Diet soda could cause obesity and heart disease

A shocking new study has found that drinking diet soda is as bad for your health as the full sugar versions, as it tricks the body into not being able to deal with actual sugar, leading to an equal risk of obesity.

All those times you’ve virtuously ordered a diet soda instead of a regular one may have been in vain, according to a revelatory new study.

Researchers at Purdue University were shocked to find in a five-year study that diet soda can actually have serious negative effects which pretty much cancel out the benefit of dodging the sugar.

In fact a link was found between drinking diet soda and a higher chance of diabetes, heart disease and strokes, making the diet option not look quite so healthy after all.

“Honestly, I thought that diet soda would be marginally better compared to regular soda in terms of health. But in reality, it has a counterintuitive effect,” professor Susan Swithers told the Daily Mail.

The scientists found that when we drink diet soda our body is confused by the fake sugar and then doesn’t know what to do when we get a dose of the real stuff.

Diet drinkers are left with a blood sugar crash that makes them crave something sweet, but when they eat it their bodies don’t release the needed hormones to process it properly.

Worse still, diet soda plays tricks with our reward center in the brain, meaning we need more and more sugar to get the same rush — effectively turning us into sugar junkies.

The study has been challenged by the American Beverage Association and there’s likely to be some serious fallout because, let’s be honest, nobody drinks diet because they prefer the taste.

It also backs up a 2015 paper from The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging which suggested that drinking diet soda even occasionally makes you more likely to put on weight rather than lose it.

It is also worth noting that the research isn’t an endorsement of regular sodas, just an indictment of diet sodas, so this doesn’t give us free reign to go out and binge on full fat sodas. 

But at least we always knew regular sodas weren’t good for us, it’s the fact diet sodas lied to us that really hurts. 

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