This is Your Brain on Diet Soda

Can your brain be easily duped? Take this test. In the video below count how many times the team wearing white passes the ball. (Make sure you watch the whole thing).

Did you see it?

About 50% of people are fooled by this video. The brain is clearly susceptible to an occasional blond moment. In fact, the brain is a lot like Sarah Palin when asked a tough question about North Korea or Paul Revere’s ride—perpetually confused.

As it turns out, diet soda and other artificially sweetened “foods” aren’t diet after all. There are nearly 4,000 artificially sweetened products on the market right now and they are not doing a darn thing to help the obesity epidemic. In fact, obesity is increasing as fast as diet products can flood the marketplace. People who switch from regular soda to diet soda fail to lose weight, even though they remove 100s of calories from their diets. Why is this the case?

First, feeling that it has avoided calories in regular soda, the perplexed brain convinces Diet Cokeheads reward themselves with a treat. Diet soda drinkers tend to take in nearly as many calories as regular soda drinkers while they think they’re taking in less (Yang, 2010). There have been a few studies that have contradicted this (Stanner, 2010), but the majority show that people who drink diet soda eat the calories back (Yang, 2010).

That diet soda as an afternoon treat may also be responsible for a future brownie craving. Sugar works a lot like drugs—the more we eat, the more we want. The brain recognizes artificial sweeteners as sugar (dumb, dumb brain) and craves more sweetness as a result (Yang, 2010).

On the rare occasion when I have a diet soda, I feel like there’s Grand Canyon-size hole in my stomach. While the brain perceives artificial sweetener like sugar when it comes to increasing sugar cravings, the brain gets confused by the calorie void that comes with the diet drink. Diet soda activates the brain’s reward center, and then when the brain can’t find the calories, it gets confused. The brain sends a memo to the stomach about the lack of calories. In response, the stomach growls and sends the body on a quest to fill the calorie void, bringing us full circle to fact that diet-soda drinkers eat more than regular soda drinkers (Yang, 2010).

On a side note, as if the weight causing effects of both diet and regular soda aren’t enough, most self-service soda machines carry nasty bacteria. The recent study found that the majority of soda fountains contained harmful bacteria like e-coli, staph, candida (yeast) or coliform (White, 2010).

Long story short, diet soda is no better than regular soda. Go water!

Sources:

Stanner, S. (2010). The science of low-calorie sweeteners—separating fact from fiction. Nutrition Bulletin. 35; 357-362.

White, A.S., et al. (2010). Beverages obtained from soda fountain machines in the US contain microorganisms, including coliform bacteria. International Journal of Food Microbiology. 137(1); 61-66.

Yang, Q. (2010). Gain weight by “going diet?” Artificial sweeteners and the neurobiology of sugar cravings. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. 83; 101-108.