Diet Soda Is Good For You | Ep 208
Have you heard that diet soda is harmful or causes weight gain? What if we told you it might actually help in your fat loss journey?
Philip (@witsandweights) dives deep into the controversial world of diet soda with his friends Dustin Lambert and Dwayne Ulrich from the Working Weights LLC podcast. They’ll explore how these fizzy, zero-calorie drinks can fit into a smart nutrition plan, debunk myths about artificial sweeteners, and examine the surprising health benefits of diet soda.
Dustin Lambert is a seasoned strength and nutrition coach with over a decade of experience. Dustin specializes in helping clients with metabolic syndrome. As a co-host of the Working Weights LLC podcast, he translates complex nutrition research into practical advice, breaking down health and fitness trends with clarity and humor.
Dwayne Ulrich is the “everyman” co-host of the Working Weights LLC podcast. Dwayne offers a relatable perspective on health and fitness. His diverse background includes roles as an educator, coach, firefighter, police officer, and x-ray technician, making him a valuable voice in the fitness community.
📨To learn more about flexible dieting so you can enjoy whatever you want (including diet soda), join my FREE mailing list at https://witsandweights.com/email
Today, you’ll learn all about:
2:30 The scary things about diet soda
6:14 The benefits of diet soda
9:23 Is diet soda cancerous?
13:02 The composition and differences of sweeteners
17:43 Myths about diet soda and weight gain
27:53 Drinking diet soda for enjoyment
32:19 Diet soda and blood sugar
47:48 Diet soda and cardiovascular health
52:28 Caffeine in diet soda
1:00:54 How to connect with Dustin and Dwayne
1:01:40 Outro
Check out these related episodes on the Working Weights LLC podcast:
Episode summary:
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the controversial and often misunderstood world of diet soda. Titled "Debunking Myths and Unveiling the Science Behind Diet Soda," this episode brings expert guests Dustin Lambert and Dwayne Ulrich to the forefront as we explore the health and science insights of zero-calorie beverages. We challenge the common fears and misconceptions surrounding diet soda, comparing it to other beverages, and provide an evidence-based perspective on its role in weight management and overall health.
Can diet soda really be a healthier choice? This episode aims to provide clarity on this question. The discussion kicks off with an examination of the conventional wisdom that often portrays diet soda in a negative light. We scrutinize the fears of its links to cancer and metabolic issues, presenting robust scientific evidence to debunk these myths. Dwayne Ulrich shares a captivating story about soldiers consuming overheated diet sodas, which led him to investigate the safety of artificial sweeteners like aspartame.
A key theme of the episode is diet soda's place in a balanced lifestyle. The conversation compares diet soda to other common beverages such as alcohol, highlighting the importance of context and relative health risks. This discussion underscores the value of flexible dieting and making incremental dietary improvements rather than adopting an all-or-nothing approach. The potential health benefits of diet soda and sweeteners like aspartame are explored, encouraging evidence-based decisions in nutrition.
The episode also delves into the complex relationship between artificially sweetened beverages and weight management. Findings from a recent randomized control trial suggest that diet sodas can be more effective for weight loss and maintenance than water. The role of gut microbiota, blood sugar, insulin levels, and cardiovascular health are discussed in detail, challenging the myths and misinformation surrounding diet soda.
We challenge the conventional wisdom that diet sodas are detrimental to health. We examine how these zero-calorie beverages might actually aid in fat loss and overall health. Dustin Lambert and Dwayne Ulrich provide insights on the ingredients in diet soda, the potential health benefits, and the misconceptions driven by fear-mongering. Dwayne recounts a story about soldiers consuming overheated diet sodas, which led him to investigate the safety of artificial sweeteners.
We explore the polarizing topic of diet soda and its place in a healthy lifestyle. The discussion covers personal preferences and experiences with diet soda, including the reasons why some avoid it due to taste and nutritional considerations. The potential health impacts of diet soda, particularly the classification of aspartame as a probable carcinogen, are scrutinized. The conversation emphasizes the importance of context and relative health risks, advocating for a balanced perspective when considering diet soda consumption.
We dive into the various aspects of artificial and natural sweeteners, focusing on their safety, composition, and consumption limits. Common sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, stevia, and neotame are discussed, examining their origins and how they are processed. The perception of these sweeteners as carcinogens and the actual risks involved based on advisable daily intake levels are explored. The episode concludes with practical advice on the consumption of diet drinks and the importance of understanding the ADI to make informed choices.
We then examine the complex relationship between artificially sweetened beverages and weight management. A recent randomized control trial by Joanne Harold and colleagues is discussed, showing that replacing sugar-sweetened beverages with artificially sweetened ones can lead to more effective weight loss and maintenance compared to water. The issue of reverse causality and the role of confounding factors such as family history and individual behaviors are addressed. Additionally, anecdotal evidence and a Harvard study suggesting that certain artificial sweeteners might affect brain signals related to satiety are considered.
Next, we address common concerns about diet soda, specifically whether it causes increased appetite or weight gain. Epidemiological observations and rodent studies suggesting a link between artificial sweeteners and increased calorie consumption are explored. Human randomized control trials indicating that substituting regular soda with diet soda results in weight loss and lower fasting glucose levels are highlighted. The role of gut microbiota and gut-brain signaling in these outcomes is discussed, suggesting that diet soda might influence these mechanisms to promote a slight decrease in calorie intake.
We then focus on the impact of diet sodas on blood sugar, insulin levels, and cardiovascular health. The idea that small amounts of insulin can help reduce glycogen stores in the liver and muscles, potentially leading to lower fasting glucose levels and improved homeostasis, is explored. The effects of artificial sweeteners like sucralose on insulin resistance are considered. The role of diet sodas in weight management and their independent effect on reducing blood pressure are discussed, highlighting the potential cardiovascular benefits of diet sodas as a substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:07
you've heard that diet soda is terrible for you, that it causes cancer, weight gain and metabolic issues. But what if conventional wisdom is not only wrong. What if these cold, fizzy, zero calorie, artificially sweetened beverages could actually help you lose fat and improve your health? Today, we're challenging assumptions to support the seemingly strange concept that, yes, diet soda can actually be a helpful tool. Whether you're battling sugar cravings, trying to create a calorie deficit or simply looking for a guilt-free treat, this episode will give you the nuance and, very possibly, peace of mind you're looking for when it comes to diet soda.
Philip Pape: 0:54
Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're diving into the controversial world of diet soda with my friends Dustin Lambert and Dwayne Ulrich from the Working Weights LLC podcast. Go, follow it right now. Pause, find it. Follow it. Dustin, who's been on the show before, is a strength and nutrition coach with over a decade of experience specializing in metabolic syndrome and helping countless clients transform their bodies. He's also one of the best guys I know when it comes to unraveling nutrition research.
Philip Pape: 1:27
Dwayne is the everyday ombudsman on their podcast. He's a renaissance man of sorts, having been a high school educator in history and science, a coach for track and field, softball, baseball, volleyball, soccer, everything except the Olympics, a firefighter, police officer and x-ray technician. In short, I think he's ready for anything. Today, we're going to discuss how diet soda can fit into a smart nutrition plan and examine the potential health benefits which might surprise you. We'll also dive into the evidence on artificial sweeteners and diet soda, including fat loss, obesity, insulin, diabetes and more, to give you the full picture, so you can unfollow the fear-mongering fitfluencers and rely instead on evidence to make the best decision for your goals. Dustin Dwayne, welcome to the show. My friends, thank you, thank you.
