The dangers of diet soda are relatively unknown to many consumers. Most people see it as a harmless or even healthier alternative to regular soda. Proponents, otherwise known as the companies that produce diet soda, love its distinct taste state that some hundreds of studies have found its effects to be indeterminate. In reality, the majority of studies into the health effects of diet soda as will be seen in this paper have concluded that diet soda poses an even greater risk to human health due to its ability to cause obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, reduced kidney function, and erode tooth enamel. The chemical elements it contains, particularly aspartame, can cause serious damage to one’s metabolism and other bodily functions and can be addictive. For this reason, diet soda needs to be taken off of the market until a better substitute for its chemical ingredients can be found.

Companies that produce diet soda and use aspartame in their beverages claim that they have been proven to be safe. In fact, Coca-Cola’s website states the following: “Aspartame is a low-calorie sweetener made primarily of two amino acids; aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Aspartame is one of the most thoroughly researched ingredients in use today, with more than 200 studies confirming its safety. Only people born with PKU (phenylketonuria), a rare disorder, need to avoid phenylalanine, one of the components of aspartame, because their bodies cannot break it down.”  Although Coca-Cola claims that over two hundred studies confirm the safety of aspartame, they fail to provide any concrete evidence of those sources, where these studies were done, or any links to these studies for consumers. Another concern with this statement is that it is detrimental to people diagnosed with PKU, a disorder that can cause brain damage to those afflicted if they consume high doses of aspartame. In addition, there are many other studies which claim that aspartame is unnatural and produces harmful effects to the human body. A health controversy such as this requires more research until a conclusive decision about whether diet soda is harmful or detrimental is reached. Human health must be top priority as diet soda is consumed at such a massive scale around the globe, usually from companies like Coca-Cola.

Some consumers are still true believers in the ‘good’ effects of diet soda. Brian Good from Men’s Health magazine is one of the few, claiming that drinking diet soda daily will lead to weight loss in an article entitled “Drink Away 10 Pounds”, which supports the claims of the companies which produce it. He conducted a study where he did just this, and switched from regular soda to diet soda for four weeks, saving a total of 2,024 calories. From these results he concluded that saving calories were the most important aspect of human health, because it matters how thin we are more than the overall health of an individual. He even provided the readers with helpful tips from Liz Ward, a Massachusetts nutrition consultant, for getting used to the taste of diet soda, assuming that they enjoy the taste of regular soda: “If you can't stand diet but want to start drinking it, try filling your cup three-fourths of the way with regular soda and topping it off with diet. Then gradually adjust the ratio until you can wean yourself off regular altogether.” While Good is concerned about the weight and physical appearance of his audience, many fitness experts would agree that the health of a person as a whole is much more important. In fact, one can be thin and maintain a healthy weight but not be metabolically fit, which is much more important due to the role that it plays with insulin and other major body organs. This can lead to some overweight people can even being healthier than their thinner peers. (Sifferlin, 2012). However, the majority of diet coke consumers love their aspartame-filled beverage and will not be keen on giving it up so quickly. This could be due to their admiration for the drink, or simply because of how addictive the taste is. Either way, something must be done about the real negative effects of this product.

The companies that produce diet soda say that they are creating this alternative to regular soda out of concern for human health via excess sugar consumption which is good because this should be their main responsibility. They also stated that they were concerned about the amount of calories in normal soda, and that a reduction in the amount of these calories could also lead to a reduction in further weight gain and even result in weight loss. However, a research study conducted on mainly nineteen year olds by Robert H. Knopp, Kathleen Brandt, and Ronald A. Arky for Taylor and Francis Online in 2009 in an article called “Effects of aspartame in young persons during weight reduction” found otherwise. They stated that “In no instance was there a detectable effect of the ingested aspartame. No meaningful effect of weight reduction or aspartame was seen on plasma triglyceride and cholesterol, nor on any other parameter of hematologic, hepatic, or renal function that was measured.” This shows that diet soda’s use of aspartame instead of regular sugar does not produce the positive effects that it claims to have, and that there is no use in switching to diet soda for the reduction of calories and sugar alone. Then the question arises, what is the purpose of diet soda if not to save calories and sugar, and are there any bad effects?

