Diet drinks are often low in calories (or they contain no calories at all), so they generally do not provide much in the way of nutritional value. In fact, most diet drinks do not contain any carbohydrate, fats, or protein at all. Check the calorie chart for your favorite diet drinks to determine their nutritional value.
Low Nutritional Value
If a diet drink has zero calories, that also means it doesn’t contain any carbs, protein, or fats – it also means that it isn’t like to contain many vitamins or minerals. To produce diet drinks, manufacturers use artificial sweeteners and artificial flavoring to achieve the desired effect without adding any calories. In essence, you are drinking chemical-laden flavored water that doesn’t give your body any nutritional value – it may even cause negative effects on your health.
Zero-Calorie Artificial Sweeteners
In order to keep the calorie count for diet drinks low, manufacturers often resort to the use of artificial sweeteners as an alternative to sugar. Sugar is high in calories and has the potential to produce dangerous spikes in blood sugar levels, but artificial sweeteners may be just as dangerous. Even though they contain few to no calories, artificial sweeteners are laden with chemicals which can have a negative impact on your health. Some of the problems that have been linked to artificial sweeteners include hormone imbalance, heart palpitations, neurological disorders and increased risk for diabetes.
Based on the nutritional insights given above, you may already realize that diet drinks often do more harm than good. While the fact that diet drinks have no calories is a good thing, the artificial ingredients they contain may have a negative impact on your health. Check the calorie calculator for your favorite diet drinks to determine their nutritional value.
Metabolic Syndrome
The term “metabolic syndrome” refers to a collection of risk factors for serious disease that often occur simultaneously – these risk factors include: abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high fasting glucose, and high blood pressure. Though diet drinks do not contain calories, a 2008 studied revealed that drinking diet soda was associated with a 34% increase in the risk for developing metabolic syndrome.
Weight Loss Benefits
Many people choose diet drinks because they contain few to no calories which, ideally, will help them to lose weight. The basic principle for weight loss is to ingest fewer calories than your body burns. Thus, drinking zero-calorie beverages as an alternative to sugary soft drinks may have the desired effect. Of course, drinking water instead of soft drinks and other high-calorie beverages is a healthier alternative, you may still lose weight by switching to diet drinks from regular soft drinks.