Dwayne Ulrich: 2:13
Glad to be here, man. Glad to be here, it's an honor.
Philip Pape: 2:16
So I actually want to start with Dwayne, as the every man on BuzzAid Break the ice dude.
Dwayne Ulrich: 2:38
Just get it out of your system, okay, and Dustin's ego is going to be just fine here. So I think I think so. Here's my question for you, super simple what are the some of the scary things that dive off into the ingredients and what the sweeteners were? It kind of freaks me out a little bit.
Dwayne Ulrich: 2:48
The only thing that and my interest in diet sodas came to me when I heard about I believe it was like I think maybe the army or something that guys really wanted a lot of diet Coke. Diet Coke was one of the favorite things that they had. So you know the US shipped diet Coke over to to them on these big pallets but they sat outside you know they're in like, I guess, in Iraq and heat on these Diet Cokes and these guys were drinking these Cokes but they'd been sitting out in the heat and they started getting lethargic and sleepy and I'm like that doesn't sound right to me. So that's when I started taking a deep dive off into what the sweeteners were made of and what they look like. Just listening to chemical contents or maybe about which we're not going to really talk about today, but chemical contents and how they're made kind of freaked me out a little bit. It's weird.
Philip Pape: 3:41
Yeah, yeah, I would agree, man. You know we've heard for years like the fewer ingredients the better, or if it's made in a lab, steer clear. Or if you can't pronounce the ingredient, don't eat it. There's, who is that on instagram. She's hilarious, the nutrition, oh, you guys might know who she is. She will like talk about a food that has all these chemicals and then she'll reveal that it's a banana you know, she'll say like there's all these chemicals and it's actually a banana I can't remember the name, uh gosh.
Philip Pape: 4:07
Yeah, I know you're talking about yeah, like a dietician, pharmacist, whatever, yeah. And then the diet coke in the army thing. I hadn't heard that. What would you say today? So do you drink it today, duane? Do you drink diet soda?
Dwayne Ulrich: 4:17
no, no, not really because it scares me or anything. But okay, man, I just don't like the taste.
Philip Pape: 4:22
You you don't like the taste, kind of chemically to you.
Dwayne Ulrich: 4:24
Well, I just want to say I need to be full disclosure. I drink almost no soft drinks Okay cool. I don't like the taste of the diet cokes. I don't drink a lot of the diet drinks at all, never have and the content of sugar and other soft drinks. It just doesn't fit my nutrition plan.
Philip Pape: 4:46
Sure, yeah. So perfectly valid reason. You don't like it. It doesn't fit for you. Yeah, love it. Dustin, now, if diet soda kills you, why are you comfortable drinking it right now? And what are you drinking?
Dustin Lambert: 4:58
Yeah, that is a good question, there we go.
Dwayne Ulrich: 5:03
Oh man Wait a minute.
Dustin Lambert: 5:05
He's got the classic the silver can, the classic I have the silver can, although I do think that the that dr pepper zero probably tastes the closest to the real thing. However, where I have currently moved to like, a 12 pack of something is insanely expensive. So buying a 24 packpack of Diet Coke so that's the only reason I have Diet Coke is just because of the price, but I do like the Dr Pepper Zero's best.
Philip Pape: 5:32
It is one of the most profitable products on the market. I mean, you think they're just adding a tiny bit of, they're squirting in this tiny bit of syrup into water and they're basically selling water, right? So again why am I not dead? Yeah, why are you not dead? I mean, we know how awful this stuff is. Man, what are you doing yourself? I?
Dustin Lambert: 5:49
guess. Um, I don't know, maybe I'm a superhero.
Philip Pape: 5:52
Yeah, I mean, you are right so your, your gut, just like, just like churns that stuff into gold and you're good, right, pretty much.
Dustin Lambert: 6:03
Pretty much, yes. And then, um, you know, the rest of it is excreted in urine. Through excellence, so through excellence.
Philip Pape: 6:10
Okay, got to bottle that up, all right, so all right. And also quasi seriousness. We don't have to get all serious, can the premise of this, this episode and people are looking at the title, thinking diet soda is good for you. It sounds like clickbait. They're going to turn it around. It's going to be this myth that we're breaking, like no, of course it's terrible for you or it can't be good for you. Can it be good for you? Like, let's start there and then we can break into the details.
Dustin Lambert: 6:35
Yep, so can it be good for you? I think that the answer is yes. It's kind of a weird position to defend here, but yeah, so I'm definitely up for the challenge, looking into it and so just to caveat, the entire podcast here. I don't think it's the best thing that you could be drinking, but I'm going to be the lawyer for diet soda here today and I'm going to make the case that it can be particularly good for you, especially in certain circumstances. So, context matters is what you're saying. Context definitely matters, yeah.
Philip Pape: 7:12
Okay, how would you put it compared to alcohol, on the spectrum of beverages that are, quote unquote, good for you in general or depending on context?
Dustin Lambert: 7:22
On a scale of one to 10, it's probably a 12. Better than alcohol, all right.
Philip Pape: 7:29
Okay, just lay in the relative things for people, because everybody loves to drink alcohol.
Dustin Lambert: 7:36
Yeah, I was going to say so that might jump into the cancer concerns right away. So there are concerns for cancer regarding this stuff. Probably the one sweetener that most people are familiar with would be aspartame, and that was recently added to the IARC list of carcinogens. Now it's in the category of 2B, as in Bravo, which is a probable carcinogen, and it's in there with other things like pumping gas in your car, asian pickled vegetables, like a whole bunch of stuff. And it's in there with other things like pumping gas in your car, asian pickled vegetables, like a whole bunch of stuff. And it's hard to argue against the word probable, like is is stuff probably carcinogen? Yeah, probably.
Dustin Lambert: 8:15
Alcohol, on the other hand, is a definite known carcinogen. I believe that's class one class one. I could be wrong. So there's class one, class two a, class two B, and then you have class three, which is just not at all. Uh, so alcohol is, I believe it's a class one carcinogen. So, on the basis of you know whether it causes cancer or not, like should you drink diet soda instead of an alcoholic beverage? Yeah, absolutely yes.
Philip Pape: 8:45
And that's a. That's a great point. Right there I think we're going to hit on throughout the show. A lot of this is relative. It really is relative.
Philip Pape: 8:51
I was on a show recently with and I'm not going to name names a very established nutrition coach who was asking me about some of these corner cases and things and I said you know, in a flexible diet, in context, these things are okay in small amounts, no big deal If it works for you. What I want to do is take somebody from a 60% ultra-processed standard American diet with probably three cans of regular Coke, to something better than that, at least as step one, and then continue down that line. So this kind of all or nothing like we need to eat clean, we need to cut everything out. How dare you tell your clients that they can drink diet soda? I think it's self-righteous at best and then it's unhelpful at worst. So if someone says okay, why, if there's a probability right in quotes of it being cancers? Why just be safe? Better safe than sorry? Why not just avoid it completely because of that answer?
