It’s not the soda that's bad for you so much as the negative effects of the artificial sweeteners it contains.
For starters, because of your body chemistry, drinking the faux-sugar may actually cause you to gain weight – perhaps even more so than having regular old sugar. Here’s Dr. Mark Hyman on the topic:
In addition to its potential to actually bring about weight gain, studies have linked artificial sweeteners to other ill health effects. Aspartme, which Nutrasweet and Equal are made of, for example, contains toxic methanol. The sweetener was also once listed by the Pentagon as a biochemical warfare agent, and has been linked to leukemia and lymphoma.
The good news is that there are plenty of tasty alternative, once you break your diet soda addiction.
- Tea is refreshing and has lots of health benefits. Try making some homemade iced tea, or asking for a glass of unsweetened tea when you are at a restaurant.
- Squeeze fresh lemon and lime juice into a pitcher of filtered water and top with cucumber slices. Not only is this drink refreshing, but the citrus aids in detoxing your system.
- Add add seltzer water to fresh squeezed juice for a sweeter, tasty beverage with a little zing. Use one part juice to two or three parts seltzer.
There’s no reason we can’t all enjoy yummy beverages besides water. The idea is to stay away from harmful additives and synthetic sweeteners that end up causing more harm than good. Here’s to your good health!
Nikki Ostrower is the founder of NAO Nutrition, a private practice in New York City specializing in weight loss, eating disorders, autism, fatigue and heart disease. She has a degree in Business Management from SUNY Binghamton and a certificate from The Academy of Healing Nutrition.
Have a question for Nikki Ostrower? Send it to her here.
Ron J. says:
The metabolism of aspartame does not damage the body because: the quantity of methanol produced is too small to disrupt normal physiological processes;[citation needed] methanol and formaldehyde are natural by-products of human metabolism and are safely processed by various enzymes; there is more methanol in some natural fruit juices and alcoholic beverages than is derived from aspartame ingestion and even large doses of pure methanol have been shown in non-human primate studies to lead to ample accumulation of formic acid (as formate), while no formaldehyde was detected
Only one more word needed to be said here: FAIL
Cris Bisch says:
I've been reading about and concerned about Aspartame since the 80's and have boycotted all products containing Aspartame ever since. Read or listen to the audio report on ODEO June 3, 2009 for an overview of the warnings of using Aspartame: "Aspartame a Danger to your Health and Fitness" @ http://tinyurl.com/ocxjta, and The Case Against Aspartame @ http://www.squidoo.com/TheCaseAgainstAspartame, with links to books and a DVD and videos.
Elli A. says:
Ron maybe you want to read again the page you quoted from. In case you don’t, here is an example:
"The Department of Justice instituted grand jury proceedings against Searle for fraud in one of its drug studies. In December 1975, the FDA placed a stay on the aspartame approval, preventing Searle from marketing aspartame."
When you look at the history of aspartame, the first thing you will notice is the large amount of investigations, fraud claims, big money, heavy special interest involvement and so on. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
Now you choose who makes your food. Why can't they simply get it approved on its own merit, and need to apply such heavy lobbying and FDA oiling?
The methanol section on the wiki page looks like something that was carefully written by a company scientist. It has very non-wikipedia tone. Interestingly this is starting to be a problem in Wikipedia in general, and some internet gurus claim is the beginning of the end of this great resource.
I don’t know if you are in the take as well and do PR, or genuinely believe that what was written in that section is pure science. Wikipedia is not the word of god and is heavily influenced by marketing. I would not go as far as predicting the end of it, but for anything commercially related, very likely.
In terms of grading other peoples knowledge, please keep those opinions for yourself.
Steve S. says:
Tea stains teeth. Water has been known to KILL people. Using words like "may" and "perhaps" as well as "studies" without citations (or fair consideration of their methodological limitations) seems a bit too much like Chicken Little ringing the panic alarm. Our bodies are pretty good at filtering out toxins and wastes products. The video self-contradicts itself by claiming BOTH that artificial sweeteners cause obesity (12 secs) and then, not even a minute later, that such conclusions are NOT VALID based on the type of research (1 min) examining the issues (correlational studies cannot/do not speak to or support causal conclusions). At 3:12 he says it "prevents weight gain" then follows with "makes you gain weight" - jeeze. MUST have misspoke, but still - also RATS are not humans. The evidence presented is not what is needed to support the view that diet sodas ARE bad, only that they MIGHT be bad. Or, think of it as diet sodas MIGHT be GOOD for you. If you want to feel proud to have made the switch to water, great! Congratulations! But don't step over the line without adequate or even convincing support.
Elli A. says:
Greg if you google it you will find many references to Aspartame being on the pentagons list. I did not see any real pentagon document, but it is widely written and mentioned by doctors and journalists. How can you use it as a weapon, interesting question. What I read is that it is similar effect to gulf war syndrome, basically reducing the effectiveness of soldiers by reducing their mental ability.
Its true that there is a lot of misinformation and hysteria in the green movement, this does not seem to be the case. In terms of methanol, what I read is that aspartame degrades to methanol over time, a process accelerated by temperature. Like a can of diet soda left in a hot car.
“Aspartame was once listed by the Pentagon on an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare agents submitted to Congress,” Martini stated in a Feb. 19, 2003 letter to the EU Parliament.
Curiously, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was instrumental in achieving Food and Drug Administration marketing approval for aspartame as an artificial sweetener in the 80s while working as a hired gun for the Searle Corporation.
Rob F. says:
My friend who is in his mid forties was kinda addicted to diet coke. He has about a 5-10 history of gout attacks. After trying several Prescription drugs that did violent things to his body he read something about Aspartme being related to gout attacks. As soon as he stopped drinking Diet Coke the gout attacks have stopped COMPLETELY. This is a true story. He has not had a single gout attack since avoiding Diet Coke and Aspartme.
Greg I. says:
Elli,
I'm surprised to see you defend this article. Note that, in addition to challenging the accuracy of the claim, I also charged you with slinging innuendo in making it. What you have said thus far doesn't seem to speak to the latter point at all.
So lets deal with the accuracy of the claim. In my google search I didn't really see anyone citing any documents; though I did see a great many people repeating the claim that this was a warfare agent. Of course getting a bunch of people on the Internet to say the same thing isn't tough -ever google 'fake moon landing'?- so I'm not sure the mere fact that the claim is widely repeated is evidence of its truth.
However I will point out that many of the websites that list the claim look highly suspect and they repeat a great many claims that have been throughly debunked over the years. So it does look like they traffic in misinformation. Or at least, are really sloppy with their research.
Viz.
Snopes
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp
Or 'Time'
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,990167,00.html
Or, if you are up for it. this article from MIT published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/aspartame-0916.html
All these debunk a great many of the common claims made about Aspartame including the Methanol claim the original article makes.
So much for accuracy. Lets examine whether the claim is advanced solely as an innuendo. This seems undeniable. The claim is made as a way of casting dispersions on the product. The implicit claim is that this stuff is so nasty the Pentagon turned it into a weapon. But of course this implicit claims is garbage. The stuff is obviously not a weapon; it would be useless in war. As such, the only value of the claim is to get this "its a weapon!" suggestion into the reader's mind in order to bias a sloppy thinker against the product. This is innuendo; it is only useful to those who wield weak arguments!