It’s understandable why companies would say that there’s no discernable effects that diet soda can harm your teeth; it’s not sugar. They claim that this is another positive to diet soda that consumers will not find in regular soda because they need to market it as a healthier version of the original. Gordon Isbell, a dentist from Alabama, says that the greatest myth that is spread by soda companies is that diet soda will not rot your teeth because there is no sugar. He even goes on to say that “People who sip diet soft drinks throughout the day can damage their teeth beyond repair. The problem is compounded if you have a dry mouth or if you drink soda without eating food, because the acid stays on your teeth longer.” (Csatari, 1996)  Janet Bailey from Good Housekeeping Magazine agrees with this, stating that “As it turns out, it's not the sugar in soda that eats away at tooth enamel, it's the acids (used as flavoring agents)” in an article called “Diet Soda: OK for your teeth?”. These studies prolong the question on why diet soda is even produced when it does not live up to its positive claims made by its manufacturers. However, diet soda does have many other effects besides the ones listed by the companies that make it; they are negative consequences of consuming the beverage.

There is a long list of reasons why diet soda should not be consumed. First, it can lead to decreased kidney function, shown in an article called “Say No to That Diet Soda?” by the National Kidney Foundation in 2016. They stated “Kidney function declined over two decades in women who drank several diet sodas a day, according to researchers from the prestigious Nurses' Health Study. In fact, compared with women who did not drink diet soda, soda-drinking women had a 30% greater reduction in kidney function in 20 years.” This greater reduction in kidney function can lead to an increase in medical bills later in life and can even cause death. Another important finding of the study was that “The diet-soda drinkers experienced a drop in their glomerular filtration rate (an important measure of the kidney's function). With age, the glomerular filtration rate tends to decline a bit. But in diet-soda drinkers, the rate of decline was 3 times as much as for women who didn't drink diet sodas”, showing that diet soda is directly correlated to decreased kidney function. This reason alone supports the argument that diet soda should not be consumed, however, there are even more negative effects of drinking diet soda.

The consumption of diet soda can also create a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes in comparison to non-drinkers, according to “Diet Soda Intake and Risk of Incident Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)” by Jennifer Nettleton, Pamela Lutsey, Youfa Wang, Joao Lima, Erin Michos, and David Jacobs in 2017. Their study found that “At least daily consumption of diet soda was associated with a 36% greater relative risk of incident metabolic syndrome and a 67% greater relative risk of incident type 2 diabetes compared with nonconsumption”, which means that consumers of the beverage could once again find themselves having a shorter life span and larger medical bills. These findings support the argument that diet soda is indeed detrimental to human health. Those at risk of Metabolic Dysfunction should be even more wary of diet sodas, according to this study: “Diet soda consumption may result in overconsumption, increased body weight, and consequent metabolic dysfunction. If true, such relations have important implications for dietary counseling, given the high frequency of diet beverage consumption by those at high risk for metabolic dysfunction”. This additional cost of nutritional counseling due to some consumers being unaware of these negative effects are also grounds to minimize the public’s consumption.

Additionally, Sharon Fowler’s research produces a longer list of human health concerns associated with diet soda consumption: “Frequent use of diet beverages has been associated prospectively with increased long-term risk and/or hazard of a number of cardiometabolic conditions usually considered to be among the sequelae of obesity: hypertension, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, depression, kidney dysfunction, heart attack, stroke, and even cardiovascular and total mortality”. These health crises should be enough to deter most consumers from their continuation of drinking diet soda, yet this information has not been made available to the public by the companies who make it; they continue to perpetrate the idea that diet soda and aspartame are safe and do not pose a problem to human health. Unfortunately for them, many researchers have found this to not be true. 

