Diet Drinks...

TerrorFirmer

I thought you guys could give me a quick answer to this - and I'm not talking about "Diet drinks" like slimfast and similar. I'm just talking about regular diet coke, diet sprite, etc.

I don't drink any fizzy drinks very often but it's nice to have the odd one at lunch or at the weekend. So two questions really: Does the nutritional value of 0 carbs, 0 fat, 0 sugar, >10 calories etc in Diet drinks mean you can drink them without danger of putting on weight? And more importantly, in what areas of your body are diet drinks still specifically bad for you?

I don't drink normal coke or sprite etc anyway, so am just wondering exactly how bad for me the diet versions still are, given that I only drink maybe 2 cans a week.

Thanks.

Dragan

One of the biggest "problems" with diet drinks is the whole aspartame sweetner issue. Basically, this has been shown not to be so good for certain people as aspartme gets broken down to wood alchohol in the body and wood alchohol is processed to formaldahyde(sp ?) as far as i am aware.

To be honest, you really do need to be drinking diet drinks beyond the point of common sense to really do yourself harm, the fact that you would rarely have one means you can do so and not feel bad about it!

t-ha

I'm stretching my mind a bit here, but I think I've heard of aspartame being linked to shrinking of the thyroid? If so it could be damaging to your metabolism rate in the long term.

However, diet drinks have very few calories and induce virtually no insulin response in the body, so the answer to your question is 'no, they won't make you fat'. Not in the short-term anyway, and I think the jury is still out on my first point.

Dragan

I don't think the jury is out at all, did a quick search and found several articles that advise of adverse affects on the thyroid. including the below.

http://www.innvista.com/HEALTH/nutrition/diet/saspart.htm

dudara

The use of aspartme as a sweetener means that there is no insulin response, as a previous poster said. however there are serious concerns over the use of such a sweetener. Even Dr. Atkins advocated omitting aspartme containing products.

However, one or two can ever so often probably is ok

Transform

Never resolves the issue of their desire for something sweet all the time also.

Water please!!!

2 cans per week is not much at all though i would still advocate H2O

TerrorFirmer

Thanks for the help guys, appreciate it.