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Is diet soda/artificial sweeteners bad for you?
- Thread starter Frisco
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pseudobrit said:
Yeah, the road of intellectual discovery is treacherous and gets harder and harder until someone evolves, or perishes....
I used to drink at least 6 12 oz cans of soda a day. I couldn't even tell you why or how. In the morning I'd drink a few cups of coffee and eventually walk my fat ass over to Starbucks for a Venti Carmel Frap with Whipped Cream.
Eventually I started to drink less soda and if I drank it I drank diet. Soon thereafter the need or desire to drink soda started to go away and I turned to juice. This was all in addition to roughly 2-3 quarts of water a day. The sugars found in the juice were causing me to pack on even more pounds at a rapid speed. I switched to chocolate milk. I'd like to say that I was misinformed about calories and such, but in fact I wasn't...I just ignored it. I thought that a gallon of chocolate milk, 2-3 quarts of water and maybe one can of diet soda a day was OK. Guess who was lying?
Then one day I replaced that chocolate milk with water or the occasional iced tea with aspartame. Here is my theory, while aspartame is not great for you and when it comes to sugar the idea is to moderate your intake, the same would hold true for aspartame. I'd rather eat my calories now than to drink them. I've found healthier alternatives to those Carmel 700 calorie drinks and chocolate milk. For 700 calories I can have 7 cups of grapes, 14 cups of cantaloupe (melon), 25 cups of green beans, 6 oz of chicken, a salad with fat free dressing, two cups of veggies, and 2 cups of jello with whipped cream. Yeah that's a lot of food.
Your questions will always bring out the aspartame is bad people and the aspartame is ok people. The fact is, anything manufactured is never great for you if you take too much of it in, but in fact it is better for you not to have to sacrifice your daily calorie intake by drinking sodas that contain the bad sugars and take a little bit of aspartame with your meal, drink, etc.
Eventually I started to drink less soda and if I drank it I drank diet. Soon thereafter the need or desire to drink soda started to go away and I turned to juice. This was all in addition to roughly 2-3 quarts of water a day. The sugars found in the juice were causing me to pack on even more pounds at a rapid speed. I switched to chocolate milk. I'd like to say that I was misinformed about calories and such, but in fact I wasn't...I just ignored it. I thought that a gallon of chocolate milk, 2-3 quarts of water and maybe one can of diet soda a day was OK. Guess who was lying?
Then one day I replaced that chocolate milk with water or the occasional iced tea with aspartame. Here is my theory, while aspartame is not great for you and when it comes to sugar the idea is to moderate your intake, the same would hold true for aspartame. I'd rather eat my calories now than to drink them. I've found healthier alternatives to those Carmel 700 calorie drinks and chocolate milk. For 700 calories I can have 7 cups of grapes, 14 cups of cantaloupe (melon), 25 cups of green beans, 6 oz of chicken, a salad with fat free dressing, two cups of veggies, and 2 cups of jello with whipped cream. Yeah that's a lot of food.
Your questions will always bring out the aspartame is bad people and the aspartame is ok people. The fact is, anything manufactured is never great for you if you take too much of it in, but in fact it is better for you not to have to sacrifice your daily calorie intake by drinking sodas that contain the bad sugars and take a little bit of aspartame with your meal, drink, etc.
The Aspartame gives me a terrible headache; so no, I don't drink the stuff. On the other hand, Splenda doesn't bother me a bit. 
jessica. said:
I would say this is one of those "common sense" things that sounds just about right to most people if they don't think about it too hard.
An average human consumes a staggering amount of "manufactured" food and drink daily. I know I do. But I also avoid certain things like saturated fats, trans fats, high fructose corn syrup and sugars which are known to be harmful when consumed in excess.
In fact, it's partly due to my regular intake of manufactured cereal mixed with manufactured fiber cereal and manufactured flax meal covered in manufactured milk that keeps my manufactured cholesterol in the 140s.
There's a balance to be struck between the embrace and distrust of technology.