Monday, July 30, 2012

Does Saccharin Promote Weight Gain?

Reading the title of this Yahoo update, "Can Diet Soda Make You Fat?"...

http://voices.yahoo.com/can-diet-soda-fat-11603214.html?cat=5

I react from experience: "It can, and for me personally it does." I'm remembering the summer I tried switching to diet soda sweetened with aspartame. My mother was hypothyroid to the point of disability while I was growing up, and still struggles to bring her metabolism up and keep her weight down within the normal range. Ordinarily I'm mildly hyperthyroid; although still capable of looking fat in fashionable clothes I've often been medically underweight. These are the two faces of gluten intolerance. Anyway, after a few weeks of drinking diet soda I started feeling sluggish, lazy, stupid, somewhat depressed, and packing on weight. After a few weeks of drinking about the same amount of sugar-sweetened soda I felt normal again, and the excess weight disappeared. Obviously I'm one of the minority of people whose thyroid glands react badly to aspartame. Quite a few people have one adverse reaction or another to high levels of aspartame, which is why some "diet" soda and snack manufacturers are switching to other lower-calorie sweeteners.

So what about the other "diet" sweeteners out there? Do they also promote weight gain in sneaky unexpected ways? In the article linked above, Peter Flom reports evidence that saccharin may sabotage dieters too.

What definitely won't sabotage anybody's weight-loss efforts? Exercise, that's what. Before reaching for a sweet cold drink, take a brisk walk and cool off with plain cold water. Then if you still feel a need for the sweet drink, your body will be braced to process any calories you ingest as efficiently as possible.

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