Dustin Lambert: 9:45
is why just be safe? Better safe than sorry. Why not just avoid it completely because of that? Yeah, you could make that argument and, again, context matters. So it really depends on where you're starting from. So, like you said, you want to take somebody from an ultra-processed diet, where maybe they are consuming sugar-sweetened sodas or other sugar-sweetened beverages, and we want to gradually, over time, get them to something that's more whole food, single ingredient. You're consuming water, tea, stuff like that, so using it throughout that process and then even during fat loss phases. For if you're periodizing your nutrition plan, which you should be, it can be quite helpful in those cases, formalizing this logically wise though to make that argument. Well, if it's probably carcinogenic, why don't we just avoid all the things on the probable carcinogen? Stop driving your car. Stop wearing clothes that have dye in them. Using cell phones? Yeah, stop driving your car. Stop wearing clothes that have dye in them. You know like. Using cell phones. Yeah, stop using cell phones.
Philip Pape: 10:48
Using cell phones or being in the sun. Let's let's be like yep, yep, right, going out in the sun. So, dwayne, what are your thoughts on, from just again, the everyday guy nutrition plan, thinking about where you've come over the years, a lot of it with, with coach Lambie's guidance actually, is there something that you continue to enjoy? That's like a little bit of a vice, where it doesn't matter because what you do today in context is significant improvement from where you were before.
Dwayne Ulrich: 11:15
Man. So I don't know if that's a fair question in this context, because my vice is ice cream, so let's stick to soft drinks.
Philip Pape: 11:25
Well, what about all the ingredients in ice cream? Well, that's another podcast.
Dwayne Ulrich: 11:32
No, but you know, just for me it's like I've tried to like diet drinks and I can drink maybe half of a Coca-Cola or half of a Dr Pepper. Maybe Just after two or three or four sips of it I'm done. But I just wanted to add on to something you guys were talking about, especially in the aspartame thing. I did some research with Coach Lamb and we did a podcast on neotame and a while back we did a whole big old podcast on sweeteners and on the aspartame thing.
Dwayne Ulrich: 12:03
So yeah, it's a known carcinogen but I mean, you'd have to, you have to like consume like 80 something for 150 pound person. You'd have to consume like 80 packets or 17 or 18, you know diet drinks in a day to like even start to be considerate, concerned about it. So it's, it's like the thing you guys were just saying don't go outside, you know, don't breathe air. So as much as I would like to say coming into this podcast, as much as I'd like to say that, oh, yeah, yeah, diet drinks are bad for you. Diet drinks are bad for you. I think that there's a component of consuming diet drinks that can maybe turn against you. But man, I just I can't find a, I can't find a solid reason to say no, you know, or?
Dwayne Ulrich: 12:48
that it's bad, I can't.
Philip Pape: 12:50
Yeah, and we'll. I know what you're alluding to. We'll dive into some of the arguments people make against it. Besides, the artificial sweeteners, we'll definitely go there, but before we get to that, I just want to kind of close out the topic here on, maybe, maybe from Dustin's standpoint as the expert here, having looked at a lot of these and talked about them a lot on his podcast the different sweeteners we have aspartame, we have sucralose, we have stevia, which is not artificial, technically right, and we have neotame, which you guys talked about. What are the differences? What is the history and composition of those that we need to be aware of as we make these decisions?
Dustin Lambert: 13:24
that we need to be aware of as we make these decisions. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think we need to be aware of composition and how they're made and stuff. Yeah, so we have different sweeteners. We have some that are natural. We have some that are synthetic Aspartame I think I probably could make a good case that aspartame is about as unnatural as cheese is because, quite frankly, it's just two amino acids that are bonded together through a process of fermentation. Now it, like it, looks really scary when you look at pictures of the vats and everything and how fermentation is done. However, when you look at how butter is made today and how cheese is made today, uh, you know it don't get me started on prosciutto, man, yeah so you know, like, yeah, so the history of most of these things.
Dustin Lambert: 14:15
As far as, like, maybe stevia and some other stuff, you can go down to the hardware store, like closer home depot or something, and buy a stevia plant right and you you can touch, touch the leaves or taste leaves and they're sweet. So the process of getting sweeteners from plant sources and stuff is just kind of like the same as tea. You kind of boil them in water, boil the leaves or whatever in water, and then through a process of distillation you remove the water from that and you're left with the sweetener Synthetic sweeteners. On the other hand, some of them are made from natural chemicals and some are from man-made natural chemicals. Some of the processes can be scary to think about.
Dustin Lambert: 14:56
In the grand scheme of things, knowing what they're made of or how they're made, I don't think is important, but knowing the upper limits, as Duane alluded to.
Dustin Lambert: 15:05
So we have ADIs on these things. That's the advisable daily intake and that is set really conservatively low from what is known as the no observable adverse effect level. It's usually 100 times lower than that and that usually comes from rodent studies where we give rodents tons and tons and tons of this stuff until we start to see that bad things happen to them, right, and so we say okay, at this amount, which is usually like a milligram per kilogram amount. Per kilogram amount. They'll usually bring that down a hundred fold to give us our adi. So it it could be the case for some of them, um, like sucralose and saccharin, those the adis on those are are a little bit lower. So it might be like five diet sodas a day versus something like aspartame, which is like 17, where you're reaching the ADI. So you do run the possibility of reaching that upper limit where you may start to see some bad things happen. But I think that's the thing to be concerned with what contains?
Philip Pape: 16:14
sucralose.
Dustin Lambert: 16:16
Just tell it so the listener is aware just just remind, just tell it so the listeners aware.
Dwayne Ulrich: 16:25
Um yeah, let me see so sucralose is known as splenda, so anything that has splenda in it.
Philip Pape: 16:27
Yeah, yeah, splenda, splenda yeah, yeah, and I believe most, most like typical diet.
Dustin Lambert: 16:30
Sodas have aspartame, but they also have combinations yeah, ace k would be the other one, or acyl sulfane potassium aculfame potassium.
Philip Pape: 16:39
Is that in the same boat as Splenda or is that more like aspartame in terms of the toxicity level?
Dustin Lambert: 16:44
Well, toxicity, yeah, so it's more like aspartame. It is really a natural thing. So an interesting little tidbit about Ace K is Ace K can actually be used to detect how much urine is in pools, because we don't metabolize it. So every bit of it you excrete, like 99.99999% of the acyl sulfate, and so they've actually done some studies, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool on average contains about 70 gallons of urine.
Stephanie: 17:18
So okay, All right.
Philip Pape: 17:21
Hey, I'm glad you brought the Olympics into this. The transcript will have SEO, but that point about how much is absorbed metabolized is important as well. You guys did that episode on neotame. Thank you for doing that, because that's been coming up more often and that's one of the points you made was the level of absorption is so tiny, you have to account for that yeah.
Philip Pape: 17:44
So these are important. All right, let's move on to Okay. So I think we've established that there's a certain level that is far beyond what a typical human is going to consume, and even if it is five or six cans a day, maybe that's in excess for any particular thing. Anyway, for someone.
Philip Pape: 17:59
I'm guessing right. What about the evidence on? Let's go to the next thing body weight, weight management, because we hear two sides of the equation. We hear, on one hand, these are zero calorie beverages, so of course you're not consuming any calories, so that's a benefit for for intake. And you know, you feel something, you put something in your stomach, whether it's water, diet, soda doesn't have calories. Maybe that helps with weight management. On the other hand, all these claims about insulin being spiked and your sweet tooth is triggered, so now you're going to seek out other foods. Lay it out. What does the evidence say on all of this? And maybe we can break it down and go one by one, starting with just the weight management.
