By Joy Stephenson-Laws, J.D., Founder 

I think it’s fun to learn about the eating habits of former presidents of the United States. For me, it adds some levity to my day with the daily non-stop news cycle. Some of their habits may come as a surprise to you or even make you giggle a bit.

Reportedly:

• Richard Nixon liked eating cottage cheese with ketchup
• Barack Obama is a fan of snacking on nuts, seeds and raisins
• George Washington really did like cherries
• Abraham Lincoln liked apples and coffee

And when Donald Trump was president, there was discussion about his health and eating habits. He was very open about his love of fast food, and apparently he drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day! Some reports say he even had a Diet Coke button in the Oval Office that would signal a butler to bring his drink.

I think many people are under the assumption that diet sodas are better for our health because they are calorie-free and not full of sugar like non-diet sodas (there are 39 grams of sugar in a 12 ounce regular can of Coke). Excessive intake of diet soda, however, still may have its downsides. 

The medical community has always pondered whether there is a link between diet sodas and cancers. Diet sodas contain artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. 

“The long-term health effects of low-calorie or artificial sweeteners are not really well-known,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, referenced in this report from TIME Magazine.

“We’re kind of conducting a national public health experiment on the entire population.”

Notwithstanding, here are a few reasons why excessive diet coke may not be good for our health:

If you drink a lot of diet soda (and, of course, regular soda), this could be very detrimental to your tooth enamel due to these beverages containing acids such as phosphoric acid. Essentially, this acid can attack the calcium that our teeth contain. Teeth are bones, and we need calcium for healthy bones. Some reports say that Diet Coke can attack your tooth enamel in just 10 minutes! It can also stain your teeth and give them a more yellow appearance.

“A can of diet cola contains 44-62mg of phosphoric acid, more than in many other soft drinks and researchers at Tufts University in Boston showed that women who regularly drank three or more cans a day had four per cent lower bone mineral density in their hips compared to those who preferred other soft drinks,” said Niraj Naik, a former pharmacist referenced in this report who recently went viral for discussing the negative effects of drinking sodas.

If you drink diet sodas all day then this doesn’t give you much opportunity for healthier, hydrating beverages such as water, herbal teas and natural unprocessed juices. Diet Coke is actually very dehydrating, and being dehydrated can lead to headaches, hunger pangs that lead to unhealthy snacking, dry skin and more negative outcomes.

Artificial sweeteners in sodas and other beverages and processed foods may actually lead to weight gain despite being low calorie. For one, they may actually make you crave more sugar. In addition to this, diet sodas may cause what I would call “delusional dieting.” If you drink diet soda, you may think that this “healthier choice” allows you to eat fatty and sugary foods because you have “the calories to spend.” You can read more about the effects of artificial sweeteners and weight gain by checking out this pH Labs blog

This woman discusses her 27-year addiction to Diet Coke that she said began at the age of four!

“I estimate that I have drunk 11,315 litres of Diet Coke in my 31 years on this Earth. (I have been conservative with these numbers – it is almost certainly more.) That is more than 11,000 litres of caramel fizz, fermenting my insides, bathing my liver in foam,” she wrote.

“I recently spent a year on prescription medication for a stomach condition that was almost certainly triggered by my overconsumption of Diet Coke, according to my GP. If enduring an endoscopy won’t stop you drinking fizzy drinks, you know you are addicted.”

(To learn about what an endoscopy is, read here).

In my opinion, artificial sweeteners are just not good for us. They are processed, provide no nutritional value and I think that they play tricks on the body’s most important systems. Some reports suggest that they may be damaging to the kidneys.

Furthermore, “Although nonnutritive sweeteners (NNSs) are considered safe and well tolerated, their effects on glucose intolerance, the activation of sweet taste receptors, and alterations to the composition of the intestinal microbiota are controversial,” reports the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“The consumption of NNSs, mainly in diet sodas, has been related to an increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and T2D [type 2 diabetes], although some studies did not find any association.”

If you are a soda addict, you can overcome this. This soda addict lost more than 100 pounds in a year! You just have to be proactive and take it step by step. If you drink several cans of soda a day, I recommend eliminating a few cans a day instead of going cold turkey. I think this will make you feel less deprived. Also keep in mind that you may get withdrawal headaches, but this is temporary. Try to drink a lot of water and infuse it with cucumber, lemon and fruit to make it tasty and provide extra nutrients. 

Enjoy your healthy life!

The pH professional health care team includes recognized experts from a variety of health care and related disciplines, including physicians, attorneys, nutritionists, nurses, and certified fitness instructors. This team also includes the members of the pH Medical Advisory Board, which constantly monitors all pH programs, products, and services. To learn more about the pH Medical Advisory Board, click here.