Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Diet soda = poor appetite control

I used to be a diet soda junkie, esp in Med School and Residency, but have virtually stopped drinking them after reading many reports on how they seem to increase weight gain.

However, over the weekend, I picked up a big bottle of diet cola with a couple videos on a whim. What I noticed was that I have crazy cravings for comfort food and ended up finishing the leftovers from dinner, which were not exactly health food.

I have not had these kind of feelings in months and it was striking to me. The only real variable was the diet cola. Definitely plan to avoid this in the future, especially in the evenings when eating in front of the telly is a risk.

Just an anecdote, but definitely fits with the research.
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1 comment:

  1. Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDApril 25, 2011 at 2:26 PM

    Hi Henry,

    I happened to come across your post while researching the relationship between artificial sweeteners and weight gain (we are working on the third edition of Intuitive Eating).

    Anyway, thought I’d share a paper, (link below), which concludes that artificial sweeteners may increase appetite, because they do not activate the postingestive component of the food reward
    pathways---resulting in less satisfaction in eating, which fuels further food seeking behavior.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/pdf/yjbm_83_2_101.pdf

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