Diet drinks- ok or not?

ruffles

Myself and my boyfriend have started a new fitness regime where we're watching what we eat and go to the gym 3-4 times a week. Thing is we love 7 UP and drink Diet 7 Up now all the time. Is it really calorie free and therefore not a threat as it claims to be i.e. can we drink as much as we want of it without putting on weight? we dont want to sabotage all our good efforts.

justsomebloke

well bar the fact that it may increase of risk lymphoma and leukemia, you should be fine

rubadub

There was a thread on this a month or so ago.
General conclusions-
fine in moderation,
watch your teeth,
water is better,
the allegeded side effects from sweeteners are going to be less harmful than the side effects of being obese or taking in huge quanities of sugar.

g'em

jsb wrote:

well bar the fact that it may increase of risk lymphoma and leukemia, you should be fine

that's a fine piece of scaremongering care to back up some claims with evidence?

I agree with rubadub

Chardee MacDennis

rubadub wrote:

There was a thread on this a month or so ago.
General conclusions-
fine in moderation,
watch your teeth,
water is better,
the allegeded side effects from sweeteners are going to be less harmful than the side effects of being obese or taking in huge quanities of sugar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy

The FitnessDock

Diet 7-Up contains aspartame, which some studies have linked to diseases such as brain tumours and lymphoma. There are whole websites set up just to warn against the dangers of aspartame.

Others would argue that the "scaremongering" g'em mentions is carried out by those with ulterior motives (i.e. $$$$)

My own experience with working with personal training clients has been those who ditched the "diet" drinks have lost weight (they actually make you hungry), their energy levels vastly improve and their lower back pain disappears (dehydration is a huge cause of lower back pain).

PAUL

rubadub

If you look hard enough you will probably find studies claiming apples give you cancer. Toast is supposed to, fried foods, and oven cooked foods.

The FitnessDock wrote:

My own experience with working with personal training clients has been those who ditched the "diet" drinks have lost weight

Did they ditch in favour for regular sugar soft drinks??
As I had said water is the better option, think that is common sense. But I do think if people are going to drink their 1-2L of soft drinks then they are better off with diet ones.
I have heard the sugar substitute can alter metabolism or something, the body thinks it is getting in sugar but isnt, messes with the system a bit- but again, your system is probably better with this "disruption", than the side effects of 2L of full sugar drinks everyday.

The FitnessDock wrote:

lower back pain disappears (dehydration is a huge cause of lower back pain).

Do diet drinks cause dehydration? Coke will due to the caffeine, but do the sweeteners cause it too?

Dragan

The FitnessDock wrote:

There are whole websites set up just to warn against the dangers of aspartame.

There is also a website called godhatesireland where we are all labeled as "fags".

Take home message : Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

g'em

The FitnessDock wrote:

Diet 7-Up contains aspartame, which some studies have linked to diseases such as brain tumours and lymphoma. There are whole websites set up just to warn against the dangers of aspartame.

thankfully Dragan got in there before me with a rather more polite version of what I was going to say about this...

The FitnessDock wrote:

My own experience with working with personal training clients has been those who ditched the "diet" drinks have lost weight (they actually make you hungry), their energy levels vastly improve and their lower back pain disappears (dehydration is a huge cause of lower back pain).

I would hazard a guess that there are many other factors involved here than just ditching diet drinks so I don't feel it's entirely fair to link them so strongly with lower back relief. I do however agree that diet drinks are not the wonder product that manufacturers would lead us to believe.

As with most other things, it all comes down to moderation. Too much of virtually anything can kill after all. Two litres of Diet 7-Up a day is not going to be good for you. However a 500ml bottle every so often to curb a major sweet tooth pang or as a substitute for junk is not going to be detrimental for your health.

justsomebloke

g'em wrote:

that's a fine piece of scaremongering care to back up some claims with evidence?

no no, it was purely scaremongering on my part. I just really felt the need to play the boogie man today, that and knowing that putting diet drinks and cancer into google will come up with a load of sites saying the same. That and I knew somebody else would come on saying the same thing to help further "prove" my point

edit: here is the study that everyones bases the results on http://www.fsc.go.jp/senmon/tenkabutu/t-dai28/tenkabutu28-toujituhaifusiryou.pdf where they found the increase risk to females rats

Dragan

** is never gonna give Fuko, his pet rat, a diet coke again, but will happily drink it himself **

The FitnessDock

In my original post, I presented the 2 sides of the coin. The "scaremongering" websites versus those who claim that such organisations and websites are bogus and set up by those with a vested interest in the subject. The rest is simply what I've learned from working with my clients over the last 10 years. Take from it what you want.

