Is Diet Soda bad for you??

I love soda, but used to drink so much of it that I decided to give it up.  I stopped drinking soda for 8 months, then when I had my first sip, it was so sweet I couldn't drink it.  But I still like the carbonation, so I drink diet soda (plus it is 0 cals). 

Is diet soda bad for you?  It has no calories, but I still feel like I could be missing something...

I'm super addicted to soda myself, but I have been trying to lay off. While listening to the radio one day I heard that for every diet soda you drink per day, you increase your chance of GAINING weight by 40%. I used to drink 3-4 per day, but I have cut it down now to 1 every 2 or 3 days after hearing that! I've found that flavored sparkling water has helped a lot...but I'm wondering if the sugar substitute is still dangerous/addictive. It is sweetened with Splenda, but I think that the only reason why Splenda is "safe" is because there isn't enough research yet to say that it's not.

I also wonder if drinking the flavored sparkling water counts toward your daily water intake?

jacqlin what the study really said is the more diet soda you drink the more likely you are to be overweight:

Diet Soda No Smoking Gun

Fowler is quick to note that a study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity. More likely, she says, it shows that something linked to diet soda drinking is also linked to obesity.

"One possible part of the explanation is that people who see they are beginning to gain weight may be more likely to switch from regular to diet soda," Fowler suggests. "But despite their switching, their weight may continue to grow for other reasons. So diet soft-drink use is a marker for overweight and obesity."

I believe diet pop is fine. I have one 20oz bottle 5 days a week (while I'm at work) between breakfast and lunch just to keep myself from feeling hungry. Water works too, but has a shorter effect (Not that a substitute diet soda for water).

I've been drinking diet pop for over 5 months now and I'm not addicted to it, don't have headaches/migranes, and I'm still losing 2-3lbs a week with healthy eating and excersicing.

Aspartame has been said to link to cancer and has been tested on lab rats, but how much dosage are they giving them? It didn't say. So maybe only the 4-10 can pop a day people are the ones that are getting the cancer? Diet soda is very popular and lot of people drink it, but a lot of people are not dying from cancer because of diet soda.

It's only called self-control.

Just my thoughts on it.

The whole 'drinking diet soda increases your chance of becoming obese' thing, I've heard, is solely because people who are already obese switch from regular to diet soda and think that's the only reason they've become obese, or that it's a quick fix. or something like that.

I've been drinking 2-4 liters of diet coke a day since I was 4 years old. It has no impact on my weight.

The rats in the aspartame study were being fed more than 10 times as much aspartame as a human could possibly consume in a day, every day. Every doctor I've been to has said that even though ideally I wouldn't drink as much soda, the chance of me getting cancer from it is pretty much zero.

The reason diet soda is bad for you is because of the unnatural sweeteners.

When you use a chemical sweetener, it has to be processed in the liver.  This takes up to 8 hours.

These sweeteners still raise your blood sugar level.

Accumulated sugar consumption, be it natural or not, causes you to become lethargic.  You move less.  You gain more.

Sugar is out of your system in 2 hours.

Sugar depletes your calcium.

Carbonation depletes your calcium, also.

Bad for your eyes too.

You would do well to learn to drink something else... like tea sweetened with apple juice.  it's really good.

I learned this from a Nutritianist while trying to manage my diabetes...

I went macrobiotic and don't have diabete's anymore.

Good luck and God bless Michio Kushi...  My saviour.

By the way...  If you want more info on aspartame...  drop me a line.  I have loads of info on the hazards of eating it.

Never let that poison touch your lips.

My view on drinking diet soda is more positive if, of course, done in moderation.

If a diet vanilla or cherry coke once a day keeps you from eating a cookie or a piece of cake, then I see no harm. My diet contains no sweets whatsoever, but I usually do have a diet soda a day. If it's coke or pepsi, it's diet - and if it's not flavored like vanilla or cherry, it's caffeine free. Otherwise it's sprite zero.

And where do you all get the idea that diet soda has so much sodium? The can of diet pepsi I have here has 35 mg - 1% your DV.

The studies that you hear about lab rats getting cancer or their bones whithering away or whatever, they are inaccurate. The doses of the chemicals they get are so great that for a human to see an equal effect, they'd have to drink 10 or 20 diet sodas a day. Which, I bet some people do.

And as for the obesity study, I agree. I work at a restaurant in Universal Studios, and when people order a bacon double cheeseburger, they order a diet coke to go with it. So they think, "I'm saving so many calories by drinking a diet soda that I can eat this burger!" Wrong, tubbies. :D

i know this topic is several years old but I have to beg to differ. When I drink diet soda, I get a bitter after-taste. To me, it is not addictive. It's almost like never drinking, and then having a shot of tequila, lol.