I keep hearing there's a study out there which suggests diet drinks make us fat. Since I'm so excited about crossing off yet another pleasure food from my ever shrinking list, I went looking for the study. It was conducted at Purdue University by two diet soda addicts, I presume: Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson. Rats were fed Dannon yogurt (my favorite brand!) that was sweetened with either sugar or saccharin. Swithers and Davidson concluded that rats who received artificial sweetner consumed more calories and gained more weight (and yes, body fat) than the rats who received sugar. Their study also found that the diet food rats showed "blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets." So the dieting rats' metabolic processes under responded to the saccharin making them eat more of the real calories later. So there it is. Saccharin is not my friend. Body fat wins yet again. Argh! You can read it and weep for yourself, here.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
fat rats
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Here's a personal anecdote: I switched from regular pop to diet pop about 10 years ago. That switch alone was responsible for me losing about 5 pounds. I went on to join a gym and made further adjustments in my diet (like not eating dessert every day), and I lost a total of 40 lbs., which I've kept off. I never drink non-diet pop, I use Equal or Sweet n Low in my tea, and I eat the yogurt flavored with aspartame. Take it for what it is.
Yeah, it's a guilty pleasure. One Fresca a week, maybe two.
And there's my point, down with these rat runners turning my non-guilty pleasures into guilty ones!
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