Diet Cola with Your Cheeseburger? Better Not
Scientists were shocked: the combination of sweetener and carbohydrates has major consequences for your metabolism. Did you think you were making a healthy choice with a Diet Coke alongside your burger, or a diet iced tea with your bitterballen? Neuropsychologist Dana Small: ‘The best alternative? A glass of water.’
Diet Cola with Your Hamburger: a Very Bad Idea
A shocking research finding: when you combine the sweetener sucralose with carbohydrates, something significant changes in your metabolism. Neuropsychologist Dana Small discovered this during her research into fast food at Yale University.
Carbohydrates in the Mix
So it is the combination of sucralose and carbohydrates that matters. Sucralose is found in diet soft drinks, such as Diet Pepsi and Coca Cola Light. And you almost never drink a soft drink like that on its own; it comes with food. What’s more, the sweetener is also found in sweets, biscuits or crisps—exactly the kind of mix with carbohydrates we are talking about. And that combination is not good, the researchers discovered. It causes lasting changes in the metabolism. ‘It changes the part of your brain that regulates how food is processed in your body,’ says Small. ‘And that change is permanent, so it is not limited to when you eat the diet soft drink with fries or a diet snack.’
From Perfectly Healthy to Almost Diabetic
The results were so striking that Small stopped part of her research. She noticed that some participants had already changed from completely healthy to prediabetic in just two weeks. One detail: the study only examined one type of artificial sweetener, namely sucralose. There are many more sugar substitutes, such as aspartame and saccharine. So nothing can yet be said about the effect of those sweeteners, combined with carbs, on your metabolism.
Reverse It?
The research is continuing, mainly to find out how these changes arise and how they can be reversed. But Small is already drawing one conclusion: no sucralose with carbohydrates. In theory, it would therefore be better to drink diet soft drinks without eating anything alongside them, but then you should not eat something containing carbohydrates shortly afterwards either. So replacing soft drinks with diet soft drinks is not such a good idea. The scientists advise: have a glass of water instead.
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