Could Diet Soda Be Causing Obesity???

Scientists at Purdue University published an article in Behavioral Neuroscience in February of 2008 that found that products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with our bodies ability to balance it's taste for sweets. Our body has an uncanny ability to remain in balance/homeostasis. The research found that consumption of non-caloric sweeteners can alter brain responses that change the efficiency of how we utilize the energy we consume which can lead to significant long-term increases in food intake and body weight.

Our body has the natural ability to estimate the calories taken in by the sweetness of the food we eat. Artificial sweeteners create sweet foods that lack calories or energy for body use. As we take in more artificial sweeteners our brain loses the ability to calculate and regulate the amount of energy taken in, which then creates a loss of balance and we begin to take in more food, which results in weight gain and obesity.

Over the past 30 years we have definitely had a dramatic increase in both overweight or obese people and an increase in the consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners.

Our body is an incredible healing organism that has the ability to maintain incredible balance and vitality. We have developed technologically and chemically to the point where scientists have learned to trick the body and as such may be altering the critical balances of the human body.

Swithers and Davison. A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation. Behavioral Neuroscience. Feb 2008;Vol 122, No. 1.