{"id":2749,"date":"2008-07-23T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.willclower.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/could-diet-soda-be-making-you-fat.html"},"modified":"2016-09-21T10:35:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T14:35:01","slug":"could-diet-soda-be-making-you-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2749","title":{"rendered":"Could Diet Soda be making you Fat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Diet Sodas and the American Dream<\/p>\n

Work hard, play by the rules, and you can be anything you want to be. This is American Dream, sewn into our souls as a fundamental truism. Do the right thing, do it with diligence, and you will succeed.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a dietary version of this dream that we hold to just as implicitly. Eat the right thing, keep your \u201ccalories in\u201d less than your \u201ccalories out\u201d, and you will succeed in holding your weight down. But somehow, the only thing that has upward mobility lately seems to be our national obesity problems.<\/p>\n

The American Dietary Dream has been frustrated somewhere, and diet sodas make the point. These zero calorie drinks, if the theory is correct, should not contribute to your overall weight. And yet two major studies have both contradicted this assumption.<\/p>\n

In the massive Nurse\u2019s Health Study, researchers at Harvard followed the detailed dietary patterns of tens of thousands of nurses since the 1970s. The scientists looked to see whether those who drank regular soda (at least one per day) gained weight. To no one\u2019s surprise, these sugary drinks were linked to weight gain over time \u2013 the nurses were about twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes as well. <\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
What surprised everyone, however, was that the effect was even stronger for diet sodas!<\/p>\n

The very same result was confirmed in the San Antonio Heart Study. After reviewing 26 years of patient data, they found that every can of diet soda a person drank made you 65% more likely to become overweight and 41% more likely to become obese!<\/p>\n

So, if diet soda consumption increases the risk of becoming overweight or obese even more than regular soda, this particular dietary dream turns out to be an unhappy one. Perhaps what we need is another way of thinking about our weight that doesn\u2019t lead us to drink drinks that make the problem worse. Perhaps the \u201ccalories in, calories out\u201d dream was \u2026 just that.<\/p>\n

After all, anyone who has struggled with their weight can tell you that calorie\/carb\/point accounting may work fine in principle, but is really difficult in practice. Perhaps a more reliable idea would be to return to the principles that actually have worked to keep us thin and healthy in the past. The first of these principles is to \u201cEat Food\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of course there are many more components to living a healthy life, but if you start with this rule, at least you won\u2019t have to wait for another study to tell you faux foods and faux drinks (diet sodas) are associated with a raft of health problems. That\u2019s because you won\u2019t be drinking them anyway \u2013 and that is a good dream to wake up from.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Dr. Will Clower is the founder and director of the Mediterranean PATH Curriculum.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diet Sodas and the American Dream Work hard, play by the rules, and you can be anything you want to be. This is American Dream, sewn into our souls as … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[494],"tags":[289,296],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-diabetes","tag-diet-soda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Qv5g-Il","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1963,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=1963","url_meta":{"origin":2749,"position":0},"title":"What NOT to drink, apparently.","author":"Will Clower","date":"April 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Thirsty for good health? I just posted an article here on coffee as a healthy drink, and immediately ran into this CNN piece highlighting research on soda. These are data from Harvard, and it's crazy.\u00a0Get this:\u00a0Sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to more than 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide each year, according to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/mlcmmqmgggev.i.optimole.com\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.willclower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/soda.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1914,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=1914","url_meta":{"origin":2749,"position":1},"title":"2 more HUGE reasons to give up sodas","author":"Will Clower","date":"November 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Via @rodalenewsNeed another reason to put down that bottle of soda? We'll give you two. A pair of studies published recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests America's beloved fizzy drinks could be doing a real number on women's health.In the first study, led by Harvard School of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2619,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2619","url_meta":{"origin":2749,"position":2},"title":"How to Screw Up Your Diet: 9. Practice Gastro-Physics","author":"Will Clower","date":"February 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a scientific secret to your diet.Don't tell any one!!If you eat a candy bar, you can always annihilate it with diet products. Shhhh. Diet sodas and Snickers, as you know, are dietary matter and anti-matter.Thus, they cancel each other out.So if you have something naughty, just chase it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2084,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2084","url_meta":{"origin":2749,"position":3},"title":"Formaldehyde? A carcinogen? Doesn’t that make Diet Sodas a health hazard?","author":"Will Clower","date":"June 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Who is surprised by this? No one, I'm sure, but they HAD to do the studies to show that nasty chemicals do nasty things to healthy bodies. \u00a0The government on Friday added formaldehyde, a substance found in plastics and other commonly used products, to a list of known carcinogens ....What\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/mlcmmqmgggev.i.optimole.com\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-PslaTd5--b0\/TfN54d5dl6I\/AAAAAAAADIQ\/Yww_N4E3y0c\/s320\/formaldehyde_need_embalming_tshirt.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1997,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=1997","url_meta":{"origin":2749,"position":4},"title":"Daily diet soda may increase risk of heart attack, stroke: study | Reuters","author":"Will Clower","date":"February 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's what the researchers found ... (from the Journal of General Internal Medicine) older adults who drank diet soda every day were 44 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack. 44 percent!! That's a HUGE number. Here's the caveat.\u00a0Their research showed a correlation between 2 things -- more diet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/mlcmmqmgggev.i.optimole.com\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.willclower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/DietSodas.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2663,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2663","url_meta":{"origin":2749,"position":5},"title":"Diet and Fat","author":"Will Clower","date":"November 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We have to confront one of our must cherished notions about weight and health -- regarding the dietary demon of fat.This article, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (reviewed in this article), helps to unlinking fat in the diet from fat on your hips.Researchers followed 125 men and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3744,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions\/3744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}