Is Diet Coke bad for you?

I know lots of people who drink diet coke and they are still living. Not one of them have developed any kind of illness related to their coke habit. Not scientific maybe but still…. as the conspiracy theorist say.

I have, on numerous occasions, hear it stated with great confidence (albeit without evidence) that Diet Coke is massively cancerous.

I don’t think its dangerous. The problem is that it doesn’t help you to lose weight. Many studies have shown that it increases your desire for sugar, so you just seek it elsewhere. My solution is to mix ½ fruit juice and ½ seltzer. I like it, it’s relatively healthy, and I am still maintaining my weight after almost 7 years.

I drink it all the time and I’m fine. Helps me drink cola without the clories

It certainly isn’t good for you.

I don’t think they are cancerous, but who knows. These days you get cancer from waking up, it seems. What artificial sweeteners do – that is not so good – is fooling the body into believing it receives sugar, thus releasing insulin into your blood stream to break it down. What happens is that – if you drink a lot of soda containing sweeteners – you get a high level of insulin level in your body with little or nothing to break down.

I drink diet coke, but I don’t let my son eat or drink anything containing sweeteners. I don’t know how this affects the body in the long run, but I am not up to risk his future health and let him drink something he doesn’t need. It does mess with the body.

There has been a rise of diabetes in the west. The causes – I am sure – probably varies, but I would not be that surprised if artificial sweeteners has it’s finger in there as well.

Yep. If you drink to much of it it can make your pants fall down.

It depends where in the world it is made – in some places it contains Aspartame and there is inconclusive and disputed researched indicating that it causes cancer in test animals. In other parts of the world (recently) they use Stevia or Splenda. The only one that I don’t have any doubts about is Stevia – I grow it myself.

I don’t consume any type of artificial sweetener because I know it does bad things to the body. The carbonate in Coke pulls calcium from the bones (if I am remembering correctly). The artificial colors used are also no good.
So, it’s not the worst thing in the world, but I’d avoid it.

@Facade It does? CO2 is a natural blood gas. That’s what we breath out, and often let out of the “back door”. I reckon gas in the stomach goes either out through the mouth or the devils eye. I don’t know. It might be as you say. To much A-vitamin does that though.

Hey everyone thanks for your answers but apart from personal opinions does anyone have any facts based on real science?
@darkScribe – what is Stevia?

@oratio I’m not sure, as I said in my post

@Facade Yup.

@johanna If you search “artificial sweeteners” and “insulin” you’ll find many links discussing what I was talking about. When it comes to being cancerous I have no clue. My gut feeling says stay away from aspartame, but I haven’t seen any proof of it being cancerous.

I just found an interesting piece of info on aspartame:
‘Aspartame, found in NutraSweet and Equal brands, is made up of two amino acids: aspartic acid and phenylalanine. We consume these same amino acids in foods every day – from milk and fruits to vegetables – and, regardless of the source, the body digests them the same way.’
So if I cut back on my fruits and veggies I can drink more diet coke….

Well, aspartame can also be used and is classed as a biological weapon. Flax is good for you to eat, but it contains cyanide, which in enough dose is kind of bad for you. Stuff enough vitamins in you every day, and you poison yourself.

I think you joked about the veggies, though.

Soda in general isn’t very good for you because of the ingredients (aspartame being one of them) that they put in it. I’m not sure what they do to the soda to make it “diet”, but I’m sure it’s not in our best interest.
Ever heard someone say that Coke or Pepsi can eat the rust off of a car? It actually can. That should be your first hint that it’s probably not something you want in your body.

@oratio
But diet coke tastes so much better…but ok I’ll eat my veggies.

I just checked out a site for insulin and diabetes medical information here in the EU and they claim that there is no correlation between raised insulin levels or raised blood sugars and artificial sweeteners and they say there is no danger for diabetics to use artificial sweeteners. They base their response on research from the EU’s equivalent of FDA. The Mayoclinic says the same as does diabeteshealth.com so my unease is laid to rest for now.
This article states info from FDA and just how much is considered a safe daily intake.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/artificial-sweeteners/MY00073

Based on that, I am safe, as are Victoria Beckham and Bill Clinton who both, I have just learned, drink large amounts of diet coke every day.

@johanna Well, diabetics already have diabetes. It’s hard to get it a second time. Go ahead. I drink it too, moderately. I still won’t give it to children. Especially not fat ones. They already have heightened risk for diabetes.

As for artificial sweeteners not raising the insulin level in the blood, I think you read that wrong. This is why it is considered that diet sodas can make you gain weight. Not because of the soda itself, but because the heightened insulin level in your blood with nothing to do make you crave for sugar.

Here are the conclusions of some research studies looking at artificial sweeteners and cancer:

Conclusion: The results of this carcinogenicity bioassay confirm and reinforce the first experimental demonstration of [aspartame]‘s multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose level close to the acceptable daily intake for humans. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when life-span exposure to [aspartame] begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.

Conclusion: Despite some rather unscientific assumptions, there is no evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic. Case–control studies showed an elevated relative risk of 1.3 for heavy artificial sweetener use (no specific substances specified) of >1.7 g/day. For new generation sweeteners, it is too early to establish any epidemiological evidence about possible carcinogenic risks. As many artificial sweeteners are combined in today’s products, the carcinogenic risk of a single substance is difficult to assess. However, according to the current literature, the possible risk of artificial sweeteners to induce cancer seems to be negligible.

Conclusions: Our findings do not support the hypothesis that aspartame increases hematopoietic or brain cancer risk.

Conclusion: The present work indicates a lack of association between saccharin, aspartame and other sweeteners and the risk of several common neoplasms.

So it looks like there’s some controversy but the majority of the research indicates that Diet Coke is in the clear.

who knows? no one has ever ingested these new chemicals for a lifetime before as they havnt even been around that long…so there’s no way of knowing what will happen long term…hey life’s a lottery consume what you feel is best

No. There was a report released in 1990 that made everyone freak out, because it said rats exposed to aspartame from diet soda were found to have an increased chance of getting lymphomas or leukemia. Also, according to the report, the increase of people with brain tumors between the years of 1975 and 1992 was associated with the creation of aspartame.

BUT…the reality is, the increase of brain and central nervous system cancers began in 1973, eight years before Aspartame appeared. As for the lab rats, they’d been introduced to extremely massive amounts of Aspartame. The rat with the smallest trace of cancer (like, ONE cancer cell) was introduced to the human equivalent of 8 cans of diet soda a day. The most cancer-tastic rat had about 2,083 cans a day.

I don’t think we need to worry about it, unless you really, really like diet soda. :P

in response to @le_inferno also they are rats close tho we may be in mathematical genetics I am pretty far from gnawing teeth and a tail and chemically speaking there is a hell of a distance between us in some cases

All soda is bad for you and not necessarily because it has sugar or because if diet it has aspartame in it. Consider that colas have been used for decades to clean various kinds of machine parts and that if you dump a can of it in a toilet and leave it the toilet will be pretty darned free of even caked on stains. It does that to your stomach as well. It strips your stomach of necessary bacteria for digestion. The amount of acid in it leads many to suffer from upper GI problems as well as lower bowel distress often just diagnosed as irritable bowel disease. But lets not stop there. Ingredients in all soda cause bone loss and therefore contribute to osteoporosis.
A healthy diet omits soda. It has no known benefits related to it’s consumption whatsoever.