News :
Study says diet sodas may tip scales to obesity
Web Posted, June 12 2005 -- Just when
you thought the news about losing weight couldn't get any worse, try
this: A review of 26 years of patient data found that people who drink
diet soft drinks were more likely to become overweight.
Not only that, but the more diet sodas they drank, the
higher their risk of later becoming overweight or obese — 65 percent
more likely for each diet drink per day.
The findings, the latest from the long-term San Antonio
Heart Study, took even the researchers by surprise.
"I was baffled," said Sharon Fowler, a faculty
associate at the University of Texas Health Science Center, who presented
the data Saturday at the American Diabetes Association's 65th Annual
Scientific Sessions in San Diego, Calif.
Researchers looked at questionnaires and medical records
for 1,177 patients who began enrolling in the study in 1979. All had
weights considered either normal or overweight, but not obese.
The volunteers were asked how many soft drinks per day
they usually drank and whether they were regular or diet — or a combination
of each. The researchers followed up with them over many years.
Drinking any soda — regular or diet — was linked to a higher
risk of becoming overweight. But when the researchers adjusted the data
to account for differences in age, sex and ethnicity, they found that
regular soft drinks had very little connection with serious weight gain.
Diet drinks, however, did.
The researchers are quick to point out that their findings
are not proof that drinking diet soft drinks causes people to become
heavy. It could be that as they began gaining weight, they switched
from regular to diet drinks.
"People who were normal weight, one out of four of
them at the time of our study were drinking diet drinks," Fowler
said. "People who were overweight but not obese, one out of three
of them were drinking the diet drinks. Definitely they were voting with
their feet. They were obviously trying to avoid gaining further weight
or repeating a family history."
However, the idea that diet sodas can lead to weight gain
isn't new. Last year, a group from Purdue University found that when
rats were fed the equivalent of diet soda, they ate more high-calorie
food afterwards than did rats fed the same amount of a drink sweetened
with high-calorie sweetener.
The group hypothesized that the body regulates its energy
needs through appetite and that it learns to associate sweetness with
a lot of calories. But when fed artificially sweetened foods and drinks
on a regular basis, the body figures it can no longer use taste to estimate
calorie consumption. It assumes that it can eat all the sweets it wants,
without consequences.
But noted obesity researcher Barry M. Popkin cautioned
that the San Antonio researchers don't have enough information to draw
conclusions about diet soft drink consumption and obesity risk.
"One needs to study in a complex, sequential way how
earlier diet drink intake affects subsequent weight changes, but these
scholars have not done that," said Popkin, head of nutrition epidemiology
at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
UTHSC's Fowler acknowledged that the findings raise more
questions than they answer. However, she pointed out that when people
drink any kind of soda, it is instead of healthier beverages.
"I don't think it's a strong enough association to
make a public health recommendation, but personally, I think people
would be much healthier drinking water."
(source :
www.mysanantonio.com)
