More bad news about diet soda

[Guest guest]

If increased risk of osteoporosis isn't bad enough to scare you away

from it, how about cardiac risk? They warn, however, that we should

not infer causality from their results:

www.snipurl.com/dietsoda

Drinking more than one soda a day -- even if it's the sugar-free diet

kind -- is associated with an increased incidence of metabolic

syndrome, a cluster of risk factors linked to the development of

diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a study finds.

The link to diet soda found in the study was " striking " but not

entirely a surprise, said Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, study senior author

and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

There had been some hints of it in earlier studies, he said.

" But this is the first study to show the association in a prospective

fashion and in a large population, " Vasan said.

That population consisted of more than 6,000 participants in the

Framingham Heart Study, which has been following residents of a

Massachusetts town since 1948. When the soda portion of the study

began, all participants were free of metabolic syndrome, a collection

of risk factors including high blood pressure, elevated levels of the

blood fats called triglycerides, low levels of the artery-protecting

HDL cholesterol, high fasting blood sugar levels and excessive waist

circumference. Metabolic syndrome is the presence of three or more of

these risk factors.

Over the four years of the study, people who consumed more than one

soft drink of any kind a day were 44 percent more likely to develop

metabolic syndrome than those who didn't drink a soda a day.

The findings are published in the July 24 issue of the journal

Circulation.

A variety of explanations, none proven, have been proposed for the

link between diet soft drink consumption and metabolic syndrome, Vasan

said. That association was evident even when the researchers accounted

for other factors, such as levels of saturated fat and fiber in the

diet, total calorie intake, smoking and physical activity.

One theory is that the high sweetness of all soft drinks makes a

person more prone to eat sugary, fattening foods. Another is that the

caramel content of soft drinks promotes metabolic changes that lead to

insulin resistance. " These are hotly debated by nutritional experts, "

Vasan said.

Vasan, who noted that he is not a nutritional expert, said he leans

toward the theory that " this is a marker of dietary behavior " -- that

people who like to drink sweet soda also like to eat the kind of foods

that cardiac nutritionists warn against.

" But we cannot infer causality, " Vasan said, meaning there is no proof

that soda itself is the villain. " We have an association. Maybe it is

a causal one or maybe it is a marker of something else. "

Carefully controlled animal studies might resolve the cause-and-effect

issue, he said.

Dr. G. Nabel, director of the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and

Blood Institute, which funds the Framingham Heart Study, said in a

prepared statement: " Other studies have shown that the extra calories

and sugar in soft drinks contribute to weight gain, and therefore

heart disease risk. This study echoes those findings by extending the

link to all soft drinks and the metabolic syndrome. "

Dr. Suzanne R. Steinbaum, director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox

Hill Hospital in New York City, said, " There is no safe way of eating

junk food, just as we learned the lesson from trans fats and partially

hydrogenated oils often found in fat-free or low-fat cookies. Diet

soda does not protect us from the development of what we are trying to

avoid by consuming it. "