Dustin Lambert: 18:39
Yeah, so on the weight management aspect of it, which kind of ties into whether or not it causes you to consume more sweets or more food in general, those are kind of tied together. So what we're looking at is a discrepancy between experimental trials so people wouldn't know this as RCTs or randomized control trials, something like that and then what we see in epidemiology In randomized control trials, when we take people in and we put them in an experiment and we say, okay, we're going to randomize you guys, this group is going to get water, this group is going to get diet soda and we see what happens. People lose weight and we have trials as long as a year, going on a year long here. Let me see if I can find one. Yeah, so we have one titled non-nutritive sweetened beverages versus water after a 52-week weight management program, a randomized control trial. This is by Joanne Harold and colleagues trial. This is by Joanne Harold and colleagues, released in the Journal of Obesity in 2024. So very recent stuff, yeah. So when we put people through these trials where we're actually randomizing them to one group or the other and we're going to replace sugar-sweetened beverages with either an artificially sweetened beverage or some other beverage normally it's water, we see weight loss. We also see better adherence to weight management, weight loss management right. So people tend to lose more weight in the artificially sweetened beverage trial versus water, and they also are able to maintain more weight loss than the water arm.
Dustin Lambert: 20:17
When we look into epidemiology, what we see is that higher rates of adiposity, obesity, overweight, bmi all that stuff tends to correlate with higher intakes of artificially sweetened beverages, diet sodas We'll just use diet sodas to make everything easier. And so what a lot of the fear mongers, as you alluded to in the beginning. What a lot of them do is they will take the correlation, the association from the epidemiology and just kind of run with it. I say that's the results. Here it is, but we have a discrepancy between the two, and it doesn't exist in every prospective cohort. So we're talking about prospective cohorts here, but a lot of them do. So we have to explain why, we have to account for why this discrepancy exists, and so the reason for that is that in these prospective cohorts, a lot of times what we're missing is a temporal component. So we want to know if X came before Y or if Y became before X.
Dustin Lambert: 21:18
So did people start drinking diet soda before they became overweight and obese? Or does being overweight and obese necessarily lead to people consuming more artificially sweetened beverages or diet sodas in an attempt to gain weight loss or to maintain some amount of weight loss? There are other confounding factors. I hate to use the word confounding, I'd rather use the word mediating or moderating. There's other things like family history of obesity, all this stuff, and when we look at the cohorts and we take the ones that we actually have data for that we can actually make those adjustments right.
Dustin Lambert: 21:55
So reverse causality is what we're looking at. Did diet soda cause obesity or is obesity causing the consumption of diet soda? That would be reverse causality, and we adjust for all of these things. What we find then, is that that association that we're looking at actually goes away. Good meta-analysis here is by Lee and colleagues the relation of change or substitution of low and no-calorie student beverages with cardiometabolic outcomes, a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohorts and what they did is they took some cohorts that had the data that they needed to make these adjustments and they adjusted for reverse causality and some of these other things that might confound those results, and what they found is that actually, sugar, sweet or diet sodas are associated with weight loss small amount and weight maintenance, not the other way around.
Philip Pape: 22:54
I love how you split those up too, because, on one hand, we're actually looking at causality, like you said, with the randomized controlled trials, and then, on the other hand, it's just a bunch of data that had been observed and now we have to link it together properly and have it in the right time-based direction. Dwayne, what do you, what do you think about all this? I've heard how you talk with Coach Lambie on your podcast. It's it's so confusing, it's so overwhelming. The average person is not going to be reading a bunch of papers, let alone reading one paper. And they're trusting us, they're trusting people. What are your thoughts on that, this or in general?
Dwayne Ulrich: 23:29
Well, just a couple of things. One of the things that I looked at real quick. I just want to put this out there before I forget about it but I looked at a study that came out of Harvard and so like, for some of the sweeteners and some of the soft drinks, particularly aspartame, had a tendency in animal trials to affect the animal's brain in such a way that it didn't know when to stop eating. Now that sounds like I'm fighting for the other side. I believe that what the data shows us, as Coach Lambie showed it, is that it can help you with the weight loss or at least maintain, and that seems to be the overwhelming deal there. But anecdotally, I see people that in my own life just people that I know that they drink a lot of artificially sweetened soft drinks. For them they maintain. Most of the time they maintain. I know people that are already obese that drink artificial soft drinks. Do they get bigger? Not over my experience, not for as long as I've known some of these people.
Dwayne Ulrich: 24:38
But I do believe there's a responsibility on the individual. Going back to nutrition, because if you just drink that and think that's going to help you lose weight, that may not be really the case for you. But by the same token, if you're tanking on soft drinks that are artificially sweetened, there's a possibility for you to eat more. I see that as a thing, just anecdotally from what I know. And then when I go look at things like the Harvard study, I'm like maybe there is some causality there. It kind of helps you forget when you need to stop eating. I do see that. So what is it? I can't find any reason to tell somebody you shouldn't drink that because you're just going to gain weight. That doesn't make sense. It's just not a sensical conversation or an argument. And when you look at the data like Coach Lambie just went through, yeah, it doesn't really bear out. I mean, yeah, there's a possibility that maybe it affects your brain and you just don't know when to stop eating. I think that's an exception more than it is a rule.
Philip Pape: 25:41
Does that make sense? Yeah, and it makes total sense. And you're hitting on the nuance here. There's so much nuance. What comes to mind for me is if I had a client who we're going to do fat loss, I'm not going to prescribe them Diet Coke, but if they were drinking regular Coke and said I really crave these things, I can't help, I drink them all the time, we'd have the discussion Hmm, have you tried Diet Coke? Like, why don't we try that? Like let's experiment and see, right. And that's one thing that comes to mind. Another is I think we're trying to add the nuance so that people don't think like Diet Coke absolutely causes weight gain, because we see that that's not the case either.
Dwayne Ulrich: 26:21
Correct.
Philip Pape: 26:22
And things are personalized. And you're right, who knows? With the context of these individuals? I grew up in households that there was a lot of Diet Coke consumption and you're right, I see it in obese populations. There's a lot of that and, like Dustin said, there's confounding, mitigating factors going on and maybe they just incorporated it at some point, hoping to lose weight, but nothing else changed. And now you're like, okay, what are we really looking at here? So the data is important, but also the individual. You know history with this.
Dwayne Ulrich: 26:49
Right.
Philip Pape: 26:50
Do you think, dustin, we cover the first piece right of? It probably doesn't cause weight gain and it probably is a helpful tool for a lot of people, especially when substituting something with calories. Just okay, good.
Stephanie: 27:03
We're in agreement, do you?
Dustin Lambert: 27:03
want me to elaborate on that. No, no, no.
Philip Pape: 27:05
That was like. I'm like blabbering, I'm rambling on here.
Stephanie: 27:09
The most value that I got from this was the fact that I had someone that I could talk to about anything and that there was going to be no judgment. It was just well, here are your goals, here's the best way that you're going to achieve it, and then let's work together to help you feel inspired and motivated to do that and there's a lot of people out there trying to be coaches and not all of them have done the work and also just be a genuine person that is positive and coming from the heart in terms of wanting to help, and Philip really embodied all of those qualities. I would recommend him to just about anyone that's looking to achieve goals in that realm of their nutrition and building new habits.
