I admit it: I drink a Diet Pepsi just about every day. I love the stuff – with a meal, after a long run or when I’m just really thirsty. I’ve always justified the habit with the idea that at least I’m not consuming the huge amounts of sugar in a regular Pepsi. There are 69 grams of sugar and 250 calories in a 20-ounce Pepsi, according to the PepsiCo. website.
Now comes a study that threatens to shatter my carefully crafted self-delusion. Researchers examined data taken periodically for nearly 10 years from 749 Mexican-Americans and European-Americans ages 65 and older in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging.
They determined that daily and occasional diet soda drinkers gained nearly three times as much belly fat as non-drinkers, after they ruled out other factors such as age, exercise and smoking. The diet soda drinkers added an average of 0.83 of an inch to their waist circumferences, while the nondrinkers added 0.3 of an inch. Daily consumers like me gained a striking 1.19 inches.
You don’t want belly fat (visceral fat in technical terms), especially as you reach your later years, when it is associated with greater incidence of mortality, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. High waist circumference is also one component of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that also includes high triglycerides, blood pressure and blood glucose.
According to one study, about a fifth of the U.S. population consumed some form of diet drink on any given day in 2009-10, and 11 percent of those people drank 16 ounces or more.
A couple of caveats here that are worth mentioning: There is considerable debate about the impact of diet soda and artificial sweeteners, with various studies showing conflicting results. Most strangely, the data in this study revealed no relationship between consumption of regular, sugary soda and waist circumference growth.
The research appeared online in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
In a statement, the American Beverage Association said “previous research, including human clinical trials, supports that diet beverages are an effective tool as part of an overall weight management plan. Numerous studies have repeatedly demonstrated the benefits of diet beverages – as well as low calorie sweeteners, which are in thousands of foods and beverages – in helping to reduce calorie intake.”
The Calorie Control Council, which represents producers of no- and low-calorie foods and beverages, also urged that the study “be treated with caution” because of some limitations. The organization noted older people tend to lose muscle mass and gain waist circumference as a result of aging and contended that some important information on Mexican-American lifestyles, diet records and family histories were not available to the researchers.
Nevertheless, she said, there are a number of possible explanations for the findings. A psychological one may be that regular diet soda drinkers conclude (as I have) that they are saving calories by not consuming sugary drinks and let themselves go overboard on other foods.
With so much uncertain, the study’s author noted, one safe path is to drink water, milk, 100 percent fruit juice, tea and coffee.
