Never resort to drinking zero-calorie, sugar-free diet sodas and other concoctions made with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose.
As I’ve always said, those toxic, sugar-free sweeteners are just as bad as—if not worse than—real sugar. And now, a major, new study has found that drinking artificially sweetened diet soda significantly increases your risk of stroke, heart disease, and even early death.
In a moment, I’ll tell you more about that disturbing study—including how little it takes to put you at risk.
But first, let’s take a closer look at how the diet soda craze began…
Trading one poison for another
In the early 1960s, the Coca-Cola Company started getting push back about their soda products. People were starting to worry about the amount of sugar and calories each soda contained.
So, the Coca-Cola Company came up with Tab®, one of the first types of diet soda.
It was a foul-tasting concoction consumed in staggering quantities by people trying to lose weight. But somehow—the obese stayed obese, no matter how much Tab® they drank to quench their thirst. (It seemed to me that they traded their sugar addiction for a diet soda addiction.)
Signs of trouble in “diet soda land”
By the 1970s, scientific studies began to show the dangers of artificial sweeteners. For example, laboratory studies found that saccharin, one of the artificial sweeteners originally used to make Tab®, was carcinogenic.
In the years since, several additional studies have linked artificial sweeteners to virtually every medical problem they’re supposed to help you prevent—such as obesity, weight gain, and Type II diabetes.
The calorie-counting crew, which believes all calories are created equal, were baffled by these findings. They put forth all kinds of ridiculous explanations. And they denied the scientific evidence showing that these artificial sweeteners are actually metabolic poisons.
But now, a new study has found a link between artificially sweetened diet sodas and heart disease, stroke—and even early death…
Just two cans a day could be deadly
For the new study, researchers tracked more than 80,000 post-menopausal women ages 51 to 79 for 12 years.
Compared to women who never drank diet soda, women who drank two or more a day were:
- 31 percent more likely to have a blood clot-caused stroke
- 29 percent more likely to have heart disease
- 16 percent more likely to die from any cause
Those are some pretty significant increases in risk. And the researchers called the results “shocking.” But the only reason you could ever find these results to be “shocking” is if you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the last half-century…
But even after discovering these results, the crony corporatist American Heart Association (AHA) still somehow claimed, “there’s inadequate evidence to conclude that low-calorie, artificially sweetened drinks affect the risk of heart disease and stroke.”
But you can bet that if any drug were shown to reduce the risks of heart disease and stroke by one-third—the way that diet sodas increase them—they’d be shouting the news from the rooftops.
Save calories AND your life
The AHA eventually stumbled into the truth, adding, “water is the best choice for a no-calorie drink.”
Ya think? That’s a no-brainer!
All their hemming, hawing, and hoping to find a “harmless” artificial sweetener reminds me of what 17th-century English philosopher Samuel Johnson said about second marriages. They’re the “triumph of hope over experience.”
Johnson also said, “mankind needs less to be instructed than to be reminded.” Well, how many more reminders will it take before they get the message about “diet” drinks?
Another interesting note is that, like Monday’s study, this new research came from France, where diet soda isn’t even very popular, compared to the U.S. Nevertheless, there was still abundant data showing its dangerous—even deadly—effects.
So, imagine what the results would be in the U.S., where diet soda is much more heavily consumed.
In the end, it always comes back to the same solid, delicious advice…
You can achieve and maintain a healthy weight by following a balanced, Mediterranean-style diet, which includes:
- 6 to 8 servings of fruits and vegetables daily
- Alcohol in moderation
- Full-fat dairy at every meal, including butter, cheese, and yogurt
- Meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and seeds
This approach allows you to enjoy your food—instead of making it the enemy. (To read more about this way of eating, simply type “Mediterranean diet” into the top right search bar of my website, www.DrMicozzi.com.)
And when it comes to food, artificial sweeteners aren’t the only things you should avoid. In fact, as I wrote in the August 2017 issue of my Insiders’ Cures newsletter (“6 killers the FDA allows in our food”), there are many common food additives that are particularly poisonous to your health. If you’re not a subscriber, click here to learn how you can gain access to this article and my entire archive—starting today!
“Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Stroke, Coronary Heart Disease, and All-Cause Mortality in the Women’s Health Initiative.” Stroke 2019;50(3):555–562. doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.118.023100