Philip Pape: 28:26
Let's go to the next thing, which is enjoyment. So what about the fact that it tastes sweet drink enjoyment? It has carbonation, all of that stuff. Where does that come in?
Dustin Lambert: 28:36
Yeah, so it does taste sweet. So all of the sweeteners are some multiple thousands of times sweeter than sugar, which allows us to use a lot less of them. As Dwayne alluded to, he doesn't really like the taste of it. So I'm with you. My clients are a little bit different than yours, where I'm dealing with people who are knocking on the doorstep of diabetes and in those cases I am often am prescribing it because many people are drinking, you know, six to 10 sugar sweetened sodas a day, and it's kind like well, hey, listen, like I get it.
Dustin Lambert: 29:13
There's more to this than just the food, right, there's a genetic aspect to it. There's also a psychological aspect to all of this stuff and it's like I, I, I understand it. Uh, so let's start maneuvering our way into, you know, instead of six to eight regular sodas a day to six to eight diet sodas a day, and then again the time. You know, I tell everybody like it doesn't matter where we get in the next six months, what's important is where we get in the next six years. So even if we're consuming a 12 pack of diet soda a day right now, right, as long as there's an exit strategy to get to that point, we need to be there.
Dustin Lambert: 29:49
It does, you know, handle the sweet tooth. When I go through fat loss phases and I'm craving sweet things myself, a diet soda often does alleviate whatever that craving is. You know, the carbonation in it also helps. I think people feel full and that can help during weight loss periods or fat loss phases. You know, you're not always going to outrun the ghrelin monster forever. It's going to catch up with you at some point.
Dustin Lambert: 30:15
So again, nuance to all of this stuff. But yeah, it can cure. Not cure, but it can help alleviate sweet tooth cravings. It can help with that psychological aspect of you. Know, I've been drinking soda for a while now and I, I love them. I don't want to give them up, uh. So okay, well, let's just let's swap over to this that reduces the amount of sugar intake that that my clients are seeing, which brings their fasting glucose down, their hba1c down, all that stuff. So yeah, for the everyday person, um, you know, if you're, if you're looking to maybe reduce intake of certain foods that are sweet or whatever the case may be, diet, soda certainly can help in that aspect.
Philip Pape: 31:01
Yeah, I agree. I'm actually in fat loss again now and I typically will have a can of diet soda almost once every day during fat loss, just in the afternoon, like I'm doing right now, because it it fits in that window, it hydrates me and it tastes good. I mean, I don't see anything wrong with it and that's kind of what we're here to to give people that peace of mind of it's okay, it's okay, it's like. You know what do you think, duane?
Dwayne Ulrich: 31:25
yeah, oh I, I completely agree. It's like um, yeah, I for one thing. It's like the long term is is thinking it in short term. You have to think in a longer term. We all like to change things right away. We're in a hurry, I've got to have it now. I've got to change right now. I've got to lose all this weight right now. I've got to stop being a diabetic today. It's a process. It's a process compared to sugar-sweetened soft drinks, what they call SSB, sugar-sweetened beverages. Man, the amount of sugar in a regular soda water, man, I'm just kind of sorry I started reading that, but it's staggering.
Philip Pape: 32:08
So, yeah, I think the artificially sweetened soft drinks, it's a definite plus, it's a definite plus, and I'll tell you a few times you mentioned the amount of sugar A couple times. I might have gone and asked for a fountain soda at a place and they gave me the sweetened version of it instead of the diet, and usually I can tell that they're really good. With the Coke Zeros and everything, it almost tastes the same. So I'm drinking it and I'm getting that kind of sweet smacking kind of taste, but I just finish it thinking in my head like no, no, they gave me the diet. And then I come to find they didn't and I'm like, okay, that's 300 calories right there, like I just make sure to track it sometimes you can almost feel it feels like fur on your teeth.
Dwayne Ulrich: 32:45
What was that?
Philip Pape: 32:47
yeah, of course like you said, some people don't like the artificial sweetener and you don't have to drink this stuff. We're not saying it and there could be haters and trolls on this. In fact, I welcome you guys who are like how dare you tell us to drink any diet soda, eat any seed oils, blah, blah, blah. We love it. Bring it on. So, dustin, did we address the part about whether it causes you to eat more? I mean, we address that studies show it doesn't cause weight gain, but what about this idea that it both spikes your blood sugar but and or causes you to eat more? Yeah, okay, so there are two different things. Let's start with the eat more thing.
Dustin Lambert: 33:22
Yeah, the eat more thing. Okay, um, so, yeah. So if we're looking at the epidemiology and we would see that, um, higher rates of of overweight and obesity correlate with higher consumption of diet sodas, and then we also might just observe people in our own lives who have been overweight their whole life and they always drink diet soda and we're like, well, that's not helping out at all. So I can see where that idea comes from, comes from. And then, as Duane alluded to, we certainly do have rodent studies where they give them artificial sweeteners and it leads to an increase in spontaneous consumption of calories, hitting on the rodent stuff. And this goes into gut microbiome research and cancer research as well. So there have been several papers. I brought up a couple of them in our artificial food coloring episodes and then there was one that came out very, very recently in dealing with cancer. I believe I don't have that one pulled up, but Dr Allo, dr Muhammad Allo, he brought that up on Twitter what we see from rodent research regarding translation to human outcomes. So if we just look at the amount of rodent research where we might be trying to develop a drug or something to treat human disease, the amount of drugs that we'd start testing in rodents and even psychological outcomes and even cancer outcomes. That actually makes it to first phase clinical human trials and then even less once we get to FDA. Approval of things translates to about 5%. So 95% of the rodent research that's out there does not translate to human outcomes, okay, okay.
Dustin Lambert: 35:09
So if we have a rodent study that shows we give rodents this sweetener and it spontaneously increases their calorie consumption, we might look at a few things how much of it are they giving? You know, what is the length of exposure that they're allowed to have, all these things. But then the other aspect is that, well, it probably doesn't translate very well to human outcomes because we have human randomized control trials where we give people diet soda and they don't eat more, they eat less. So just substituting and a lot of these trials that we're talking about. We're talking about a substitution of two beverages a day, so two cans.
Dustin Lambert: 35:55
Substitution of two beverages a day, so two cans. 12 ounce cans of soda per day is the is, uh, what most of these trials shoot for with a minimum of three sodas per week. So even at a minimum of three sodas per week, we are seeing spontaneous weight loss. So whatever is happening there as far as the impact that these might have on brain regulation or gut regulation is leading people to eat less. It's not the other way around, right, because when we actually test it, what happens when we give people diet soda and we're actually measuring these outcomes? People lose weight. They don't gain weight.
Philip Pape: 36:28
So do you think it simply comes down to energy balance at the end of the day here and that there are no other aspects of the in our guts or gut? So also all that?
Dustin Lambert: 36:55
stuff. And then we also know that gut microbiota or um, what's the term? I'm looking here for laura the um, no, the whole thing. So I saw our entire digestive tract right. So there's all stuff going on and we have a gut brain and we have drugs out now that stimulate hormones that are produced in response to things that happen in our gut and that signals our brain. So I certainly think that there's something happening there.
