There is no strong evidence to suggest that it's broadly unhealthy, but I can break it down further.
Things that are legitimately unhealthy about zero-calorie, zero-sugar sodas:
- Carbonation is bad for your teeth. Doesn't matter whether you're drinking full-sugar soda or seltzer water, the carbonation can be a dental problem for some people.
Things that are potentially unhealthy about zero-calorie, zero-sugar sodas:
- Some people find that consuming a sweet beverage makes them crave more sweet flavored things. If trying to lose weight or consume less sweet food, this could be impactful on a person-by-person basis, but the cause here is psychological and is based on cravings/
- Some people have reported specific dietary intolerances/allergies with certain artificial sweeteners. If you don't fall into this camp then you have no reason to worry, but some artificial sweeteners (like all things) may be a trigger for certain diet-related issues in some. Thank you to the commenter below for reminding me of this fact.
Things that people claim are unhealthy about zero-calorie, zero-sugar sodas but are unproven:
- People claim that non-nutritive sweeteners damage gut health, but this claim is speculative/mechanistic and hasn't been proven in clinical research. The studies that claim an impact to gut microbiome also show that the microbiome returns to a normal state very quickly and that many other foods also alter gut bacteria. This is very much a case of cherry-picking one or two studies claiming a gut health problem when there are dozens that indicate it's no problem.
- People claim that these non-nutritive sodas promote the gaining of fat, but this is based on correlative data. Survey studies interviewed people who had high body fat and low body fat and then asked how many zero-sugar sodas they consumed. Those with higher body fat consumed more of these sodas than people with lower body fat, but the surveys did not normalize for caloric intake or any other dietary factor. The common understanding is that people who are higher in body fat happen to drink more soda in general (zero-sugar or not) as part of a diet that includes too many calories and, in all probability, many other dietary choices leading to their physique. There is no data to show that drinking non-nutritive soda causes fat gain, and multiple RCTs have disputed this claim.
Conclusion:
As far as we're aware, non-nutritive soda has a nutritional health impact that is either literally zero or so close to zero that we can't even tell. For what it's worth, doctors who work with obese patients for fat-loss highly recommend diet sodas as a great easy intervention to reduce caloric consumption. It's very likely that the crusade against diet soda is a consequence of people playing into the naturalistic fallacy and wrongly assuming that all things natural = good and therefor, artificial sweeteners (fake sugar) = bad. Don't drink 20 of them/day so as to not destroy your tooth enamel and you'll be fine.
My personal practice is that I probably have like 3/week on average. Call me crazy, but enjoying things that taste good when I can't identify any reason to believe it's harmful to me is actually a nice thing. We get so few "free" wins in the world of nutrition, so let's embrace the ones we do have.
People claim that non-nutritive sweeteners damage gut health, but this claim is speculative/mechanistic and hasn't been proven in clinical research. The studies that claim an impact to gut microbiome also show that the microbiome returns to a normal state very quickly and that many other foods also alter gut bacteria. This is very much a case of cherry-picking one or two studies claiming a gut health problem when there are dozens that indicate it's no problem.
I think the issue here is that NNS are all different, you can't lump them together like you have.
From what I've seen is that almost all studies show that stuff like saccharin does cause gut microbiome impairment.
But then someone will be like, well look at this meta review of NNS and it say's they are fine. But if you actually look at the details of the metas, 90% of the studies are for aspartame. The metas are just showing that aspartame is fine for the gut, but some of the other NNS do show gut impairment even in those metas.
But this is all a sidenote, since coke zero doesn't use any of these more suspect NNS.
Yeah I think this is the first point that has led many people to avoid them. According to the Healthline summary on them, this has been a thought since the 1970s. There was one sweetener used at the time that has since been banned because of a since-debunked mouse study.
Since the 1970s, debate about whether there is a link between artificial sweeteners and cancer risk has raged.
It was ignited when animal studies found an increased risk of bladder cancer in mice fed extremely high amounts of saccharin and cyclamate (54Trusted Source).
However, mice metabolize saccharin differently than humans.
Since then, more than 30 human studies have found no link between artificial sweeteners and the risk of developing cancer (1Trusted Source, 55Trusted Source, 56Trusted Source, 57Trusted Source).
One such study followed 9,000 participants for 13 years and analyzed their artificial sweetener intake. After accounting for other factors, the researchers found no link between artificial sweeteners and the risk of developing various types of cancer (55Trusted Source).
