
Study: Diet soda doesn't help you lose weight - DevUps
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/10/diet-soda-health-problems/2507219/
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eric970
Er, this whole topic can be a little misleading. I haven't found a single
reputable study that claims diet soda itself causes weight gain. Rather, just
as the reasoning in this article suggests, the only scientific fact they
present is that the consumption of diet soda itself does not encourage weight
loss.

Side note: Do any brands really advertise drinking their diet soda as a method
of (actual) weight loss? I can't think of any that actually present it this
way.

It goes on to say that substituting sugary soda for diet soda isn't enough for
most people to stop gaining weight. This is probably because you're likely to
substitue the calories and sugars for something else, since your body notices
its getting less of something and will crave it.

Yet you have things like this:

"One large study found that people who drank artificially sweetened soda were
more likely to experience weight gain than those who drank non-diet soda"

This again is a correlation with the typical behavior of a diet soda drinker.
They're not drinking diet soda because they want to lose weight. Rather,
they're drinking it because they don't want to gain weight. They could have a
terrible diet overall and this alone does nothing but move the problem over
into, say, consuming two scoops of ice scream after dinner everyday. All
because the soda they had during lunch didn't satisfy their bodily craving of
refined sugars.

So this is a case of correlation not being causation. These types of articles
do nothing but encourage this error to propagate. Perhaps the term "diet soda"
is misleading in itself, but perhaps telling people that drinking a calorie-
free drink will make them gain weight is just as silly as telling people it
will make them lose weight.

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v1tyaz
Very misleading. In fact, the author of this study is a behavioral
neurologist, hence studying human behavior relating to diet drinks rather than
diet drinks themselves. Drink as much diet soda as you like, if the rest of
your diet is healthy then you're fine. This article is just typical fear-
mongering against artificial sweeteners, I'm surprised it got up voted here.

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DanBC
> I'm surprised it got up voted here

A disturbing number of HN readers have batshit insane viewpoints on food.

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coldtea
Yes, because being sceptical of substances that get approved after some hasty
testing, with big push from a few large multinationals is "batshit insane".

The sceptic thing is to thing scientists are above human and infallible. And
to ignore tons of precedents of BS substances and drugs being brough to the
market, only to be recalled a few years or even a few decades later.

Because "science" is a magic word, that somehow overcomes systemic problems in
how burecreacies work, how people (including whole teams) react to money, and
how judgements can be wrong. To suggest otherwise is "batshit insane".

After all, those doing the safety testing can take their sweet time to study
long term results, aren't ever lured by money, and understand all possible
effects of the substances they approve equally well as the collective
scientific community understands non artificial substances used for centuries
or millenia, right?

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grannyg00se
Study: Sunblock doesn't help reverse skin cancer.

~~~
notahacker
The best line from the article was the opening one: _" Diet soda, it turns
out, may not be the panacea for weight loss that we all thought — and many of
us hoped — it was."_

It would make a very nice lead in to an Onion article.

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redwood
I think what's misleading is not the guidance of this article: but rather the
idea that calories are calories.

We've been told calories are calories are calories so many times.

BUT

Calories are clearly not treated the same way by different people: two people
can eat the same thing, and live the same lifestyle, and one will be
overweight. Should we really assume that the same notion can't apply to an
individual who treats themselves differently?

What's the elephant in the room? Metabolism!! And whether your body _wants_ to
store weight.

What you eat affects both metabolism and whether your body wants to store
weight. Sure, everyone's going to be require their own unique mix.

BUT the important point is that what you eat has reflexive impact on how your
body uses what you eat and thus on whether you'll be overweight.

So calories are not the only thing. And thus it's entirely possible that a
calorie-free substance, which has impacts on metabolism and how your body
decides what to store, can impact weight gain.

~~~
kalleboo
> What's the elephant in the room? Metabolism!!

