Diet Drinks Overweight People Eat More, Study Finds

Sharon Moore January 17, 2014

A lot of people think that if they switch to diet drinks than the regular sweetened ones, they can manage their weight better. But according to a new study, heavy people who have a diet drink habit tend to consume more calories from food.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health have found that overweight people who opt for ‘diet drinks’ are eating more solid food during the day than overweight and obese people who drink sugary drinks. According to the researchers, previous findings which suggest that diet drinks may disrupt the brain’s sweet sensors, may help explain the results of their study. "If you consume artificial sweeteners, it makes the brain think you are less satiated or full, and as a result you eat more,” said study co-author Sara Bleich, associate professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The study involved data from 1999 to 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that asked about dietary habits over the previous 24 hours. The team from John Hopkins looked at the national patterns in diet-beverage habits, sugary-drink consumption and caloric intake by body-weight category. They found that twice as many obese people drink diet fizzy drinks as normal-weight adults. Overall, 11 per cent of normal-weight, 19 per cent of overweight and 22 per cent of obese adults drink diet beverages.

Furthermore, obese participants who reported drinking diet beverages consumed, on average, 88 more calories per day from solid food than those who consumed regular sugary beverages. Meanwhile, obese participants who drank diet drinks consumed nearly 200 more calories a day from food than obese men and women who drank sugary drinks.

Susie Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University, who was not part of the study, was not surprised of the findings. She said previous studies have shown that artificial sweeteners disrupt basic learning process. It has also been found that the brain of diet drinkers respond differently to sugar than the brain of a regular sweetened drink consumer. "It’s as if the experience with diet soda has made the meaning of sweet tastes confusing or unpredictable," she said.

The new study, however, does not encourage consuming just regular sugary drinks. Swithers said the goal should be to reduce consumption of sweeteners altogether.

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Drinking diet soda just makes you eat more