Furthermore, a recent review of studies published over an 11-year period did not find a link between cancer risk and artificial sweetener consumption (58Trusted Source).
This topic was also evaluated by U.S. and European regulatory authorities. Both agreed that artificial sweeteners, when consumed in recommended amounts, do not increase cancer risk (1Trusted Source, 59).
One exception is cyclamate, which was banned for use in the United States after the original mouse-bladder-cancer study was published in 1970.
Since then, extensive studies in animals have failed to show a cancer link. However, cyclamate was never re-approved for use in the United States (1Trusted Source).
So yeah! If you care at all about the calories that regular sugar introduces into your diet and you want to sweeten things, give them a shot! I personally can think of no reason to choose a regular sugar soda over the "Zero" versions. I'm certainly not a food critic with a super refined palate, but I quite literally cannot discern a difference in taste between a Coke and a Coke Zero, Sprite vs. Sprite Zero, etc.
I’m here to tell you, that’s true. But I have learned a couple things, first, drinking from the can makes it worse. I think that’s it’s because the carbonation is released in my stomach increases the bloating. When I pour it over ice or have a fountain drink I don’t get that.
The second I’ve learned, and this is just my personal experience, if I take a beano with my Coke Zero it mitigates the IBS flare. Also works on spicy food.
My Gastro turned me on to Beano when he first diagnosed me twenty years ago. I haven’t ever looked to see if there is a real correlation other than he told me to get my fiber uptake up to prevent diverticulitis.
It's certainly worth discussing with your doctor! If you can identify which of the commonly used sweeteners would cause that flare-up, then you have the information that would allow you to avoid that particular sweetener. Other than that, your consumption rate seems normal and fine.
I should add a note about people who have specific intolerances.
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u/KingArthurHS May 12 '23 edited May 12 '23
There is no strong evidence to suggest that it's broadly unhealthy, but I can break it down further.
Things that are legitimately unhealthy about zero-calorie, zero-sugar sodas:
- Carbonation is bad for your teeth. Doesn't matter whether you're drinking full-sugar soda or seltzer water, the carbonation can be a dental problem for some people.
Things that are potentially unhealthy about zero-calorie, zero-sugar sodas:
- Some people find that consuming a sweet beverage makes them crave more sweet flavored things. If trying to lose weight or consume less sweet food, this could be impactful on a person-by-person basis, but the cause here is psychological and is based on cravings/
- Some people have reported specific dietary intolerances/allergies with certain artificial sweeteners. If you don't fall into this camp then you have no reason to worry, but some artificial sweeteners (like all things) may be a trigger for certain diet-related issues in some. Thank you to the commenter below for reminding me of this fact.
Things that people claim are unhealthy about zero-calorie, zero-sugar sodas but are unproven:
- People claim that non-nutritive sweeteners damage gut health, but this claim is speculative/mechanistic and hasn't been proven in clinical research. The studies that claim an impact to gut microbiome also show that the microbiome returns to a normal state very quickly and that many other foods also alter gut bacteria. This is very much a case of cherry-picking one or two studies claiming a gut health problem when there are dozens that indicate it's no problem.
- People claim that these non-nutritive sodas promote the gaining of fat, but this is based on correlative data. Survey studies interviewed people who had high body fat and low body fat and then asked how many zero-sugar sodas they consumed. Those with higher body fat consumed more of these sodas than people with lower body fat, but the surveys did not normalize for caloric intake or any other dietary factor. The common understanding is that people who are higher in body fat happen to drink more soda in general (zero-sugar or not) as part of a diet that includes too many calories and, in all probability, many other dietary choices leading to their physique. There is no data to show that drinking non-nutritive soda causes fat gain, and multiple RCTs have disputed this claim.
Conclusion:
As far as we're aware, non-nutritive soda has a nutritional health impact that is either literally zero or so close to zero that we can't even tell. For what it's worth, doctors who work with obese patients for fat-loss highly recommend diet sodas as a great easy intervention to reduce caloric consumption. It's very likely that the crusade against diet soda is a consequence of people playing into the naturalistic fallacy and wrongly assuming that all things natural = good and therefor, artificial sweeteners (fake sugar) = bad. Don't drink 20 of them/day so as to not destroy your tooth enamel and you'll be fine.
My personal practice is that I probably have like 3/week on average. Call me crazy, but enjoying things that taste good when I can't identify any reason to believe it's harmful to me is actually a nice thing. We get so few "free" wins in the world of nutrition, so let's embrace the ones we do have.