Diet soda may cause weight gain: Study

Consuming diet soda and calorie-free drinks high in artificial sweeteners may be linked with putting on weight through increasing blood sugar levels, two new researches suggest.

After analyzing data from a 10-year study on 474 people, University of Texas researchers found that the more diet drinks a participant used, more pounds he/she would put on.

The findings showed a 70 percent greater increase in the waist circumference of the participants who used to drink diet soda.

In addition, individuals who regularly drink two or more diet sodas a day are about 6 times or 500 percent more likely to have abdominal obesity, the study found.

The findings should be considered important because abdominal fat is a major risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other chronic health conditions, Sharon Fowler and her colleagues warned.

While the biological mechanism by which diet soda affects abdominal fat remains unclear, another new study conducted on lab mice suggests the artificial sweetener aspartame may be responsible.

During the study, scientists fed diabetes-prone mice with food rich in aspartame and compared the effects with their peers who had never had sweetener in their diet.

The mice in the aspartame group showed elevated fasting glucose levels but equal or diminished insulin levels, consistent with early declines in the function of pancreatic beta-cell.

"These results suggest that heavy aspartame exposure might potentially directly contribute to increased blood glucose levels, and thus contribute to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and the risk of diabetes in humans," concluded study’s co-author Gabriel Fernandes.

"Artificial sweeteners could have the effect of triggering appetite but unlike regular sugars they don’t deliver something that will squelch the appetite," said Sharon Fowler, who was involved in both studies.

The researches were both presented at the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions.