Diet Soda May Sabotage Weight Loss Efforts

People who drink diet soda in an effort to lose weight may be doing more harm than good according to a recent study conducted by the Ingestive Behavior Research Center at Purdue University. In the study, rats given yogurt sweetened with zero calorie saccharin later gained more weight and put on more body fat than rats who ate yogurt sweetened with glucose (a simple sugar comparable to table sugar).

The study surmised that by breaking the connection between a sweet sensation and high-calorie food, the use of saccharin changes the body’s ability to regulate intake. Problems with self-regulation might explain in part why obesity has risen in parallel with the use of artificial sweeteners. Because people have different experiences with artificial and natural sweeteners, human studies that don’t take into account prior consumption may produce a variety of outcomes. Three different experiments were conducted to explore whether saccharin changed lab animals’ ability to regulate their intake using various assessments, the most obvious being caloric intake, weight gain and compensation by cutting back.