Health Implications of Diet Soda

Weight Gain

Although diet soda doesn't contain any calories, drinking it may make you more likely to gain weight. One possible explanation for this is that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda change the way your brain processes sweet tastes, making people who drink a lot of diet soda crave sweet foods and eat more of them, according to a study published in "Physiology and Behavior" in November 2012. Of course, this could also be due to people overcompensating for the amount of calories they save by drinking diet soda instead of regular soda and eating too many calories throughout the day.

Diabetes

Drinking diet soda may increase your risk for both Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, according to a study published in "Diabetes Care" in April 2009. Study participants who drank diet soda at least once a day were 67 percent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes and 36 percent more likely to develop metabolic syndrome that those who didn't drink diet soda at all.

Heart Disease

Artificially sweetened beverages like diet soda may also increase your risk for heart disease. A study published in "Acta Diabetologica" in December 2011 found that young people with diabetes who drank higher amounts of diet beverages had higher triglyceride, total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein, or bad cholesterol, levels than those who didn't drink these beverages often.

Cancer

While the evidence for the link between diet soda and cancer isn't as strong as that for diet soda and some other health conditions, a study published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in October 2012 found that men who drank at least one diet soda per day had an increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphomas, and both men and women diet-soda drinkers had an increased risk for leukemia compared to people who didn't drink any diet soda.