up cravings for more food.⁷

A Diet Soda – Diabetes Connection

A French study following 66,118 women for 14 years found that those who drank at least one 20-ounce diet soda per week more than doubled their risk of diabetes than those who did not consume any sweetened beverages. The researchers noted that it wasn’t just overweight women drinking the diet soda and getting diabetes, since the effect was only partly attributable to body mass index or BMI. There may be other deleterious effects of diet soda unrelated to weight gain that increase the likelihood of developing diabetes.⁸

A Better Alternative

Since evidence suggests that the use of artificial sweeteners promote weight gain and also increase the risk of diabetes, (and the safety of their use has been questioned) it is wise to avoid food and drinks that contain them. Rather, include naturally sweet foods in your diet like fruits and squashes, along with a variety of other vegetables. Try infusing water with fruit or cucumber for flavor. Unlike processed foods with added sweeteners, nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables do not perpetuate sweet cravings and overeating. They offer fiber, essential nutrients, antioxidants and other phytochemicals that protect against the same diseases that added sugars promote, like heart disease and diabetes.

This approach, focusing on nutrient-dense, plant-rich eating, is the best path to good health and increased longevity. It is also the plan I outline in 10 in 20: Dr. Fuhrman’s Lose 10 Pounds in 20 Days program and in my book The End of Dieting, where I go into more detail about this easy-to-follow weight loss method which is designed to maximize nutrient content per calorie.

For optimal health, I recommend you strengthen your taste buds to prefer the more subtle sweetness of fruit and focus on the majority of your diet on an assortment of vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.. A Nutritarian diet is designed to remove food cravings, sugar addiction and with time can have you prefer healthier choices and delicious, but fewer sweet deserts and drinks.

1. Nettleton JA, Lutsey PL, Wang Y, et al. Diet soda intake and risk of incident metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Diabetes Care 2009, 32:688-694.
2. Colditz GA, Willett WC, Stampfer MJ, et al. Patterns of weight change and their relation to diet in a cohort of healthy women. Am J Clin Nutr 1990, 51:1100-1105.
3. Fowler SP, Williams K, Resendez RG, et al. Fueling the obesity epidemic? Artificially sweetened beverage use and long-term weight gain. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2008, 16:1894-1900.
4. Mattes RD, Popkin BM. Nonnutritive sweetener consumption in humans: effects on appetite and food intake and their putative mechanisms. Am J Clin Nutr 2008, 89:1-14.
5. Pepino MY, Bourne C. Non-nutritive sweeteners, energy balance, and glucose homeostasis. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care 2011, 14:391-395.
6. Swithers SE, Martin AA, Davidson TL. High-intensity sweeteners and energy balance. Physiol Behav 2010, 100:55-62.
7. Yang Q. Gain weight by "going diet?" Artificial sweeteners and the neurobiology of sugar cravings: Neuroscience 2010. Yale J Biol Med 2010, 83:101-108.
8. Fagherazzi G, Vilier A, Saes Sartorelli D, et al. Consumption of artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages and incident type 2 diabetes in the Etude Epidemiologique aupres des femmes de la Mutuelle Generale de l'Education Nationale-European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort. Am J Clin Nutr 2013.