Dustin Lambert: 37:23
We do know that there are changes that happen to certain microbiota or flora within our gut when we consume. A lot of people take that as being negative. However, when we look at the outcomes, I would have to say that those changes have to be a positive effect, because we're seeing the outcomes that we want to see. We're seeing people lose weight, we're seeing lower fasting glucose numbers. Long-term HbA1c comes down a little bit, but a lot of those trials just aren't long enough to notice a change there or they're not looking at it.
Dustin Lambert: 37:58
Yeah, so so is it? Does it just come down to calories, like is it just that I'm replacing 150 calories with zero calories? I don't think so, uh, because the amount of weight loss that we're seeing would lead us to believe a little bit more. I think that whatever's happening to the changes in the gut and the changes whatever may be happening in response to that in the brain is spontaneously causing people to eat just a little bit less. It's not huge, all right it's. This isn't magical and it's not going to get. It's not the staff of Moses here. So yeah, but I think that there is something else to it.
Philip Pape: 38:32
That's an interesting one, cause we've now we're we're almost taking the benefit even that one step further. The gut health thing is talked about more often now as as a negative and, like you said, maybe there's something else going on. If we use the transitive property right, like if you do this and then on this side, it results in weight loss and we know gut health and cognitive function, whatever also affects that weight loss, beyond what energy balance would explain. Therefore, the diet soda is doing something. I mean I, I get that logic. Yeah, we have the comparison to water.
Dustin Lambert: 39:02
So we have zero calorie versus zero calorie and in the diet soda arms, they lose more weight. So there has to be something that's happening there that's causing just a little bit more of a calorie deficit, which we can only assume is people are eating less.
Philip Pape: 39:20
Could it be the satiety effects of it? Sure, have they compared carbonated pure water as?
Dustin Lambert: 39:27
well to soda, yep, yep. So when we compare the diet soda to the water arms, people are allowed to have carbonated beverages and a lot of these trials are free living trials. It's not a metabolic ward study. A lot of these are free living right, so people are just at home doing stuff. So what happens when we give people diet soda and they're at home and they're not advised to try to lose weight and we're looking at a carbonated, artificially sweetened beverage? And a lot of these are not just diet soda, but it's also the waters that you can get, the flavored and sweetened waters that are zero calorie, that are carbonated. But in the water arms they also are allowed to have carbonated water. So it's not just an effect of well, maybe this one has carbonation, this one's plain water. There's something more there.
Philip Pape: 40:15
And could it be just psychological hunger? Because I feel like even in my own personal experience, it takes away the craving. It kind of rubs that itch and therefore you don't eat. And it's as simple as that. What do you think it could be? Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. Well, whatever it is for an individual, they can they can look at the data and see what happens.
Dwayne Ulrich: 40:33
And so I agree, I agree with that. I read some studies about, uh, the carbonated water also kind of having the same effect. I agree there's something more about the diet soda as opposed to just carbonated water. But carbonated water has a more, I think, a more intense effect than just plain water itself. And I want to go back to the rodent thing I said earlier because I don't want people to misunderstand about, you know, certain sweeteners causing you know animal trials to where they didn't know when to stop eating. The thing Coach Lambie said about when we're using rodent studies, a lot of times what they're pushing for is they're just pushing for the maximum amount. When do we get an adverse effect? So I think we were doing a study on neotame on our podcast. You know when do we get an adverse effect? So I think we were doing a study on neotame on our podcast, and so they gave the animal subject. Like what, coach? Was it 7,000 times what the normal would be?
Dustin Lambert: 41:31
That one was just a petri dish.
Dwayne Ulrich: 41:32
Oh well, petri dish.
Dustin Lambert: 41:34
Oh no, no, I just referenced stuff in the past that we looked at.
Dwayne Ulrich: 41:39
Yeah, but it's just massive. But they give massive amounts to. I mean, just look at the. We talked earlier about aspartame. Well, good lands, you've got to drink 17, 18 sodas before there's any adverse effects. I don't want people to be misled.
Dustin Lambert: 41:54
Not even that. That's just to reach the ADI.
Dwayne Ulrich: 41:56
Yeah and I don't want people to be misled by that that that's, oh my gosh, something bad's going to happen. So there's obviously something happening in the gut biome that you know. Something's happening down there.
Philip Pape: 42:07
I don't really know what it is, but I think it's effective the longevity guys pushing low protein based on rats and I just I drew the line there. I'm like no, no, we're not doing that. Okay, let's talk about insulin response. Okay, I think that's the other one here right, cause you do talk about prescribing this for diabetics as a alternative to sweeters. But let's take people who maybe weren't drinking diet soda at all. Maybe in randomized controlled trials they've looked at this. You add it in. Does it affect your blood sugar?
Dustin Lambert: 42:46
Yes, it affects blood sugar. So we can speak to the fear mongers because I think this is another criticism that people have about it is that, well, this thing is sweet, right, and when you taste it, your brain thinks it's receiving sugar, and that stimulates the production of insulin and that leads to insulin resistance. Okay, so, not even just going into trials, but if we just logic this argument out here, okay, so let's just say, for the sake of argument, that that's happening right. As soon as it hits your taste bud, your brain goes ah, there's sugar release, insulin. Well, number one. That's not how insulin is released. Again, let's just say that it is all right. So let's say that it's a big bolus of insulin, right. So your brain thinks that you're getting whatever seven teaspoons of sugar, and so it signals to your pancreas to release the amount of insulin to dispose of seven teaspoons of sugar.
Dustin Lambert: 43:49
If I woke up first thing in the morning without eating anything and I drank this diet soda here and my pancreas released enough insulin to dispose of the amount of sugar that would be in a sugar-sweetened soda, I would go into hypoglycemic shock, right, it would induce vomiting, it would induce nausea, I would probably lose my vision and I would most likely become unconscious. Now that's not happening because I haven't eaten anything today and I, this monster, and I am also drinking this Diet Coke, so that's not happening. Okay, so it's not a large bolus of insulin. Maybe it's a small one, right? Maybe it's a little bit. Okay, fine, let's say that that's happening.
Dustin Lambert: 44:34
If you are of the position which most of them are, that high blood sugar is bad and you need to reduce that, you should be having as little amount of stored glucose in your liver and your muscles and everything as glycogen as possible. What would small amounts of insulin do? If I just had this diet soda and I didn't eat anything and I had high blood sugar and I had fatty liver maybe and fatty liver can come from excess glycogen within the liver Well, these small amounts of liver would reduce my homeostatic blood sugar, my blood glucose level, fasting glucose levels, just a little bit, and that reduction would signal glucagon to tell my liver that blood sugar has come down. Please release some glucose into the bloodstream to bring us back to homeostasis. If I did that several times a day over the course of weeks and months, what I would end up with is a liver with lower glycogen stores and also lower glycogen stores in my muscle and also a lower fasting glucose level. So if that were happening, I'm not really sure how you could make the case that that's a bad thing, right? So that's one.
