Diet Vs Regular Soda – Losing Weight

Losing weight is a challenging task. It is best done in small and simple steps instead of a doing a complete overhaul of your diet and exercise routine. One small change that you can make is your liquid calorie intake.

Take an inventory of the things you are drinking. Small changes can be made that will have an effect on your weight over time. For example, if you are currently drinking 2% milk, switching to 1% will cut out extra calories and fat, but only going down 1%, you won’t notice a big change in taste.

If you drink soda pop, the best change would be to switch to drinking water instead. But if you still need your daily coke or sprite, it would be better to switch to a diet drink. There has been a lot of discussions on diet vs regular soda drinks, on the health and safety risks.

Regular soda has typically has about 150 calories and 10 teaspoons of sugar whereas diet sodas use artifical favors instead of sugar, which cuts out the calories. These artifical favors, such as aspartame, have been questioned about their health risks. Here’s what Health Canada has to say on the subject:

“There is no evidence to suggest that the consumption of foods containing aspartame, according to the provisions of the Food and Drug Regulations and as part of a well-balanced diet, would pose a health hazard to consumers. In addition, other scientific advisory bodies such as the Scientific Committee for Food of the European Community, and the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization have reviewed all the available safety studies and have found aspartame to be safe.

Dr. Donald Hensrud of the Mayo Clinic had this to say in August 2005

“There seems to be a lingering perception that nonnutritive sweeteners are bad for you. But research hasn’t shown any significant health concerns. In 1977, the FDA proposed a ban on saccharin because of a suspected link to cancer in rats. It turned out that the research was flawed. There’s no credible evidence that saccharin or other nonnutritive sweeteners cause cancer.”

As long as you don’t drink excessive amounts of diet sodas or that you don’t have the rare genetic metabolism disorder, phenylketonuria (PKU), you should be fine with drinking diet drinks.

By making a simple change by substituting diet sodas for regular, you’ll be able to start loosing weight.

Reference:

• www.medicaledge.org/newspaper/n-2005august14.html