THE DIET COKE DEBATE
When it comes to sugar-free sodas, some experts see a glass of dangerous chemicals, others a harmless indulgence
IN recent years, expert opinions on things once considered unhealthy, such as eggs, meat and dairy, have changed to embrace foods previously scorned. Now, one doctor says yet another item we’ve been told to avoid actually isn’t that bad: diet sodas.
Aaron Carroll, MD, a professor and leading pediatric researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine, takes a provocative stance in his new book “The Bad Food Bible: How and Why To Eat Sinfully,” arguing that the occasional Diet Coke isn’t so bad, and that it’s better than the real thing.
“When you’re going to have a soda once in a while, I would choose the artificial sweetener,” Carroll tells The Post. “And I would make the same choice for my kids.”
He spends a great deal of one chapter discussing Diet Coke and why it might not be so bad. He says the real danger is sugar — which has been strongly linked to diabetes and obesity. Artificial sweeteners, on the other hand, have not been proven to be harmful to humans, he argues. The notion that they are the enemy is misguided, he believes, and often perpetuated by the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of scientific studies.
For example, just because artificial sweeteners have been shown to increase the likelihood of bladder cancer in second-generation rats (meaning the offspring of rats that receive high doses of sweeteners), it doesn’t mean they have the same effect on humans.
“If you give rats a lot of things, they get bladder cancer, including things like vitamin C,” says Carroll.
And history proves his point: “Billions of people are drinking [artificial sweeteners], and we’re not seeing increased rates of bladder cancer,” he says.
There’s also the public’s perceived reluctance to ingest anything deemed a “chemical.”
“We get worried about what’s a chemical and what’s not — [but] everything’s a chemical,” he says. “People [are] concerned that these are chemicals made in a lab, so they must be dangerous.” But that’s just not the case, according to Carroll, who says trials on the subject haven’t shown artificial sweeteners to be a public health threat.
“If there is a danger,” he says, “it’s incredibly small.”
But not every expert shares Carroll’s views.
Susan Swithers, Ph.D., a professor of behavioral neuroscience at Purdue University and a leading researcher on the effects of artificial sweeteners, suggests that people avoid Diet Coke and similar products.
She cites studies in humans that show links between the regular ingestion of artificial sweeteners and unhealthy conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, dementia and obesity.
But even these data sets can’t definitively prove artificial sweeteners are to blame: “With the human data, we can’t make causal attributions because they’re not experimental studies — they’re observational studies,” she admits.
While research hasn’t directly linked artificial sweeteners with these conditions in humans, Swithers says there is plenty of evidence from animal studies that suggests there are “mechanisms” that could hypothetically lead to these negative outcomes.
“The best data we have says that the diet soft drinks don’t reduce your risk for these outcomes, and potentially increase your risk.”
Many artificial sweeteners pass through the body without being absorbed, but Diet Coke’s aspartame is, and it might have a lasting effect on the body.
“Some [studies] suggest that the metabolic byproducts [of aspartame] could be one of the things that changes the gut microbiome,” says Swithers. Such changes could leave the body less able to regulate blood sugar levels, potentially contributing to diabetes.
But both experts can agree on one thing. Consuming 12 Diet Cokes every day — as it was recently reported that President Trump does — isn’t healthy.
Carroll says: “I wouldn’t recommend it, but that’s just because I wouldn’t recommend too much of anything.”