Dustin Lambert: 45:52
Number two it doesn't stimulate insulin. Okay, so the way insulin is stimulated is that your pancreas has a large artery runs right through it and it pulls blood out of that artery to sense how much glucose is floating around in your bloodstream and that's how it knows how much insulin right, and also receives some signals from the liver. The liver and the pancreas work together to keep blood sugar levels stable. That's why type 1 diabetics have such issues. Also type 2 diabetics, right, because at some point they start losing control of that thing and you no longer have homeostasis. You start dipping into dangerously low levels or dangerously high levels.
Dustin Lambert: 46:32
People love social media. There are tons and tons of videos of people out there wearing a CGM and will drink a diet soda and show you it does absolutely nothing. It does nothing, so they don't stimulate insulin. Now let me put the caveat. Okay, so I will say as far as like an insulin resistance aspect goes, I have seen some stuff on sucralose that would give me pause in recommending that, right? So that's the Splenda. So yeah, I have seen some stuff. So there is another guy on YouTube and he did a pretty good three or four week look into sucralose and looking at insulin resistance and there's something there that gives me pause. I think maybe if you were to have a little bit of that, so one packet of it or something in your tea for lunch, probably not going to be a big deal, but that would be the only one.
Philip Pape: 47:23
All right, yeah, just want to put that to bed for people Again. If you just look anecdotally and, like you said, logically follow it through, people aren't getting, you know, insulin shock, as if they just injected themselves on a regular basis Because guess what? A lot of people are drinking them while they're fasting, so you would see this often. So, man, we'll take care of those intermittent fasters right now.
Dwayne Ulrich: 47:48
Just feed them a bunch of diet soda.
Philip Pape: 47:49
Okay, so that's good. So we're ticking off all the boxes here, I think. And we sort of alluded to how it of course helps with weight management, it helps with diabetes. Is there anything in the realm of cardiovascular disease stroke we wanted to cover? I mean specifically because obviously those risks also come down in concert with these other risks coming down.
Dustin Lambert: 48:07
Yeah, those risks come down. So if you substitute some sugar-sweetened sodas with artificially sweetened sodas, you're drinking diet sodas now and you managed to lose some weight. Obviously you're dealing with fewer carbohydrates coming in. That's going to have an effect on blood glucose. Let's put all of that aside and look at where we have adjusted for weight loss and other things. Do diet sodas have an impact in and of themselves on certain risk factors for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stuff In terms of diabetes? I don't think that in and of itself it has anything that really has to do with lowering your carbohydrate intake and also the weight loss. Now there is an effect on blood pressure that's seen independent of weight loss, independent of anything else, and when we compare diet soda to water again, what we end up seeing is a reduction of about 2.5, about 2.6 millimeters of mercury systolic. So that's the top number. That's independent of weight loss alone. We did an episode on coffee not too long ago and we saw kind of a similar effect there.
Philip Pape: 49:18
So hold on these. Caffeine containing soda. Caffeine containing soda yeah, okay, not diet, this is not with caffeine free.
Dustin Lambert: 49:26
Right, Not caffeine free. Yeah, so it would be just low calorie, no calorie. Sweetened beverages in general I'm just using the word diet soda to be the simple here right, so they may contain caffeine and they may not. But overall, when meta-analyzed, what we see is that artificial sweetened beverages tend to lower blood pressure just a little bit more than water when we substitute sugar sweetened beverages. So it's about two and a half millimeters of mercury systolic top number.
Dustin Lambert: 49:58
It's estimated by the American Heart Association that a three millimeter of mercury reduction in systolic blood pressure on an individual basis is clinically meaningful. So on itself all alone it almost gets you to that clinically meaningful reduction. Right, If you manage to lose weight now, you're in a clinically meaningful reduction. So that reduces your risk of coronary heart disease and it also reduces your risk of stroke. On a national level, on a population level, 5.5 millimeters of mercury, that would lead to a 15% reduction in coronary heart disease and a 27% reduction in stroke. So that's at 5.5.
Dustin Lambert: 50:50
So if we do some quick math here, we go down to 2.5, 2.6, what we're looking at on a nationwide level would be somewhere around a 6% or 7% reduction in coronary heart disease incident, Not risk incidence of coronary heart disease and somewhere around a 12% reduction in stroke incidence. So coronary heart disease, we're talking about stuff like heart attacks and other things like sudden heart failure, pectoral angina, all that stuff. There's about 800,000 people who have heart attacks every year and there's about 800,000 people who have strokes every year. What that results to if this were to be the case, if we could get a nationwide reduction of 2.5 millimeters of mercury systolic blood pressure, that would be about 40,000 fewer heart attacks every year and about 100,000 fewer strokes.
Philip Pape: 51:42
So, dwayne, you're going to start drinking diet soda now, right, not only do we say it's not bad for you, it's good for you, it's good for you. We got some diet root beer in the fridge right now the root beer is caffeine free, so just make sure you pick the time of day you want it.
Dwayne Ulrich: 51:57
Oh, I drink my coffee. I do drink coffee.
Philip Pape: 52:00
Yeah, yeah, ah, it's so fascinating. Right With the blood pressure, is there a concurrent reduction in blood lipids like LDL? Do they have data on that, because that's again another factor for CBD.
Dustin Lambert: 52:12
Yeah, so there is reduction in blood lipids. I think that probably has more to do with the weight loss than anything.
Philip Pape: 52:18
Wow, crazy. So yeah, seriously, we are delivering on the promise of this episode so far. I think that there is a case that it can be good in some cases for certain people, in certain contexts. I'm going to keep saying that. Oh, speaking of coffee, you guys drink cryo brew. You ever tried that? It's a brewed coffee. So I mean brewed chocolate.
Dustin Lambert: 52:39
It's brewed, chocolate brewed oh, that's my alley here.
Philip Pape: 52:41
Yes, yeah, check it out, attention, check it out. So it's got almost no caffeine. So for me it's like having coffee at night. You know, I can have that cup of coffee at night again during fat loss. It's kind of like diet soda it itches, the flavor and the craving and the having something in your mouth, but with the more um, the bitterness and like thickness of coffee, of a coffee.
Philip Pape: 53:00
Yeah, I'm a foodie, if you couldn't tell, I could. So, speaking of so, where does caffeine fit into all this? And that's why I alluded to it, because that's a strong factor, I imagine, depending on what you're studying.
Dustin Lambert: 53:13
Yeah, so the caffeine? So you know caffeine levels vary between diet sodas. So what I found between the diet soda stuff and the coffee stuff is that caffeine is a diuretic, so it will cause you to pee more. However, diet sodas are 95% water. We don't see dehydration happening from consumption of diet soda or coffee. That's not happening, and so, despite caffeine being a diuretic, it just may be that you're drinking enough water along with it to counteract that effect. Duane, did you look into the sodium excretion?
Dwayne Ulrich: 53:51
yeah, it's. It's kind of. It's kind of just um, and it's kind of like social media fodder, just like, uh, being dehydrated because you drink too much caffeine or you eat too much coffee. The same thing with diet drinks. It's just social media fodder. It's like, oh my gosh, you're going to deplete your potassium levels because you're going to start offloading all this stuff because it's diuretic. We saw in our podcast on caffeine that it doesn't hold true to the data.
