Diet Soda's Dirty Secret

So you think diet soda's good for you? Well, it's gotta be better than regular soda right? And it has to be good for helping you lose weight, right? After all, it has the word "diet" in it.

Well, the answer to those questions (in order) are: It's not, not by much, and no way!

Let's get this straight right now. Diet soda is not good for you. No matter how you want to look at it, it's still a drink that will not help you and might just kill you.

I'm not going to sound any alarms but there are some experts who claim the artificial sweeteners and the other chemicals in diet soda lead to cancer and other life-threatening diseases. While science hasn't actually proven any of this (yet), it's still not a good idea to ingest anything that the science world feels the need to conduct such tests on. I mean, look how long it took before we KNEW smoking was bad for us.

This brings us to the whole thing about diet soda being better for you than regular soda. It probably is. In fact, it certainly has less calories and that's a good thing. But saying that diet soda is better for you than regular soda is kinda like a saying getting hit with a brick is better than getting hit by a Mack truck. If given the choice, I'd take neither, thank you.

Finally, so many people think diet soda is good for losing weight because the word "diet" is in the title. Well, there is still the other word "soda" in the title. And just about everyone knows soda is bad for you. If it wasn't then you'd see everyone at the gym walking around with a bottle of soda in their hand. (That makes me chuckle for some reason.)

But "diet" is still in the title, and that causes way too much confusion. Yet people aren't confused by other things that could be confusing. For example, I have a cinnamon apples candle at home and I've never thought to eat it. As far as I know, no one else has either. Yet it has a yummy fruit and a tasty spice right in it's name. Why is there no problem here yet such confusion over the word "diet"?

Anyway, I digress. Diet soda is not diet and it will not help you lose weight. In fact, studies have shown that any kind of soda - regular or diet - leads to obesity.

And that really is diet soda's dirty little secret. It's not good for you. In fact, it's bad for you. It's especially bad for you if you're trying to lose weight. So, stop buying into the dirty secret and grab a glass of juice or a glass of good ole fashioned water.