4 reasons you must avoid diet soda
Yay! It is Sunday again folks. How you long to get that much-deserved break from the daily grind. It is time today to hang out with friends, gossip, shop and make merry. Does that mean eating out too? Hell no, you are on a diet.
Will it go off gear? Absolutely not, because you know how not to binge. In fact, you are conscious enough to count and curtail empty calories to keep your weight in check, with your "no sugar, low calorie" options in place.
As always, today too it's going to be "diet soda only" to go with your favourite meal.
Doing yourself a favour? Unfortunately, no!
Contrary to the belief and drool-worthy labelling that proclaims "no calories and no sugar" endorsed by svelte models, diet soda containing artificial sweeteners is harming your health to no end. Yes, you missed the point.
How can anything artificial be good for your holistic health? And, the diet soda saga doesn't end here; there are other ingredients which are more or equally detrimental to your health.
Pause for a minute and review this diet soda myth carefully.
Here's how and why?
Diet soda contains artificial sweeteners, caffeine, phosphates, citrates and class 3 preservatives but you know what, knowing what the label reads is half-baked knowledge till you comprehend what these ingredients are doing to your health. Let's see how they affect your health:
1. Artificial sweetener
Boasting of that one or no calorie goodness and confusing the brown effervescent beverage as "healthy", helping to keep your weight in check is an illusion. This ingredient is guilty as charged of being otherwise.
Artificial sweeteners have flavours stronger than regular sweeteners like sucrose (sugar), honey agave, fructose (fruit sugar) that trains the taste buds to crave for more sugar to satiate the sweet tooth. Consequently, you end up loading your system with more simple carbs or simple sugars.
Most artificial sweeteners are high in sodium content, which elevates the blood pressure and doubles the risk of stroke or heart attack.
They trigger insulin metabolism and kick start the fat storage mechanism, making us gain weight, contrary to what you thought (chose them because you thought they'll help you loose weight). Mission aborted.
Puts you at a risk of becoming a Type 2 diabetic, characterised by making the patient insulin resistant.
Most popular sweetener used in diet sodas, aspartame poses an even serious threat to the kidney and it's functioning.
How can you risk so many of your vital organs? It's not worth at all. Instead, choose regular soda. Believe me, a few extra calories from regular sugar pose lesser harm compared to artificial sweeteners.
2. Caffeine
Definitely needs no introduction. It makes its presence felt in almost every other popular beverage you choose - tea, coffee, soft drinks, hot chocolate and diet sodas - to shun drowsiness or break away from the monotony of routine. It is omnipresent and should be taken with caution.
When you go overboard with caffeine, it starts playing a different tune in your body featuring unpleasant symptoms like anxiety, insomnia, irregular heart rate, dizziness, headaches and even migraine.
The dilemma doesn't end there. Caffeine is a known diuretic (components that increases the frequency of urination) which makes you loose enormous amounts of body water , leading to dehydration.
Do you have dull and rough skin and lacklustre hair?
Get a headache every time you gulp down endless cans of diet soda?
Not able to get rid of those frequent migraines? If, all answers are in the affirmative, keep your caffeine intake in check because dehydration then start the vicious cycle of longing for more diet sodas to quench your thirst.
Is going de-café (caffeine-free) an answer? Well research is still on.
3. Phosphates
Diet soda surveys have proved to put women at a larger risk for osteoporosis (tender and brittle bones) owing to the presence of high amounts of phosphoric acids. Studies all over the world shows, high amounts of phosphates in the blood leeches calcium out of your bones to balance calcium-phosphorous equilibrium in the blood, making the bones tender, brittle and easy to break on their own.
Needless to say, phosphates also erode the armour of the teeth that protects them - the tooth enamel, leaving you with no reason to smile. Try and notice the distorted, de-colorised and chipped teeth of regular soda drinkers, which brings you back to square one. Isn't "vanity" the thing that made you choose diet soda over regular soda? Mission re-aborted.
4. Preservatives
The anti-mold builders or preservatives used to give diet soda longer shelf life also plays truant here, adding to your health debacle.
Sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate, the most commonly used preservatives in the soda (soft drink) industry, damages the DNA of mitochondria (power house of each body cell) devoiding the cells of required energy.
Eventually, this gives a sullen effect to the neurological network of your body leading you to depression. Depression is not something you aim for during a weekly outing with friends or otherwise. Therefore, say no to diet soda.
Summing it up, diet soda offers you no nutritional value, confuses your body about to how to digest the chemical overload making your body take much longer to assimilate the foreign chemical substances.
And before I close this review, it's important for a diet soda fan to know that he should totally avoid using diet soda as a chosen alcohol-mixer for it causes sugar rush (sudden surge of energy and high blood sugar levels) effecting heart rate, leading to palpitations. Use instead plain water or regular soda. More than that, if you are a health buff, why not give up alcohol totally?
So next time will it still be diet soda to go with no cheese, lean meat burger, sir?