Even diet drinks can make us fat

20 March 2015 - 02:33 By Reuters
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Scientists say diet soda may sabotage weight loss efforts.
Scientists say diet soda may sabotage weight loss efforts.
Image: ©Tischenko Irina/shutterstock.com

People over 65 who drink diet cold drinks every day tend to expand their waistlines by much more than people who prefer other beverages.

For older people, who are already at increased risk of heart and metabolic diseases, the chronic illnesses that go along with excess belly fat add to the health risk, said researcher Sharon Fowler, of the University of Texas Health Science Centre.

To see what role diet cold drinks might play, the study team monitored people over 65 for an average of nine years.

People who said that they did not drink diet cold drinks at all gained an average of nearly 2cm around the waist over the nine years. This compared to nearly 5cm for occasional drinkers and more than 6.5cm for people who drank diet cold drinks every day.

The possibility is that there is a causal relationship at the molecular level in the body that causes waistlines to expand more. Fowler believes this to be the case.

Diet cold drinks are relatively acidic and the acidity, and the artificial sweeteners, might have an effect on gut micro-organisms, which influence how we absorb nutrients.

"Calorie-free does not equal consequence-free," she said.

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