Even though there are all of these downsides to diet soda, people continue to drink it. Alexandra Sifferlin found that “Scientists speculate that artificial sweeteners fool more than just your palate; they also fool your brain. When you taste something sweet, your body naturally expects a calorie-load that diet beverages don't deliver. As a reaction, the metabolic system may start converting the sugar that's already circulating in the blood into fat, on the assumption that more has just come in that can be used as energy. In the alternative, the body may go in the other direction, burning though the circulating sugar so that the incoming soda doesn't leave you with too much. But since the soda has no sugar at all, you wind up with a net loss -- which may lead to a craving for candy or some other high-sugar snack.” This means that diet soda tricks the consumer’s brain into thinking that it received an intake of sugar, when really there never was one—only artificial fillers. This contributes to an unhealthy lifestyle of the drinker, because their body craves sugar and they may even choose to consume another diet soda, furthering the issue and creating a cycle of unhealthy habits. This is also established by Sifferlin: “It's also possible that the lack of calories causes diet-soda drinkers to overeat later for psychological reasons. They either feel unsatisfied and eat more to make up for it, or they think they saved on calories earlier by opting for diet soda -- a handy justification for eating more.” These unhealthy habits eventually develop into type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart problems, tooth decay, a reduction in kidney function, depression, and even death.

The solution to the reducing health concerns associated with diet soda is not easy; there are many steps that must be taken to protect the public. Firstly, companies need to stop perpetrating the lie that diet sodas are better for consumers than regular soda because they reduce tooth decay, calorie intake, and sugar intake. Many studies have proved these claims to be inaccurate and that they further the unhealthy habits formed by many Americans today.  This is why the government should require companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi to have a warning label on their diet beverages and on their company websites. It is essential that people are informed about the potential health risks when drinking these beverages or giving them to children. While it is probably these companies’ primary goal to make money, they need to start putting the health of the nation as a priority. They need to be held accountable for what they are selling to the American people, and should even compensate the consumers of their sodas before they released this vital information. The next step must be taken on behalf of the public to educate themselves on the dangers of what they are putting into their bodies. The creation of government-sponsored ad campaigns about the realities of the health effects of aspartame in diet soda needs to be implemented immediately. Starting a campaign in schools to teach young consumers about the true “health benefits” of diet soda (or lack thereof) would make a significant step in fighting the ad campaigns already set in place by soda companies to promote the sale of diet soda. Finally, in a period of 10-15 years after implementing these changes an overall ban of diet soda and other aspartame products should be considered. This method has already been implemented in a smaller scale in cities around the US already.

 In fact, previous New York mayor Bloomberg has created and pushed a bill to ban the sale of soda in drinks larger than 16 fluid ounces in restaurants, sports arenas, and movie theaters, an important step in limiting soda consumption (Grynbaum, 2012), however this bill was recently shut down by the New York Court of Appeals. Whether or not this would have been able to solve New York’s obesity problem, where nearly half of all adults ae obese or overweight (Grynbaum, 2012), but it would have certainly been a step in the right direction. If the general consensus of lawmakers and health officials after 10-15 years are that the above changes have not been enough to curb the negative health effects presented in society from reliance on diet soda, then a ban would be the best possible choice.

It is clear from above research that diet soda is a problem in today’s society that requires our immediate attention. The soda companies that manufacture diet soda are outright avoiding the truth about the harmful properties of diet soda by distracting consumers with statements about its taste or references to hundreds of studies that are unable to be substantiated or even found on their websites. Diet soda and the aspartame found inside of it have been found to lead to a false dependence on sugar, has been shown to lead up to nearly 30% decreased kidney functions in some studies in women, cause greater incident rate for type 2 diabetes in its drinkers along with other metabolic disorders, and even cause a host more of other adverse health effects including death in some rare cases. The need for both companies to start clearly making the negative health effects possible from their product and the government to finally start educating citizens about healthy life decisions and alternatives is more clear than ever. The soda companies are allowed to continuously peddle their products as “diet-helping” or “thinning” alongside other buzzwords when in reality diet soda has been shown to have no differentiable effect in weight loss compared to even regular soda.
