Diet Soft Drinks Make You Fat
New Study Shows Diet Soft Drinks Make You Fat
A new study shows that people who drink diet soft drinks don't lose weight. They actually gain weight.
The findings come from a study conducted by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. The data collected from eight years of research was reported at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego last June.
Here's what Fowler had to say about the study. "What didn't surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity. What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher."
When the researchers looked closely at the data they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.
"There was a 41% increase risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day, " says Fowler.
Fowler's team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64. Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.
For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:
· 26% for up to ½ can each day
· 30.4% for ½ to one can each day
· 32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
· 47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.
For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:
· 36.5% for up to ½ can each day
· 37.5% for ½ to one can each day
· 54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
· 57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.
