20 years ago I was 14 and starting to get chunky so I switched to Diet coke and my brother said that's gonna make you fatter because it tastes sweet so your body will want sweet. Well I'm still drinking it and still getting fatter maybe I'll finally learn!
Interesting stuff.

This is just my personal opinion, but I honestly don't believe that diet soda can make somebody fatter. The claim behind diet sodas actually causing people to gain weight is because it supposedly makes you crave sweet stuff. However, it is up to us and our own willpower to NOT eat all the sweet stuff. Just because you're craving it doesn't mean you have to eat it.

I've been drinking diet soda for years. I don't crave sweet stuff and I've (obviously) lost a lot of weight and I'm still keeping it off. So it's not going to affect everyone the same.

I can't speak for everyone, but what made ME fat was eating too many calories.

Period.

It goes beyond a simple "craving" though LLV. We aren't talking about "oh now I want a cookie" It isnt a willpower issue.

First, I doubt it affects everyone the same way, some people can eat a piece of fruit all by itself and be fine. Those of us who are more prone to blood sugar swings and insulin resistance can't.

If I eat a piece of fruit all by its little lonesome self on an empty stomach I get a blood sugar spike, followed shortly by a huge crash. At this point we arent talking "craving something sweet". We are talking ravenously hungry, light headed, eventually to the point of irritability and nausea. I HAVE to eat then, and usually a substantial bit to calm it down. What I eat at that point is a matter of control and knowledge.

The body SCREAMS for carbohydrates, but a smart response is to give it a combination snack of carb/pro/fat. But those of us on a diet are so used to thinking of "if I am hungry when I am not supposed to be, eat something small...like fruit or veggies"....hello making it worse! Without the knowledge of how to handle a blood sugar crash, it is easy to spiral it to huge amounts of food needed to bring it back to steady.

That is how diet soda works for those who are sensitive. The signals tell our body sugar is coming. Insulin is released to prepare for the sugar that doesnt come. When the sugar doesnt come, we are in low blood sugar state which then causes us to NEED to eat to function. So what starts out as a zero calorie thing ends up demanding more calories than planned. And we CANT say no or we cant function.

I personally treat artificial sweeteners with the same caution I use for sugar or other highly refined carbs. Never on an empty stomach, never alone, always in combination with protein and or fat. I try to avoid them completely, but I really love diet coke.

However when things are out of control for me, if I am doing a refined carb free day, I also eliminate diet coke.

Also: if it indeed does cause an insulin response, there is a lot of studies that indicate that insulin response does cause a slower metabolism...therefore, even if nothing else was eaten, the insulin alone could cause weight gain...everything else being equal

I was under the impression that naturally occuring sugars (such as the fructose in fruit) helped to prevent a fast blood sugar spike and following crash. I thought they took longer to break down. I could be wrong. But my nutrition instructor told us that it is mostly refined/processed sugars that caused this.

Thanks for explaining that. However, I'm personally hypoglycemic and I've never had any problems with diet soda.

So I guess it just depends on the individual.

From the publication: the receptors were detected in human duodenal biopsy or by postmortem samples and detected by immunofluorescence; confirmed by cells immunostained, laser-captured and subjected to RT-PCR.

Feeding studies were done.

Natural sugars used in the study were glucose and sucrose. There was also a non-metabolizable nonsweet sugar (2-deoxy-glucose) used as a control which did not cause the GLP-1 release as did the natural sweetners and the sucralose.

I'm still wading through it all!

jo

It is very individual. I cant eat fruit ever by itself, or even with food for breakfast. That is how I respond to fruit...now refined sugars are much much worse. I am extremely sensitive...I cant eat oatmeal or any of the low glycemic carbohydrates alone either.

Wow, what a great thread. I like the comments about willpower: Just because you're craving it doesn't mean you have to eat it. That's bolstering! I am also fascinated by "Jo's" comments about the way, scientifically, the diet ingredients function in our system. Fascinating!

Wow, it's amazing how "Greek" a lot of that is to me. But after reading it a couple of times, it sounds like they are doing feeding studies (on animals only?) to find out which substances cause the GLP-1 secretions. So it was glucose and sucrose as well as sucralose...

And were the human studies just done to find the receptors? Or were the feeding studies on humans too!

And that non-metabolizable nonsweet sugar (2-deoxy-glucose) ... it may not cause the secretions, but do we want to eat it????

Seriously, thanks for wading through this stuff!