Diet Soft Drinks Won’t Make You Fat But This Talk Will Make Me Crazy

A recent story out of the University of Texas has been pushed into the diet and nutrition spotlight as of late. The researchers from Texas’s Health Science Center presented their findings at the annual scientific meeting of the American Diabetes Association. The findings suggest that drinking diet soda in middle age increases a person’s chance of gaining weight.

However, when most people read that sentence all they will read is this: “drinking diet soda will make you fat.”

And when I read that all I see is this: “There are a lot of ridiculous presumptions in this world.”

Correlation is distinctly different from causation. Confusing the two can be very dangerous, especially when people take information and assume there is cause and effect involved, when the two variables simply happen to co-exist. I was born on the coldest day in recorded Atlanta history. However, I was born because I had come to full term, not because of the weather. No doubt the two events are correlated, as in the variables do happen to coexist. But there is no cause and effect relationship there.

Just because someone drinks diet soft drinks and gains weight does not mean that the weight gain is caused by drinking diet soft drinks. Perhaps it wasn’t the diet soda… perhaps it was the huge hamburger and large order of fries ordered with the diet soda and eaten 5 times a week that is to blame. This study does not take into account or control for the other foods the participants ate or how many overall calories were consumed.

Eating more calories than your body needs to perform daily activities is what makes you gain weight. Case closed. Honestly… how can we gain weight from something that doesn’t have calories? We consume too many calories and/or we don’t exercise enough. We have a love affair with food. I am guilty just like the rest of you… but own up to it! Don’t blame it on diet soft drinks as an easy way out, as a scapegoat, as an excuse. This is McCarthyism at its finest.