So are diet sodas really as bad as people make them out to be? It takes just
a few searches online and the negativity and fear-mongering around diet drinks is
really clear to see. But what if the truth about diet sodas? Is there
justification for all the fear or if people's attitudes been formed by
sensationalist media pieces and content designed purely to drive high views?
So as someone who consumes diet drinks I've always been of the "everything in
moderation" mindset. I think they taste good, I think they're great at helping
you deal with sugar cravings and helping you stick towards a calorie controlled
diet. But with all the negative press out there it made me wonder am i risking my
health by drinking them? So in this video I've looked at some of the most common
objections to drinking diet sodas and looked to see if there's any science for
actually backing any of these things up. Now every brand of diet soda will have slightly
different ingredients so for simplicity I focused on Diet Coke and Coke Zero as
this is the most popular brand. So something I hear a lot is that diet
drinks are just full of chemicals and in fact these chemicals are so toxic that
you're probably better off just drinking the full sugar equivalent. Now this is a
classic appeal to nature fallacy and just because something is natural
doesn't mean that is automatically healthy and in the same way just because
something is synthetic doesn't mean that it's automatically unhealthy. Now it's
worth mentioning that everything is a chemical and in fact Layne Norton
recently posted about this on his Facebook page and he posted the chemical
ingredients for an organic banana. Now when you read through that list it all
sounds pretty scary especially if you don't know what a lot of these chemicals
are but of course you would never normally be worried about eating an
organic banana. Now there are nine ingredients within a Coke Zero the most
controversial of which is probably going to be aspartame. Now I'm going to go into more
details specifically about aspartame in just a moment but it's one of the most
thoroughly tested and studied food additives the FDA has ever approved.
So despite diet drinks having zero calories there are still plenty of
claims that they still cause weight gain and diabetes.
However from all the studies I've seen they definitely show a correlation but
not a causation. In the same way that the annual number of people that drowned
falling into a pool Correlates very strongly with the number of
films Nicolas Cage was in, again correlation does not equal causation. So
from the diabetes studies it seems that most of the participants were already
overweight and predisposed to having type 2 diabetes. In other studies it
seems like there were some behavioral reasons why the participants kept
gaining weight while drinking diet sodas. The most likely theory is that the
participants were eating additional food because of the calories they saved by not
drinking the full sugar versions of the sodas.
So as mentioned earlier aspartame has been highly criticized and highly
controversial ever since it was first approved by the FDA in the early 1980s.
It is now one of the most widely used and well studied sweeteners in the world.
There have been lots of studies where participants have ingested huge amounts
of aspartame over long periods of time and there have never been any observable
side effects or results. As such there are no scientific links to brain tumors
or cancer. Observational studies are often sensationalized by the media which
then leads to lots of anxiety amongst consumers. Now from these studies there
is an ADI value for aspartame, which is the Acceptable Daily Intake. This is the
maximum amount of a chemical that can be ingested daily over a lifetime with no
appreciable health risk. Now the very conservative ADI value for aspartame is
50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
Now there's 184 milligrams of aspartame in a can of Coke Zero so an 80 kilogram
person could have up to 22 cans of diet soda per day over a lifetime with no
appreciable health risk. Which is insane. Now when we consume aspartame it's
broken down into our body into three different compounds. It is 50 percent
phenylalanine 40 percent aspartic acid and 10 percent methanol. Now methanol
raises the most eyebrows as this is actually converted into formaldehyde
within the body. Now this sounds absolutely horrendous
but formaldehyde is actually used for certain processes within the body
including making certain amino acids, and it doesn't actually build up or store
within the body. Any excess of formaldehyde is actually converted into
formic acid which is excreted from the body when you pee. Now it's also worth
noting that the amount of methanol produced by aspartame is very very small
and in fact there's a higher amount of methanol found naturally within fruits
and vegetables. So as such an equivalent amount of fruit juice can have five
times the amount of methanol than a diet soda.
