I was horrified last spring when I saw how much soda (or pop) my supervisors at my internship drank.
I was horrified last spring when I saw how much soda (or pop) my supervisors at my internship drank. I think it’s a generational thing — we have been told all our lives that pop is bad for us, but people 15 to 20 years older than me seem to drink so much of it.
Feeling bold one day, I asked my boss why he drank diet soda all the time, and he said he did it because it was too late in the day for coffee and it isn’t bad for you like regular pop is.
I nodded my head and smiled, but in my head I was thinking, “Isn’t that just as bad?”
Though some studies claim that diet soda helps people cut calories and lose weight, a study published in Nature science journal finds that there may be more risks than just the now-expected risk of weight gain for that mid-afternoon buzz.
The study, conducted by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, found that diet soda sweeteners like aspartame and saccharin can alter gut microbes in a way that increases the risk for Type II Diabetes and can cause a glucose-intolerance.
And if glucose-intolerance doesn’t seem so bad, let me tell you, it is. Glucose can be found in almost every carbohydrate-containing food, including bread, dried and fresh fruit and honey.
But like every controversial study, there are disbelievers and believers. I know that this study will be just another reason why I don’t drink pop.
