Diet Drinks And Weight Loss:

Diet Drinks And Weight Loss: Are They Linked?

Calories and sugar content are the elements that soda ads promote on diet drinks and weight loss. They labeled it as the healthier option for regular sodas. By the time diet sodas were introduced, many health conscious people drink it to satisfaction. But, is there a healthy kind of soda, really?

Alternative sweeteners in diet drinks

Originally, diet drinks were sweetened with saccharine and cyclamates. These two compounds were used to replace sugar in the soda. Soda companies boasted for this revolutionary change and the positioned their marketing target to diabetics, CPD and obese patients. This was in 1970’s. However, researchers have found that these two components, especially the saccharine, is cancer-producing. This leads to the decrease in sales and popularity of the diet sodas.

Later, in 1990’s, the diet sodas dominated the grocery shelves again. They made a comeback with the scientific study that tells saccharine is not a relevant component for cancers. To keep saccharine scare out of the way, soda companies replaced it with aspartame which is popularly known as NutraSweet.

In 2002, additional flavors were added to diet soda like vanilla. grape, lemon orange and many others.

Today, diet sodas have either aspartame or cyclamates as sweeteners. Cyclamates are often combined with saccharin for more pleasant taste. However, this sweetener was found to be cancer-producing. So, it is banned from the US.

Diet drinks and weight loss

What do diet drinks do to your body? They give adverse effect to your:

·        Brain. It has a psychological effect like a stimulus-and-effect connection. When you see a soda, you know that it has a lot of calories and sugar but, you want still it, though. Diet drinks can only make you crave for the regular soda drink because, it cannot satisfy your expected taste of soda. You body will only crave for more.

·        Weight. Diet drinks and weight loss is impossible to link for a long time. Your body seeks to be satisfied. At first, you can replace one regular soda with a diet equivalent. However, as time goes on, you will no longer be satisfied with such reformation. Your body tends to ask more diet soda as replacement to a regular soda. This is quite striking for dieters. The best thing to do is to keep track of your diet drinks and keep them to a low consumption practice.

·        Heart. The increasing incidence weight gain of persons who resort to diet sodas instead of the regular drink, was very disturbing. Increase in weight means having your heart to work harder. This will give too much load to your heart that may lead to heart problems if you do not correct your weight soon.

·        Diet preference. It does not mean that if you are drinking diet sodas, you are not consuming junk. Any soda is a junk. And, so, it is not good for your health. You cannot justify it as a form of healthier drink than a junk.

·        Metabolism.  It can hurt your metabolism and may aggravate metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is characterized by having a lot of excess fat on your mid-body, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and high blood sugar. Diet sodas can increase your chances of having metabolic syndrome by 35% than by not drinking any sodas at all.

·        Dental carries. Yes, diet sodas can give you dental carries inspite of the sweetener alternative they got. Aspartame is still a form of carbohydrate that can attach easiy to your teeth. If you are not careful enough, you might get tooth decay.

Soda companies are trying so hard to keep their market alive and sky-rocketing high. Keeping yourself healthy by having fresh fruit options is better than diet sodas. The link between diet drinks andweigh loss is proven to be just a sweet imagination.