Diet Soda; Is It Good Or Bad If You Are On A Diet?
The debate over whether diet soda is a dieter’s friend or a dieter’s enemy seems to become more heated every day.
One side is saying it is a great beverage for people trying to lose weight and who want something more exciting to drink than water. The other side is saying it won’t help you lose weight but can actually make you gain weight.
I wish I could give you a definitive answer and say either, “Yes, diet soda is fine to drink when you are trying to lose weight.” Or “No, diet soda will not help you lose weight.” But I cannot find enough clear cut evidence to wholeheartedly support either statement.
What I have gleaned from my research is this:
Setting aside the issue of whether or not diet soda will aid or impede your weight loss is the issue of the chemicals it contains and whether or not you want to be ingesting them on a daily basis in significant quantities.
There’s also the issue of diet soda that contains caffeine. If you are mainlining Diet Coke, you have most likely formed a dependency to caffeine which will cause a period of headaches, when (or if) you decide to break that dependency. Large amounts of caffeine can also disrupt your sleep, can make you jittery, and can speed up your heart rate.
Some people complain of fluid retention when drinking diet soda and blame the sodium content in the it. Most diet soda/pop is very low in sodium. The culprit in fluid retention might be the artificial sweetener. Some recent research is showing that people react differently to artificial sweeteners, causing fluid retention in some people.
If you don’t want to give up diet soda but it is making you retain fluid, try switching to a soda with a different artificial sweetener in it and see if that makes a difference. For example, if you are currently drinking one sweetened with Aspartame, try switching to one sweetened with Splenda or saccharine (NutraSweet). Also try drinking no diet soda for a least a week.
Drinking diet soda does seem to make some people think they can have that candy bar (ever had a Diet Coke and a king size snickers bar?) because they are saving calories with the diet soda/pop so the higher calorie food is okay. Likewise, some people will order a diet soda/pop after super-sizing their fast food meal. Drinking it lulls some people into thinking that switching out regular soda for diet means they can eat more food, but what usually happens instead is weight gain, which is then blamed on the diet soda/pop.
Personally, I get cravings for salty foods when I drink a lot of diet soda. My physician thinks it’s the artificial sweetener that’s causing those cravings. So instead of drinking a 12 pack of Diet Coke every day like I used to (yes, I’m being serious) I now try to have just one can of regular soda a day. I’m not always successful at doing that and sometimes drive to the store for an “emergency 12 pack of Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, or Diet Mountain Dew, but eliminating most diet beverages from my day-to-day diet has calmed my cravings.
So you’ll have to make the judgment call for yourself on whether or not to include diet soda/pop in your weight loss or weight management plan. Some people say it helps them with weight management; others say it’s a weight gaining tool. The only way to know for sure what it is for you is to try it and see.
WHY CANT THE SODA COMPANIES MAKE DiET SODA TASTE JUST AS GOOD AS REGULAR SODA?
I hate the taste of diet soda. It has no calories or carbs. Coca-cola and many other soda companies make a diet version of the regular kind. To me the regular kind taste good. But the diet soda taste terrible! Why cant they make diet soda with no calories taste exactly the same as regular soda?
Why cant they make something healthy that actually taste just as good?
because it is made with different ingredients.
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Um, that might be because there's no sugar in diet.
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trust me, you cannot tell the difference in diet dr. pepper. i've had it by accident, & i HATE taste of diet soda…until i actually saw the bottle, would have never known.
TRY IT< I SWEAR
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my taste buds
Because that disgusting taste is from artificial sweeteners.
That's the only way they could make it diet.
Fake sugar.
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to make a soda diet, you must take out evry ingredien tthat has any amount of calories in it. then they must take something that will imitate the original flavor and add it instead. so no matter how hard they try, diet soda will always taste a bit different.
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well its obviously different. there's a price to no calories/carbs. but coke zero tastes very similar to the regular one
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i beg to differ about the diet dr. pepper. All i drink is Dr. pepper and now that i'm dieting a bit i've tried to change, it still has that diet after taste. SO don't try it. THe only thing i've drank that i kind of like diet is Sprite.
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BECAUSE SUGAR TASTES BETTER THAN ARTiFICiAL SWEETENERS ALSO CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
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There are many types of sugars for various uses and none of them get into a diet drink, so sweetener manufactuers keep coming up with new substitute-sugar entrants in their battle for this gigantic market. The one certain advantage for the unsweetened variety is the avoidance of the huge number of calories leading to type-2 diabetes in many middle-aged and older people. Over-use of sugar can also disturb the blood-sugar levels, especially in young children.
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Tell you what, if you think it's so simple, you develop an artificial sweetener with no calories, no after taste but that still tastes like sugar. They've spent millions trying to make one, and still haven't pulled it off.
So, good luck to you.
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they do..coke zero
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I can taste the difference in both diet dr. pepper and coke zero. The fake sugar leaves such a bad aftertaste it sometimes makes me throw up.
i have often wondered this as well, but i guess until scientists come up with a better artificial sweetener, or find out how to take the calories out of regular sugar, we just have to either drink the calories or find a way around the taste.
I would just like to add that the artificial sweeteners may be very dangerous to our health. We are just starting to see the long term effects of some of the first ones invented, but things like Splenda are new, and we won't truely know if they are safe for many many years.
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coke zero is pretty good. and remember coke C2?! that was so good!!! it tasted like old coke!!!!
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Chemical sweeteners, no matter how sweet tasting, also taste like chemicals. The chemicals are bad for the body because they have to be eliminated before they become toxic.
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