STOP DIET POP?

Is diet soda/pop better than its sugary counterpart?

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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "I keep hearing diet pop is worse than the full sugar version, due to artificial sweeteners. Is this true?"

Concise Conclusion: It's unlikely to be worse, as you're saving the calories. However, things that have little to no calories but taste sweet typically don't make us feel full, so we tend to seek those calories elsewhere. If you're switching from sugary soda to diet soda, that's very likely a small win when it comes to weight loss.

Quick Wrap-up: Evidence shows that switching from sugary soda to diet soda is either modestly beneficial or neutral for weight loss. However, going from something less sweet like soda water to diet soda is likely a negative, as you're just adding compensatory seeking of calories from the sweet taste. There are also concerns emerging with the effect of artificial sweeteners on the microbiome.

Dive Deeper

1) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13652

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