Diet Soda, like Darth Vader only slightly more refreshing

Diet Coke, it seems like a moderately low risk vice. All those studies about lab rats getting cancer from NutraSweet, proved that unless we were attached to a proverbial saltlick of aspartame, we’d be fine with moderate consumption. It’s a zero calorie beverage that happens to be laden with caffeine; perfect for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

Ahhhh, ignorance is bliss, ain’t it?

The New York Times recently reported on a nine-year study by scientists monitoring men and women between the ages of 45-64 in regard to their eating patterns and likelihood of having metabolic syndrome (doesn’t that sound like a made-up disease?). In all fairness, something I feel that was completely overlooked in the Times article; men and women between the ages of 45-64 are prime examples of people who will naturally have increased levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, slower metabolism, and increased risk if diabetes—the defining symptoms/characteristics of metabolic syndrome. Okay, having cleared my conscious of common sense (pesky, I know), on to more information about the experiment. The study followed these 9,500 participants in their eating habits:

Over all, a Western dietary pattern — high intakes of refined grains, fried
foods and red meat — was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for
metabolic syndrome, while a “prudent” diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish
and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk.

But, diet soda still seems safe, right? Well according to a itty-bitty paragraph at the end of the article (are we back in the yellow-journalism era? Because the title of the article definitely said “Diet Soda”), those participants that drank one or more diet sodas a day increased their chance of metabolic syndrome by 34%. Okay, that’s a big number. I must say this article leaves me with more questions than answers. One being, why? What’s in diet soda that makes it increase your risk of heart disease by a third? Answer: They don’t really know.

I mean, I have my theories. Diet beverages are all chemicals. And although our bodies are evolving to an ever more encompassing food source at rapid rates, they still haven’t evolved to be able to digest manmade chemical compounds. The digestion of chemicals, like those found in soda, is treated in the body like a toxin, which will be processed accordingly through the kidneys. This extra tax on our internal organs would be my guess as to the cause of ‘metabolic syndrome’ (which still sounds like a made-up disease to me).

But what do I know, I’m a coffee drinker.