Is it okay to drink diet soda if you’re trying to lose weight? Let’s break it down in details.
There are a number of drinks labeled as “diet” or “zero-calorie” products like the Coca-Cola Zero Sugar (formerly Coke Zero). As they virtually provide no calories, they won’t make us fat.
Coca-Cola Zero Sugar tastes sweet, but how come does it provide no calories? Because there is no sucrose, or corn syrup, in Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. Instead, the sweetener used in Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is aspartame. Since aspartame is extremely sweet — — 200 times sweeter than sucrose, a little bit of it is enough to make the Coca-Cola Zero Sugar sweet. As a result, the calories are almost negligible and it can be considered to be a “zero-calorie” drink.
Since Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is indeed having “zero-calorie”, it won’t theoretically make you fat no matter how much you drink.
However, some netizens say that Coca-Cola Zero Sugar will cause an increase in insulin levels, and an excessive secretion of insulin will make us really fat. It’s actually ridiculous. Insulin level primarily depends on blood sugar, instead of taste. Although some sugar substitutes may indeed induce a slight increase in insulin levels, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of them work that way. In general, although Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is sweet, it has no obvious effect on inducing insulin secretion.
Moreover, the key to changes in body weight is calories, not insulin. The insulin only tells the cells to store excess energy as fat. In the absence of excess calories, no matter how much insulin there is, it won’t make you fat.
Therefore, in terms of weight loss, it’s okay to drink Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. Not a problem at all. Drinking Coca-Cola Zero Sugar alone will never make people fat.
Is Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Safe?
As diet drinks like Coca-Cola Zero Sugar are added with aspartame, even if they don’t make people fat, some people are still worried about the safety of aspartame. Will it be harmful to health? Rumor has it that aspartame is linked to an increased risk of cancer. Is that true?
First of all, in most parts of the world, aspartame is a legal sweetener. Since 1976, when the Food and Drug Administration of the US approved the addition of aspartame in foods, the use of aspartame has been approved in more than 100 countries. Although there has been some controversy about it, almost all the authoritative organizations around the world have recognized the safety of aspartame.
We all know that Europe has always been strict with food safety. In 2011, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that aspartame is safe. On December 10, 2013, EFSA reassessed the overall risks of aspartame and once again announced that it is not harmful to the health of ordinary people given its usage within the safe dosage. The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives has also evaluated the safety of aspartame twice and eventually confirmed that it is safe to healthy people when consumed within the safe dosage. That is to say, as long as they don’t eat too much aspartame, healthy people will have no problem with it.
But how much is too much? For example, a healthy adult can drink ten cans of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar a day without having any health issues.
Nevertheless, this is only considering healthy people. People who have a condition called phenylketonuria shouldn’t consume aspartame. In fact, some others may experience uncomfortable symptoms, such as headaches, nausea, mood swings, and insomnia, after drinking beverages containing aspartame. This may be a neurological effect produced by phenylalanine. So if these symptoms occur, do not drink beverages containing aspartame.
