Hartz: Diet colas, artificial sugar will drown us
Two big studies found that drinking one can of diet soda a day can increase a healthy adult’s risk of pre-heart disease, metabolic syndrome and weight gain by 30 to 40 percent.
By Jenny Hartz (Contact)
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Many people believe government conspiracies or nuclear war will destroy mankind. But what if it is something much closer to home?
What if it is food?
I was on my Yahoo! homepage the other day (a healthy alternative to porn), and I found a video from ABC News. Diane Sawyer (again, a healthy alternative to porn) was interviewing a behavioral scientist from Purdue University, about a study conducted on rats.
The study was done to discover the effects of diet sodas. It seems the rats that drank diet sodas (their favorite probably being Diet Sewer Dew) gained more weight than the rats fed normal, sugary foods.
The scientist said two big studies found that drinking one can of diet soda a day can increase a healthy adult’s risk of pre-heart disease, metabolic syndrome and weight gain by 30 to 40 percent.
Now I’m rethinking the “Do The Dew” slogan. It sounds more like the dew is going to do me in (coincidentally, also the plot synopsis for “The Sopranos”).
The video and the more detailed article on abcnews.com say this could implicate more than diet sodas. The effects could possibly come from any food with artificial sweeteners because they change the brain’s chemistry.
The body prepares itself for a huge calorie load when we eat sweets, but it is confused when it tastes the sweet diet soda but gets no calories.
I’ve heard rumors about the effects of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners before.
It’s not the weight gain that scares me. I work out five times a week, climb the mountain behind Wescoe two or three times a day and jump up and down a lot when refs call unnecessary fouls on the basketball team.
But it’s the idea that these sweeteners change my brain’s chemistry that freaks me out.
Sugar cookies that call to me by spelling out my name in sprinkles may make my hips bigger, but that’s what fat does. Fat does not fool my body into thinking it’s anything but a lump of heavy, useless material (Ironically, that’s what a lot of us to do our mothers).
We need to stop drinking diet sodas. We need to stop eating anything with excessive amounts of artificial ingredients.
In moderation, there is nothing wrong with full fat, full sugar food. It is natural, real food made for our natural, real bodies.
To give a good analogy, let’s use fake baking. Tanning beds will make you look tan, but you can still tell it’s fake. It still exposes you to the same health risks that tanning in the sunlight has.
Our bodies are meant for sunlight, and sunlight in a certain amounts is good for the body.
Just because we don’t see the immediate dangerous effects of diet sodas doesn’t mean they won’t happen.
History is littered with events we once thought safe but now know are lethal, such as pesticides, radiation, boy band music, etc.
I challenge everyone on campus to find healthy alternatives to diet sodas and any other drink with artificial sweeteners.
I know for myself it won’t be easy. Now I have to find healthy alternatives to keep myself awake in class like sleep or sudoku.
Jenny Hartz is a Stilwell junior in creative writing.
Discussion
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Can't Diet Coke kill you if you leave it in the sun? I don't trust that soda, but I do like combining it with Mentos.
http://www.blacktable.com/gillin040317.htm - Hah, Diet Coke heads!
Ms. Hartz ought to research the effect sugar has on blood glucose/insulin levels, the correlation between the glucose flood / insulin response and fat storage, and the correlation between high sugar intake and adult-onset diabetes. Just because sugar is "natural" (and "sugar" found in most sweetened foods these days is the decidedly unnatural High Fructose Corn Syrup), does not mean it is better for you than "non-natural" replacements, or that it does not also alter body chemistry.
The study cited in this article has been used to make "conclusions" that are outside the bounds of its data. There was a correlation between diet soda intake and weight gain, but not a CAUSAL link between the two. The rats can't consciously think to themselves, "Hmm, perhaps I should stop stuffing my mouth before I get fat"...but people can!
The only possible negative conclusion of the study is: if you regularly drink diet sodas, be more cognizant of how much you're eating, as the artificial sweetener does not trigger the "stop eating!" reflex in your brain. For what it's worth, High Fructose Corn Syrup has been shown to have the same effect.
While we're at it, check out http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_loca... and get some scientific education about aspartame, the primary artificial sweetener used in diet colas.
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