‘these claims are scaremongering’

The scare stories have been making headlines everywhere recently – and Dr Christian has had enough!

There have T been frightening reports in the news claiming drinking diet fizzy drinks could triple your risk of developing dementia and make you more likely to suffer a stroke, but it’s just silly scaremongering.

Of more than 4,000 people – who were studied for seven years – only 3 per cent had a stroke and 5 per cent developed dementia. Once scientists took other health and lifestyle factors into account, the link disappeared.

These types of studies can’t “prove” anything anyway. They just show links. You could grab 10,000 people off the street and some of them would get dementia, some of them would drink diet fizzy drinks, but you can’t claim one caused the other.

There is a lot of fear around sweeteners, but they’re scrutinised intensively – aspartame is one of the most tested ingredients in the world and a review by the European Food Safety Authority concluded it has “no safety concerns.”

KNOW THE FACTS

Emerging evidence suggests consuming artificially sweetened drinks can trigger sweet receptors in your brain, making you hungry, but that’s only a problem if you drink them between meals. Sugar, on the other hand – which is natural – is far more dangerous. That’s where this obsession with “natural” always being healthy is misleading.

NHS England has just asked all hospital shops to limit sugary fizzy drinks to no more than 10 per cent of the total beverages they sell. That’s because the link between sugar and obesity is irrefutable, and obesity increases your risk of Type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia.

Sugar is a far greater risk for all those things than sweeteners. Sugary drinks have also been linked to fatty liver disease. People think the only way you damage your liver is with alcohol, but I rarely see alcoholic liver disease in my clinic – it’s mostly down to a poor diet.

SAVE FOR A TREAT

A can of sugary drink contains nothing nutritional, so they shouldn’t be drunk regularly.

There’s strong evidence that can’t be argued with, showing sugary drinks can impact sleep, rot teeth and increase risk of obesity, which is linked to 13 kinds of cancers.

Low-calorie sweetened drinks have a place, just drink them with meals. It’s about balance. I have a few diet lemonade cans in my fridge, which I enjoy once in a while, not every day.

Diet fizzy drinks ;may triple dementia risk'