Aspartame and Weight Loss

There has been a lot of press lately that diet sodas, particularly the artificial sweeteners used in them, can actually lead to weight gain as well as a host of additional health problems. But, how much of this is hype and how much is fact? While I cannot answer that question, and at this point no one can regardless of what they say, I will do my best to give you a brief review of what my fellow scientists have found out about the effects of artificially sweetened beverages (ASB) on weight gain.
Let’s start with a basic question, what defines an artificially sweetened beverage? Well, that would be any beverage that has no, or negligible, calories and are therefore of no, or negligible, nutritive value. These are in contrast to sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) which are often sweetened by high-fructose corn syrup (that’s a whole other article). These artificial sweeteners as their name implies are chemically engineered and are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than standard table sugar. Currently the Food and Drug Administration has approved five artificial sweeteners as safe for human consumption: acesulfame potassium, aspartame, neotame, saccharin (yes a study did link saccharin to bladder cancer in rodents, but was never replicated and the doses given were extremely high), and sucralose. All of these artificial sweeteners are used in a myriad of foods and beverages and most can be conveniently found in small, pastel-colored packets in that hallowed ground known as Starbucks™.
So, as we all know the makers of these artificial sweeteners and the vendors you use them have fed countless millions into the marketing machine in order to promote their consumption and the consumption of the products they are in, but how much...

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...st modest weight loss. However, it is important to note that these studies were rather short in duration and that the weight loss seen was not always significant.
So, what’s the verdict? Is diet soda good for you? Well, based off the research and a good measure of my humble opinion, I would say that it is alright. Will you lose weight by continuing to drink it? Possibly, but no amount of diet soda is going to help you lose weight if you are using it to wash down a super value sized meal from your local burger joint, but as part of a healthier eating regiment, it probably won’t hurt. Will you gain weight by drinking it? Again, the answer is it depends on how you adjust the rest of your diet while drinking it. In the end, the evidence would suggest that artificially sweetened beverages are not the enemy of weight loss, just possibly the scapegoat when it fails.