Is diet soda a bad habit? There’s no replacement for a balanced diet

Perhaps, like many people, you have been reading this wording on diet soda cans for more than 20 years and have no idea what it means:
PHENYLKETURONICS: CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE.

Though it sounds like a high-tech haiku, it turns out that phenylketuronics are a kind of people who have a metabolic disorder that does not allow them to process phenyalanines, which are a chemical byproduct of aspartame, the artificial sweetener that makes diet drinks what they are and is also found in “Equal” and “Nutrasweet.”

According to Adali Hernandez, a clinical dietician with the University Medical Center in El Paso, if you have the condition, known as PKU, it was probably diagnosed at birth.

Nevertheless, suspicion immediately sprang up around the strange new warnings when they appeared in the 1980s. For a short time, the common myth was that diet drinks would fuse the synapses in your head together.

“You’ll find out in 20 years,” said the health-conscious ones.

Well, it is more than 20 years later, and while there are no studies that indicate that anyone has had their synapses fuse together, a study published last February might be of concern, Hernandez said.

A University of Miami Miller School of Medicine study followed more than 2,500 New Yorkers over nine years and found that people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events, including stroke and heart attack. The study was presented at an American Stroke Association conference in Los Angeles and reported by MSNBC.com.

However, Hernandez said a single study cannot take into account all the many factors that might be involved in the results. Indeed, in the story posted on MSNBC, the report’s lead author said it is yet to be determined if people are replacing “saved sugar calories” with unhealthy choices.

Hernandez said the issue is deserving of more studies, but she also said people who drink diet soda every day might want to expand their beverage options to include water, tea or fruit juices.

Other concerns about diet sodas

There are no shortage of worrisome studies on the Internet that claim diet sodas cause a number of alarming health side-effects.

You can scroll through the list: scarring of kidney tissue, bone loss, weight gain, damage to tooth enamel, and all kinds of risks associated with aspartame based on rodent studies.

Regarding reports of people gaining weight while drinking diet soda, Hernandez said this also needs to be better studied. There are no nutrients in diet soda, she said, so it is possible people have an imbalanced diet, and are relying too heavily on diet soda for weight loss while not looking carefully at their overall food intake.

Moderation and balance in the diet are more important than substituting diet sodas and hoping they will compensate for poor nutrition, she said.
Moderation and balance are also important in analyzing the results of any given study, said Rosa Lopez, a registered dietician with the New Mexico Department of Health in Las Cruces.

One important source of information for consumers is the Food and Drug Administration, she said. Studies conducted by the FDA over many years have resulted in only two significant precautions regarding diet sodas: 1) they are not recommended for use by pregnant women; 2) they are not recommended for use by either men or women who may have an issue with fertility and are trying to become pregnant.

“That’s to be on the safe side,” she said.

If anything, she said, the fact that there are two known carcinogens used in the caramel coloring in both regular and diet sodas should be of equal concern, but again, FDA studies have indicated the odds are so low that anyone would contract cancer from drinking sodas that it is not even an issue that anyone thinks about, she said.

13 cans a day

The FDA has established different safety limits for the various kinds of artificial sweeteners on the market, Lopez said, and they are actually conservative.

The safe limit for diet sodas is 13 cans a day, she said.

“Some people would say that is a lot, and others would say that’s not near enough,” she said.

Other safe limits set by the FDA include seven packs of day of Sweet’n'Low (pink package), 33 packs a day of Equal (blue package) and 36 to 39 packs a day of Splenda, she said.

Sweet’n'Low and Equal are protein-based — that is, when they break down in your body, it’s a protein, she said. Splenda, on the other hand, is derived from sugar. Its claim to fame is that when it heats up, it stays sweet.

There is no doubt that the artificial sweeteners are highly processed, she said, but so are many of the foods in our diet.

It is possible that the phosphorous used to carbonate the drinks can impact both bone loss and kidney damage in people who have problems with those issues, she said. However, the acidity level in the drinks is not significant enough to damage tooth enamel, she said.

UMC’s Hernandez noted that the 2009 study that indicated the possibility of kidney damage was limited to women. More studies are needed on the issue, she said, and need to include men.

It’s not natural to derive a sweetener that is calorie-free, Lopez said. If people can live without the drinks, that’s a choice they can make, she said. However, consumers like to have options, so we have them, she said.

Many issues in nutrition are about balance and moderation, she said. For example, Lopez said she will drink diet sodas, but goes nowhere near the 13-can FDA limit, she said.

Another important consideration in evaluating health concerns, she said, is to analyze every study that is quoted in a media or Internet source.

“It’s important to know the population of people that were studied, the level of whatever food or substance they were given, and what the actual findings were,” she said.

Certain people will always need to be extra careful about their diet, especially people with immune system disorders or diabetes, and the elderly and small children, she said.

It is true, she said, that by drinking one can of diet soda instead of regular soda every day, a person can expect to be 15 pounds lighter in a year’s time because of that decision.

But that’s simple diet math — reducing calories consumed or increasing calories burned should result in weight loss, even if it’s a little more than a pound per month, as in the aforementioned example.

It doesn’t mean diet soda consumption is a catalyst for increased weight loss. In fact, a recent study from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio recently assessed 474 elderly diet soda drinkers, finding that, over the course of a decade, their waistline expanded considerably more than those that don’t drink diet sodas.

The study’s abstract, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: “Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised: they may be free of calories, but not of consequences.”

The study is not conclusive, but it falls in line with Lopez’ advice.

“Also, it’s important to remember there are limits. Even if a food is natural, that doesn’t mean it’s good to have it in unlimited quantities,” she said.

“There is no gimmick, there is usually no one magical thing that is going to make all the difference in regards to your health,” she said. “You have to make choices. It’s more complicated.”

Jeff Barnet is a former reporter for Healthy U

Diet and Weight loss with Bill & Sheila
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