Diet Soda and Regular Soda's Unhealthy Common Traits

It's obvious that regular and diet have some different ingredients and health effects, but they have a few things in common.

1. Phosphoric Acid: It's used in soda to give it a tangy taste. Phosphoric Acid has been compared to battery acid. It under speculation for eating the enamel off soda drinkers teeth. Also, too much phosphoric acid intake can cause the calcium to be removed from your bones and over time can potentially cause osteoporosis and low bone density.

2. Caramel Coloring: Caramel coloring in sodas is made by reacting sugars with ammonia. Researchers found that the chemicals this reaction produces carcinogen, or basically it produces a chemical that causes cancer.

Calorie and Sugar Infested Soda; The Truth About Regular Soda.

Hmm, well if you're a person who counts calories you are probably well aware that in at least one can of Pepsi there is over 100 calories. For people who indulge on soda rarely that might not seem like a lot, but if you're a daily soda drinker those calories can add up and your body might be facing some repercussions for your actions. Obesity is extremely high in the United States, and all though there is no solid reason on how it got so high, people are starting to put the blame on soda. And could you blame them? If you were to drink four cans of Pepsi in a day, that calorie intake alone is well over five hundred. All just for a beverage.

The sugar in regular soda is what gets the calories raised so high. Recently, a study done on 60,000 people in Singapore showed that pancreatic cancer was linked to soda consumption.

The study began in 1993 and lasted for 14 years. The researchers asked the individuals being studied what their diet was, how much soda they drank, and if it was sweetened or not. After 14 years they discovered that those who drank two or more sodas a week had an 87% increased rate of developing pancreatic cancer.

Scientists believe that the sugar in soda is the cause of this. ( If you have no clue what the pancreas is, let me fill you in really fast. It is located below the stomach and it produces insulin. Insulin helps control your blood sugar) The sugar in the soda increases the insulin level, and it has been shown that insulin promotes the growth of tissue, including cancer cells.

The Dangers of Aspartame (Artificial Sweeteners Sugarfree Diet Coke Zero...

Dr. Morando Soffritti and the FDA

Italian cancer researcher, Dr. Morando Soffritti, who works for European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences (ERF), conducted a study after he felt that a study done in the 1970s was inadequate because the rats were put to death after a two year life span. ""Cancer is a disease of the third part of life," Dr. Soffritti said. "You have 75 percent of cancer diagnoses for people who are 55 years old or older. So if you truncate the experiments at 110 weeks and the rats are supposed to survive until 150 to 160 weeks, it means you avoid the development of cancer at the time when cancer would be starting to arise." (nytimes.com)

His study included 1,900 Sprauge-Dawley rats that were used when they were eight weeks old tell their natural death. Soffritti and his team fed the rats in the treated group feed that had doses of aspartame in it. The control group received the same feed, but it was aspartame free.

The last rat died at 159 weeks old, which is a little bit over three years. After each rat died of natural causes an autopsy was conducted. Through the autopsy's, Dr. Soffritti and his team discovered some surprising and disturbing results from the rats in the treated group. They found the rats had an increased risk of developing malignant tumors on peripheral nerves and an increase in lymphomas and leukemia.



When these results were shown to the FDA, things didn't go so smoothly.

The FDA has been dealing with aspartame complaints since the 1960s about aspartames link to brain, pancreatic, uterine, ovarian, thyroid, mammary, and testicular thyroids. Knowing these results, the FDA didn't allow aspartame to be approved for over fifteen years. During the 1970s the scientists at G.D Searle had filed a petition for the FDA to approve aspartame, claiming the research they had done it concluded it was safe. The FDA responded by saying they discovered numerous errors and inadequate results with Searle's results.

Another group of scientists tried to stop the FDA from approving aspartame. Regardless of the errors in Searle's studies and the results found in other studies that concluded aspartame was not safe, the FDA investigators approved aspartame. One of these people was Arthur Hull Hayes, who then left the FDA to work for Searle.

Sounds a bit fishy, eh?

So when the ERF presented their results to the FDA, the FDA claimed that there wasn't enough information provided by the ERF to say there was really a problem with aspartame. " Based on our review, pathological changes were incidental and appeared spontaneously in the study animals, and none of the histopathological changes reported appear to be related to treatment with aspartame." (FDA)

To review the ERF's study follow this link:
http://www.sweetpoison.com/pdf/Soffritti_et_al_in_EHP.pdf

To review the FDA's dismal of their claims follow this link:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodIngredientsPackaging/FoodAdditives/ucm208580.htm

Artificial Sweetener

Obviously since Diet Soda contains no sugar, scientists had to find a way to give it a sweet taste. This began the long line of artificial sweetener and the media's constant backlash of the artificial sweetener's effects. For the next twenty or so years soda companies went through several different artificial sweetener changes, after each one was said to cause a different health problem (cancer, tumors, etc) .

In 1981 the FDA approved the chemical compound Aspartame okay to use in food and beverages.

"It is a synthetic chemical consisting of two amino acids, phenylalanine (50 percent) and aspartic acid (40 percent), and a methyl ester (10 percent) that promptly becomes free methyl alcohol (methanol; wood alcohol). The latter is universally considered a severe poison" (wnho.net).

Free methyl alcohol has been said to cause chronic methanol poisoning, which then affects the dopamine system of the brain and consequently causes addiction.

After Aspartame was approved complaints started flowing in about how dangerous it is. The FDA do anything about the complaints, and by 1988 "80 percent of complaints volunteered by consumers to the FDA about supplements involved aspartame products" (wnho.net)

Are you a little worried yet?
Here is an overview of some of the symptoms reported:
(courtesy of wnho.net)

(http://www.wnho.net/fdaapprovedepidemic.htm)



In 2008, a study was done to see if diet soda intake increased the risk of Metabolic Syndrome and Type II Diabetes. The scientists assessed diet soda consumption by doing a repeated food questionnaire. They discovered that people who have drink diet soda daily have a 36% greater risk of developing a Metabolic Syndrome and a 62% risk of getting Type II Diabetes.

(http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2009/01/16/dc08-1799)



Diet soda, which contains aspartame, is considered the soda to switch to when you're trying to watch your figure. However, these claims and opinions could be wrong. Researchers suggest that diet soda may in fact, "aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates and gain weight" (wnho.net).
http://www.wnho.net/michelle_obama_and_aspartame.htm

Diet Soda...

Do you know who first made diet soda or why it was invented?
Hyman Kirsch first formulated diet soda in the beginning of the 1950's so that people at the Jewish Sanitarium for Chronic Disease who suffered with diabetes could have something to drink. He named it No-Cal Soda. However, by the 1960's No-Cal Soda shut down their factory. Pepsi and Coca-Cola decided to start formulating their own diet soda, and No-Cal couldn't compete with their marketing.

Hyman Kirsch: Russian immigrant and diet soda inventor.