So BPA otherwise known as bisphenol A is an industrial chemical used to produce
certain plastics and resins. It's shown to have quite a nasty effect on human body
and it's already been restricted across the EU, Canada, China and Malaysia. So BPA
can actually seep into beverages and food if it's within the containers. This
is why you've probably heard of BPA-free plastics when you're talking about
drinks bottles, food containers and baby bottles. So even though diet sodas are
most commonly contained within an aluminium container they actually have a very very
thin plastic lining. Now this is very well designed and very difficult to see,
however someone dissolved the aluminium can using sodium hydroxide - very "Breaking Bad" style,
and revealed the inner plastic lining. This lining is designed to stop
the metal being corroded by the drink inside. Now looking online that lining
does actually seem to contain BPA but it is trace amounts. The FDA has said that
BPA levels are safe at around 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight,
so again for an 80 kilogram person we're talking four thousand micrograms
per day. Within each can of diet soda there's between 1.7 and 3.5 micrograms
of BPA, so again we're really talking very small amounts.
So our blood sugar levels increase when we eat carbohydrates. When they're
digested they're broken down into sugar and absorbed into our bloodstream, and
this increase in blood sugar levels triggers the release of insulin. So
insulin is a hormone that transports sugars from our bloodstream into
our cells for energy, or to be stored as fat.
So because aspartame doesn't contain any sugar it shouldn't cause an insulin
response. Now despite a lot of claims that it does, in 1998 the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition performed a study on 48 healthy people where they
were given large dosages of aspartame for 20 days, and equivalent to 20 cans of
diet soda. The researchers found that there is no effect on their insulin levels.
So the impact of gut bacteria on overall health is still being explored
but the research suggests that your balance of gut bacteria could be an
indicator as to your susceptibility to different health conditions and may even
be the key to preventing or even treating certain diseases. So one study
has shown a change in the balance of gut bacteria in mice when they were fed
artificial sweeteners, and this included a reduction in some of the good bacteria.
This definitely needs further investigation and human studies to
determine the effects on people. The issue is that everyone's balance of gut
bacteria is very different and unique, and so complex that is very difficult to
measure or even say for certain which bacteria are the most beneficial. There
are trillions of good bacteria made up of thousands of different species and
5,000 bacterial strains. So as it stands nothing can be said for certain about
the effects of artificial sweeteners on the gut microbiome but I'm definitely
interested in finding out more from further studies.
So most people think about tooth decay and cavities they typically think about
sugary foods and sugary drinks being the issue. However despite the fact diet sodas
have no sugar in them whatsoever, they've been found to create a similar amount of
dental erosion as their sugary counterparts. Now the reason for this is
because the ingredients in the diet sodas are actually quite acidic and can
actually dissolve the protective enamel on your teeth. Now this can be minimized
by drinking through a straw or having a drink with a meal. So another popular
belief is that diet drinks can actually impact your bone density and there is an
element of truth to this. Now diet drinks contains phosphoric acid and while
phosphorus is an important bone mineral in itself, a disproportionate intake of
phosphorus compared to your intake of calcium could lead to bone loss. Now it's
worth pointing out however that the amount of phosphorus in diet drinks is
very very small compared to things like chicken or cheese. Another possible issue
is that the caffeine in diet drinks can actually prevent calcium from being
absorbed, however the negative effects of calcium absorption by caffeine can be
fully offset by as little as one to two tablespoons of milk.
So try and form some kind of meaningful conclusion to this, my thoughts are that
there's a lot of media sensationalism around diet sodas. Ultimately it's a
matter of choice but from what I found out I'm more than happy to consume them in
moderation as part of a balanced healthy diet. Now of course if you're worried
about it or you're experiencing any kind of negative side effects from drinking
diet sodas, or you have some kind of underlying health condition, then
obviously stop drinking them. My only real concerns were about the tooth
enamel which I found pretty eye-opening and I'll definitely be keeping an eye
out for further studies only the gut microbiome. However I think there are a lot of
health benefits to losing weight, and if drinking diet sodas helps you achieve
that, I think that's a good thing. So if you watched this video to the end, thank
you very much for watching and I hope you found it useful. And comment below
let me know what you think about drinking diet sodas.