DIET SODA: How "unhealthy" is it for you, really?!
Is diet soda bad for you??
In short, no!
Okay, that’s it, you can go back to your Diet Pepsi now ;)
Just kidding… like so many other things, the long answer to this question is: it depends.
First of all, diet soda is calorie free and sugar free, so it does NOT negatively impact your overall calorie or sugar totals in any detrimental way. It does NOT cause insulin spikes.
Drinking the occasional diet soda is totally okay!
The potential negatives come in connection with the acidity and our teeth, our surrounding habits, and the other beverages you consume.
If you drink so much diet soda that it’s negatively impacting your teeth, that’s probably a good place to draw the “too much” line in the sand.
And, although this is certainly not the rule, some studies have reported that individuals who drink a lot of diet soda tend to have less healthy food habits, generally speaking. To be clear though, this was correlative, not the cause of health issues.1
However, it was also reported that the sweet taste of the diet soda caused some to want to eat other sweet and sugary foods. Like, because you taste the sweetness of the soda, you want to continue eating sweet foods so maybe gravitate towards something like cookies. In this case, the issue is more-so with the surrounding food and beverage choices, not the diet soda itself.
And to the last point. I firmly believe that most of our beverage intake should be WATER, and by sharing the info in this post, it is NOT my intention to say that you should go ahead and drink 45 diet sodas per day! (In fact, my recommendation is to work up to drinking 1/2 of your body weight in ounces of water per day!) So, if your consumption of diet soda is causing you to under-drink your water, then that is a potential problem, which should be rectified.
You may be thinking, but, Sara, what about the aspartame in diet sodas?!
Good question!
The quantity of aspartame present in diet sodas in relation to the impact it has on the human body would require you to drink over ~1000 cans of soda to be negatively impacted by the aspartame. (Check out this article, this article, and this post for more information on this!)
Here’s what you can take away: Have a diet soda every once in a while, if you want one. And, notice your surrounding food choices and how they make you feel while/after having them. If you start to experience teeth problems, that’s too much! Everything in moderation, all foods fit, we just have to understand how!
Want to talk about your soda drinking habits?! Or any habit you have questions about, for that matter?? Share in the comments below. Send me an email at sara@nutritionforlifeproject.com. Let's chat.
Also, this will be my last post through the end of the year. Thank you so much for your continued support and for reading; I appreciate it more than you know. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! See you for a new post in 2025, on January 7!
As always, thank you for reading,
Sara
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19151203/