A book I'd highly recommend is "Your Body's Many Cries For Water" by Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj. In it, he explains how "sugar-free" diet drinks cause dehydration in the body much more so than the sugar-rich alternatives. He also explains how they cause hunger due to there being no calories in them.

For the record, I'm also an advocate of the "everything in moderation" principle - usually when I go to the cinema!

G86

I'm training at the mo and I've complelely ditched the diet coke at the advice of my trainer.

I used to drink bucketloads of the stuff! Now I just drink water.

It messes with your insulin levels and I'm not sure how it works scientifically(Im a novice!) but it definitly won't help you if your trying to lose weight.(I've tried!)

My tummy feels far less bloated too since I stopped drinking it,

rubadub

"Your Body's Many Cries For Water" by Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj.

Batman might be right , but they suit me fine, I drink probably 1 litre a day, usually diet club orange (that is 11% orange juice). I drink a fair amount of water too. My pee is clear and I don't go hungry, weighed in this morning at 11.5stone, 5' 11'', belly almost gone!

It messes with your insulin levels

I think the sweet taste tricks the body into thinking it has taken in sugar. In my case the skim milk I am drinking does not taste sweet yet has a fair bit of sugar in it, so it might offset such effects.

CerebralCortex

rubadub wrote:

.....but they suit me fine, I drink probably 1 litre a day.....

Thats why you're so defensive. :P

nesf

The big problem is the dosage level. Formaldehyde is one the no-no's associated with aspartamine. According to one study it starts collecting in the brain etc in rats at dosages somewhere between 20mg to 200mg per kg of the animal. A 500ml bottle of Diet Coke has 250mg (approx) and Coke Zero has 120mg (approx).

You have to drink an insane amount of either to approach even the lowest concentration value used in the study. For a 90kg individual you’d have to ingest 7.5 litres of Coke Zero in a day to approach 20mg/kg.

I am rounding off values here but can you see my point?



It most certainly does increase cancer rates in rats but the dosage levels are far higher than anything that a normal person would take. The current API is 50mg/kg which could be argued to be too high but a person drinking even 2 litres of the Diet Coke a day isn’t even going to reach 20mg/kg if they weigh over 50kgs which the vast majority of people do.

The FitnessDock

nesf wrote:

The big problem is the dosage level. Formaldehyde is one the no-no's associated with aspartamine. According to one study it starts collecting in the brain etc in rats at dosages somewhere between 20mg to 200mg per kg of the animal. A 500ml bottle of Diet Coke has 250mg (approx) and Coke Zero has 120mg (approx).

That figure is actually the source of much of the debate regarding how much is required to do the human body damage.

This is a quote from a recent article called "Aspartame Disease: An FDA-Approved Epidemic" by Dr H.J. Roberts (I can post the entire study for anyone interested)

"The current "acceptable daily intake" (ADI) of 50 mg aspartame/kg body weight makes no sense. It represents the projection of animal studies based on lifetime intake! This was clearly stated by previous FDA Commissioner Dr. Frank Young during a U.S. Senate hearing on November 3, 1987. Furthermore, it disregards the usual 100-fold safety factor used by the FDA as a guideline for regulated food additives. The maximum daily intake tolerated by most reactors in my series, based on the predictable recurrence of induced symptoms and signs, ranged from 10 to 18.3 mg/kg."

If you go to the pro-Aspartame site (http://www.aspartame.org), you'll see that they claim to disprove all the "myths" about the dangers of aspartame, because the FDA have "proved" them to be so.

Those who are anti-Aspartame claim that the FDA's pro-aspartame is nothing to do with research and everything to do with the $$$$ they are allegedly paid to fund such "scientific research".

Personally I tend to side with the anti-Aspartame crowd.

But once again, if you half-believe both sides and live by the everything-in-moderation motto, you should be fine.

PAUL

nesf

I'm inclined to agree that 50mg/day is high as a recommended maximum intake. The thing is, achieving that high an intake is bloody difficult for an adult (though a fair bit easier for kids). Even 10mg/kg isn't a trivial amount.


It's still not clear how analogous the rat studies are to what would happen with humans though. Which muddies the water a lot.


Edit: That figure of 20-200mg was only for the formaldehyde component of aspartame sorry. I should have been clearer in my original post. I'm more trying to point out that a lot of the rat studies have been dealing with "unrealistic" dosage levels versus what your average person will consume. It really looks like being similar to alcohol. Yes, you can kill yourself with it either in one session or through long sustained high dosages but most people simply don't drink the amount of alcohol that could land them in this position.