As I mentioned many times before, I drink diet soda. It is an easy, tasty way to drink something with no carbs. Lately, I have been told the strangest thing – they told me that drinking diet soda could give me diabetes. I told them it was too late.
But, thinking about what they said, I thought that it was a bit strange. I have heard that non-diet soda causes diabetes. One reasoning is that all that sugar has to cause diabetes. (That isn’t true.) Another reasoning is that drinking a lot of soda can cause obesity, which can cause type 2 diabetes. (this is true). But, diet soda? It doesn’t have calories or sugar… how can it cause problems?
Well, nothing has been proven exactly why, but a study in Diabetes Care (February 2009) showed a connection between drinking more diet soda and higher chance of diabetes. Some people think that it has to do with the diet of those who have soda. (Yes, they are having diet soda, but the rest of the diet is full of fat.) Others think that the sweetness of the sweetener might trigger something so people are more hungry.
Since there doesn’t seem to be anyone who knows the real answer, I’m going to ignore this article for now. It didn’t seem to go deep enough into why it happened. There needs to be a lot more research done before anyone can say for sure that soda can or can’t cause a problem.
Just for the record, I didn’t drink diet soda until my diabetes diagnosis, so it had nothing to do with my type 1 diabetes. And that, I can prove. 🙂
