Enter "sodium diet" and "weight" in your favorite search engine and you may be amazed at what you find.
Drink more soda diet, earn more weight? "Ask for a headline." Diet soda: port for weight gain "screams another.
In a recent search for a popular web browser, 49 of the first 50 hits went to stories warning dieting soda drinkers that drinks can make them pack in the pounds.
The only exception was the entrance to Wikipedia to "soda diet", which also quoted weight gain concerns.If you believe in what you read on the internet, of course drinking soda diet causes weight gain, right?
Maybe, but probably no, the obesity researcher Barry Popkin, PhD, says WebMD. What is clear is that science is far from conclusive.
Diet Soda - Does Diet Soda Really Cause Weight Gain? What Experts Say
It turns out that all news and blog posts cite the same studies: Research on rats conducted by two researchers from the University of Purdue and two studies that followed over time.
Popkin, which directs the division of nutritional epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says that none of the studies makes a convincing case that no calorie soda contributes to the weight gain.
No friend of the soft drinks, popkin's own search links, carbonated beverages sugar for obesity and he led a global effort to get the vending machines that sell them from schools.
"The bloggers in the world talked to the notion that soda diet causes obesity, but science is not there to support it," says Popkin.
In an analysis published last year, popkin and co-author Richard D. Mattes, PhD, MPH, RD, who is a nutritional professor at Purdue University, but was not involved in the study studies, revised the research that examine the impact of artificial sweeteners in weight.
They found little support for the notion that non-calorie sweeteners stimulate appetite or contribute to obesity in some other way, but they say more research is needed to know for sure.
"Frankly, we were stunned," says Swithers. "It's really a small study."
In the first study, two groups of rats were fed with sweet, tasty and glue liquids. For a group, the liquid has always been sweetened with sugar, so there was a consistent relationship between sweet taste and calories. In the second group, sugary liquids were alternated with liquids made with artificial sweetener saccharist, so that the relationship between sweet taste and calories were inconsistent.
After 10 days, the rats received a sweet chocolate pudding and high calorie. Those exposed to caloric and non-calorie sweet drinks eat more of the pudding.
In another study, rats were fed with highly calorie chocolate pudding or chocolate milk with their regular food. At the end of the month, the group of chocolate milk has gained significantly more weight.
The first experiment suggested that by breaking the connection between taste and sweet calories, artificial sweeteners interfere with the body's natural ability to judge calorie content, says Swithers. The second, which the body is less able to recognize energy delivered in liquid form.In a subsequent set of studies, researchers fed yoghurt rats with sugar or saccharin beyond their regular food and found that the mice that ate the non-calorie sweetener took more calories and earned more weight.
Another study often quoted in the news and blog posts followed people in San Antonio, Texas and showed that those who drank more dieting soft drinks have gained more weight over time.
The researchers analyzed data from the Heart San Antonio study, which followed more than 5,000 adults for between seven and eight years.
Although people who drink both sugary and diet soft drinks gained weight, Diet soda drinkers were more likely to become obese. And the more refrigerants diets the participants drank the larger their weight gain.
Framingham analysis included 9,000 middle-aged men and women followed for four years. Researchers found that compared to people who have not drank soft drinks, those who have drank both sugary and soda diet were more likely to develop metabolic syndrome - a cluster of symptoms often linked to obesity that increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Because both studies were observational, it is impossible to tell if the diet soft drinks played a direct role in weight gain.
It may be that people change to soda diet when they begin to gain weight without approaching other aspects of their diet that are causing weight gain.
It may also be that people with very poor diets are disproped from soft drinks drink soft drinks.
Popkin calls this from the "Big Mac and Diet Coca" mentality.
"Especially in America, we have many people who eat high-fat diets, high sugar, but also drink dietary soft drinks," he says.
Sharon Fowler, MPH, who led the study of San Antonio, recognizes this, but also thinks the other thing is happening.
"I am not convinced that these sweeteners are as safe as they should be, given their widespread use," says Fowler, a college associated in the division of clinical epidemiology from the University of Texas Health Center in San Antonio. "I'm worried that we are in the middle of a giant experiment and we do not know the result."Popkin cites research, including his, showing that people who drink artificially sweetened soft drinks as part of a calorie restricted diet lose weight. So make Maureen Storey, PhD, which is senior vice president of scientific policy for American Beverage Association.
"The current body of science available shows that low calorie sweeteners - such as those used in dietary soft drinks - can help reduce calories and help maintain a healthy weight," says WebMD.
It points out that the American association diabetes and the American dietary association support the use of non-calorie sweeteners to restrict calories and sugar intake."Drinking diet drinks alone, however, is not enough to contract excesses - the only way to maintain a healthy weight is balancing calories consumed with burned calories."
Nutrition Researcher David L. Katz, MD, which directs the Yale Prevention Research Center, says research as a whole suggests sugar substitutes and other non-nutritious eating substitutes have little impact on weight in a way or other.
"For each study that shows that there may be a benefit or damage, there is another one that does not show" there "there," says Katz.
Katz agrees that research linking dietary refrigerants to weight gain is scarce and inconclusive. But he is still worried that artificial sweeteners condition people to want to eat more sweet foods.
"We refer to a" sweet tooth ", not a" sugar tooth, "says Katz." I think this is absolutely right. Our taste really do not differentiate between candy in sugar and sweet, say, aspartame. The evidence that this sweet taste is addictive is quite clear. "
Your theoretical concerns are reinforced by 20 years of experience in the real world with your patients.
"What I have seen in my patients is that those who drink soda Diet are more vulnerable to stealthy sugars," says Katz.
Katz says that stealth sugars are those added to processed foods that have no sweet taste such as biscuits, breads and mass sauce. They usually come in the shape of high fructose corn syrup.
Although some commercial mass sauces do not contain added sugars, others contain more than ice cream toppings, Katz says.
"The question is that you prefer marinara sauce with all that high fructose corn syrup?" Katz says. "The answer is, a person with a sweet tooth."
In your search review, popkin and mattes admit that the use of non-calorie sweeteners probably promotes a preference for sweetest foods. But they conclude that it is unclear if this affects weight gain - and they say that calorie-free sweeteners can help people control their weight if used instead of greater calorie sweeteners.
"But if they will be used in this way it is uncertain," writes popkin and matte.
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