Research finally shows why diet soft drinks fatten....

Today's Post:  Friday, 5-31-2013

It is well established that people who drink diet soft drinks have more belly fat and are more likely to have type 2 diabetes than people who drink regular soft drinks.

Regular soft drinks are very effective fatteners and produce enough blood sugar surge to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

So if you just look at those statistics, no one in their right mind who wants to lose fat or avoid diabetes would ever drink any diet soft drinks.

But there are two problems. 

1.   Because diet soft drinks have no sugar some less knowledgeable experts still recommend them to people trying to lose fat and to people who already have type 2 diabetes.

And, some people successful at fat loss do drink diet soft drinks.  (Most of them are relentless in how well they do everything else and have cut back to more like one or two a day instead of the 5 or 6 most people who drink diet soft drinks consumes however.)

2.  The bad looking results no one questions MIGHT be caused by fatter people choosing to drink diet soft drinks.  And, they might be caused with the fast food and junk food soft drink drinkers are more likely to eat.

Worse, both these things are true at least in part. 

But if the diet soft drinks DO cause these things directly, no one who knows this would expect them to be helpful for fat loss or good health.

A previous study found that rats fed artificial sweeteners ate more calories than the control group fed food sweetened sugar. (If I remember correctly the rats fed artificial sweeteners were also heavier and fatter.)

But that's not quite enough.  Both being mammals sometimes rats and people do have similar reactions to many things.  BUT sometimes they differ.  Like the bad statistics that diet soft drinkers are fatter etc, this might not be true of people -- just true in rats!

Since the soft drink makers would lose over half their profits if people stopped drinking diet soft drinks and have not been trustworthy on use of high fructose corn syrup in regular soft drinks, I've been of the opinion that the dreadful results HAVE been caused mostly by the diet soft drink consumption itself.

I also have believed ever since I saw it that the rat study IS likely true for people.

But my recommendation to stop diet soft drinks AND regular soft drinks if you want to lose fat or not gain it would be stronger if there was more direct evidence that diet soft drinks fatten.

BINGO!

That study just showed up in my inbox this morning in the Medical News Today newsletter!

Artificial Sweeteners Affect Metabolism And Insulin Levels

http://mnt.to/a/4dNc

The artificial sweetener sucralose (Splenda) is capable of changing the

body's insulin response, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine

reported in the journal Diabetes Care.

Simply put, diet soft drinks and artificial sweeteners cause an extra big insulin surge according to this study.

Remember that the average drinker of diet soft drinks consumes more than 5 a day.

That means that in people who drink diet soft drinks this is a BIG effect!

This one IS the smoking gun!

Your body acclimates to repeated insulin surges and stops lowering blood sugar, insulin resistance, when that happens. Then blood sugar levels get higher and many people get type 2 diabetes.

This study shows drinking diet soft drinks provides the repeated insulin surges.  Oops!

But high insulin levels have a second effect.  They cause your body to store calories as fat and prevent you from using the calories you have in fat storage even when you actually need them!

BINGO again!  Drinking diet soft drinks is a direct cause of adding extra fat and having trouble removing it.  Yikes!

This is extremely important news.

Tell everyone you know.

So the word from here is that if you drink diet soft drinks after learning this, you care more about the soft drink companies profits than you do about how fat you are or whether you have type 2 diabetes or not.

Is that what you want?