Many people are led to believe that diet drinks work for weight loss. But a new study suggests that it's actually the other way around. Diet drinks even prevent fat loss.
If you wish to shed a few pounds, you might also be tempted to take extra calories from diet sodas. But what you need to know is that your metabolism even gets slower when you drink more of diet beverages.
According to the research conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital, most diet soda drinks contain an artificial sweetener called aspartame which disrupts metabolism. The slower your metabolism, the faster and easier it is for you to gain weight.
"Sugar substitutes like aspartame are designed to promote weight loss and decrease the incidence of metabolic syndrome, but a number of clinical and epidemiologic studies have suggested that these products don't work very well and may actually make things worse," the report's senior author Dr Richard Hodin said.
"We found that aspartame blocks a gut enzyme called intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP) that we previously showed can prevent obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome."
"So we think that aspartame might not work because, even as it is substituting for sugar, it blocks the beneficial aspects of IAP."
This means that instead of helping weight loss, artificial sweeteners even cause weight gain. This leads to Dr. Hodin's study of aspartame itself. He conducted another study on mice which led him to conclude that artificial sweeteners really do not work when it comes to reducing weight and losing fat. And according to him, it can even be a reason for a person to feel hungrier.
"There has been some evidence that they actually can make you more hungry and may be associated with increased calorie consumption."
"Our findings regarding aspartame's inhibition of IAP may help explain why the use of aspartame is counterproductive."
"While we can't rule out other contributing mechanisms, our experiments clearly show that aspartame blocks IAP activity, independent of other effects."