The stuff I've seen says that metabolism can only account for about 300
kcal/day difference, until you get into extreme cases like "starvation mode"
where the body starts to shutdown (women's periods stop, etc). In the end
there's no way around the first law of thermodynamics.

Most anecdotes about "but he eats the same stuff I do!" are just the extremely
common cases of people under and overestimating caloric value.

~~~
dllthomas
_" In the end there's no way around the first law of thermodynamics."_

The first law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system, and doesn't
_automatically_ have much of anything to do with whether something as complex
as a body stores fat or not.

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fvrghl
Study: Marketing doesn't accurately represent product

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noobface
Drew Curtis wants his comment back

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kalleboo
Summary: Fat, unhealthy people drink diet soda. We don't know if it's
correlation or causation. Lots of people have different theories, but they're
all over the map.

Reading articles like this in news media sources is so frustrating since they
only ask questions and never answer any of them.

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area51org
Isn't the point of diet soda to reduce the amount of sugar you consume while
not having to actually give up soda? Who died and said Diet Coke would make
you lose weight?

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webwanderings
You don't need a study to know that none of the Soda drinks are of any help to
any humans. Humans lived without soda for very long time until someone
invented Pepsis and Cokes and .... and they are not something you use to help
yourself for anything. So why bother?

~~~
KMag
Your post could be paraphrased as "It's obvious X isn't helpful because X
isn't ancient and X isn't helpful. Why do people do/use X?"

Please use better logic. Also, fetishizing ancient things is an impediment to
progress.

The long term survival of the human species in the presence of something is
(weak) evidence that the thing isn't harmful, but the logical inversion isn't
true. That is, the survival of the human species for a long time without
something is neither a valid argument for nor against that thing's benefit.

~~~
webwanderings
Using or not using a so-called useless thing is not a question of human
survival. Humans are consuming soda and it has been proven that it isn't
HELPFUL. So the question is really about the continuous waste of time,
resources and energy (in producing and consuming) versus that of the intent
behind all these (time, resources and energy).

Unless of course you believe that producing/consuming Soda is HELPFUL in a
sense that it is helpful towards economy (someone's making and people are
consuming it). In this case, I have no argument here because the intent is
clear enough.

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vittore
First I though it is smart commercials from Panic and their Diet Coda

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gcatalfamo
Wow, people really needed a study to finally realize it.

~~~
kiba
If we didn't study the obvious, we wouldn't figure out that the earth is not
the center of the universe.

~~~
baq
actually, it is, for some values of universe (observable, etc.)

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loginalready
As far as I know, the US is the only country where sugar-free soda is referred
to as "diet".

The notion that it would help lose weight is totally new to me, I'm presuming
that is because most countries outside the US would never allow it to be
marketed that way.

~~~
corresation
It's called diet here in Canada as well. In any case, diet does not and has
never meant "lose weight". If you pay any attention to what you consume, you
are "on a diet".

~~~
jdminhbg
> In any case, diet does not and has never meant "lose weight".

It plainly does, whether that usage makes you happy or not:
[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diet?s=t](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diet?s=t)

~~~
corresation
One of five possible definitions includes losing weight in no universe means
that diet means "lose weight" \-- you don't get to choose what Diet means on a
can of soda.

Diet is nothing more than the things you eat, and a "diet" can be to lose,
gain, maintain weight, or simply to pay attention to what you eat for the
purposes of healthy eating. A diet soda is a soda modified to reduce/eliminate
sugar, which again is in no way manifestly correlated with losing weight.

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JacksonGariety
Of course it doesn't. For the same reason Subway doesn't have fresh
ingredients.

~~~
KMag
You're saying the body makes analogous supply and demand decisions about
energy balance that Subway management makes when setting up their supply
chain? Please elaborate, because this is either a deep insight beyond my
understanding or else shallow and simplistic. I hope it's the former.

~~~
JacksonGariety
It's simplistic but not shallow.

People are in general far too trusting of commercial labels like "diet" and
"fresh" when they should be making healthy choices about their companies they
buy from instead of the products.