Dustin Lambert: 54:22
It doesn't, so I don't think that that's an issue at all, I think there may be some effect of increased sodium excretion to go along with it. So, in terms of the coffee, there was a trial that we looked at where they did measure sodium excretion and it was higher in the coffee group than the water group, is higher in the coffee group than the water group. So the fact that we see blood pressure reductions independent of weight loss, from from artificial, artificially suited beverages that may have caffeine, I think there may be a case to be made there too that you're having an increased sodium excretion from that which is going to put the hydration status, but also with the blood pressure thing yeah, that's and that's a positive.
Dwayne Ulrich: 54:58
But again, going back to what I was saying is like, as far as other base minerals in your body, you're not going to deplete things like potassium, magnesium and stuff like that. There is a sodium offload. That is a boost. I mean that's a plus. But I was just saying overall elements in your body. It's just you're not going to offload a bunch of stuff. That's going to hurt you.
Philip Pape: 55:18
Go eat a banana, go eat a banana.
Dwayne Ulrich: 55:20
Absolutely not going to offload a bunch of stuff to hurt you Go eat a banana?
Philip Pape: 55:23
Go eat a banana, Absolutely Actually this.
Philip Pape: 55:28
Then sodium comes up as a thing too because the soda I'm drinking has 60 milligrams and some diet sodas have quite a bit more 200, 200 something milligrams. And I know, coach Lamba, you're big into not over subscribing to the fact that we're under salted. Right, there's this narrative that we're all under salted and maybe some people have too much salt and it's causing high blood pressure. It's interesting because there is a lot of salt. I guess I don't know Relative. Is it a decent amount of sodium that we should be worried about? It sounds like it reduces your blood pressure, so maybe not.
Dustin Lambert: 55:56
Is there a lot of sodium in the diet sodas? Yes, yes, yeah. So it varies from one to the. You know, I think diet coke has like 55 milligrams of sodium, 40 milligrams of sodium, so so it varies. Like, am I concerned about somebody having a diet soda with 40 milligrams of sodium three or four times a day? Not really, you know. So we're looking to stay under 2300 for the day. You know, if you have three or four diet cokes, you know we're at 200, like there's plenty left to salt your food.
Philip Pape: 56:24
All right, all right. Um, there's one other benefit I thought of, and that is a cavity cavity risk.
Dwayne Ulrich: 56:30
Oh yeah.
Philip Pape: 56:31
Which.
Dwayne Ulrich: 56:32
I took a deep doubt on this. I just oh, did you.
Philip Pape: 56:34
Okay.
Dwayne Ulrich: 56:35
Yeah, I found it fascinating. So I think we just need, first of all, we need to take a look at sugar sweetened beverages first. It's just like your mama said, that stuff's going to rot your teeth out. So for a child, there's a term for it. I just can't remember what it is Primary dentin, I can't remember.
Dwayne Ulrich: 56:54
Anyway, for a child, sugar sweetened beverages are just caustic, just tear the child's teeth up. If they drink a little bit of a soda man, you need to wash those teeth out and brush them. And then in your teens, your young adulthood, it doesn't have quite an effect. An older person I'm still talking about sugar-sweetened beverages so for an older person, you don't have the cavity issue but you have an erosion. It increases erosion in your teeth.
Dwayne Ulrich: 57:25
But now going to the artificially sweetened ones, so there's a thing that happens is that I think it's called karyogenic is that when your body, when you drink a sugar sweetened beverage, the sugars break down into an acid and so that's what's tearing up the enamel in your teeth. So artificially sweetened beverages aren't karyogenic, so your body doesn't take that stuff and generate an acid. So there's really not much impact on your teeth, even on what's called a primary dentinate I think it is, and middle age, like so early teens to 20-something and even adults. There's not that much of an impact there. The only impact that I found in studies that I was looking at was that artificial sweeteners are used a lot on foods or treats, especially that are highly acidic, and so whatever you're going to get is probably going to be coming from a higher acidic type food or treat or sweets or whatever Gosh. The first thing that comes to my mind is those nasty little like the worms and the.
Philip Pape: 58:33
The gummy worms.
Dwayne Ulrich: 58:33
Put the sugar on them, sour patch gummy worms, sour patch kids, those, I hate those things. But so you know, if you find those with artificial sweeteners, you know it's not the sweetener that's tearing you up, it's going to be just the acid from the food. Sure, sure. So it's a plus.
Philip Pape: 58:50
I mean, all right, hey, we're busting this stuff in right, can you have the sugar sweetened beverages? Pshe, phosphoric acid is an ingredient in soda and that might be a cool episode for you guys to do, because that's another one that has been fear mongered with like they'll show teeth in a vat of phosphoric acid and it's like rotting away, and then you look at the amount that have to be exposed to for long periods of time, far beyond just what your saliva rinses from you and hopefully you brush your teeth.
Philip Pape: 59:19
It's a non-concern, but it's interesting how the acidity from the sugar breaking down is more the concern, and then the artificial sweetener tends to solve that problem via substitution. So now we're just finding so many cool things here today. So, guys, as we wrap up, I think we've addressed the general premise here about whether diet soda is harmful or not, and in what context and what the evidence is, and we're kind of scratching the surface, because I realize there's a lot out there. Is there one thing that we didn't cover that you wish I had brought up?
Dustin Lambert: 59:51
Yeah On whether or not these things are banned in Europe. Wow.
Dwayne Ulrich: 59:55
Didn't even think of that.
Philip Pape: 59:56
Okay, that's a good one, let's go there.
Dustin Lambert: 59:59
Yeah, so that's a common criticism on a line by the fear mongers, and you know the answer is, quite frankly, no. So what people are missing about things that are supposedly banned in Europe? So they'll say a lot of things are banned in Europe. Bha, bht I think aspartame was the latest one. Europe doesn't use the word. They have an e-designation for food additives. So if you want to go and look at it, you can just Google European Food Safety Authority food additive list and you'll find e-designations for things. Aspartame is under the e-designation E951. Ak is E950. Sucralose is E955. Yeah, so these things aren't banned in Europe. The people that you're listening to just don't know anything. There we go.
Philip Pape: 1:00:48
Anything to add to that, Dwayne?
Dwayne Ulrich: 1:00:51
No, but well, I will add this there are some plant extracts that are banned in Europe as well, Like cannabis. Cannabis good Maybe that's a podcast for one of us to do. Yeah, I'm with coach on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Philip Pape: 1:01:09
I mean, I tend to my skepticism. Hairs go way up when you say Europe or California.
Dustin Lambert: 1:01:14
So yeah, same difference man.
Philip Pape: 1:01:16
Same difference.
Philip Pape: 1:01:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, man Cool. So your friends? Yeah, yeah, all right, man Cool. So this has been awesome. I think we had fun. I think I learned a few things that I didn't know, which is always real, real gold. When I have these conversations, I do want to ask you where you want people to find, you guys. But since, for sure, you have a podcast, the working way to LLC podcast, is there a specific episode that I'm thinking the artificial sweetener one, but maybe another one that you want to send them to and we can throw it in the show notes?
Dustin Lambert: 1:01:40
The artificial sweetener one would probably be good. It ties right into this. And then there is the artificial food dyes. I think would be another excellent one for people to listen to, to get a better idea on how to kind of understand the research regarding these food additives. Cool.
Philip Pape: 1:01:56
Yeah, that's a good one. Especially, people talk about protein powders, for example, which have sometimes have the dyes in them and they're consuming lots of them, so we'll I'll include a couple of those in there.
Dwayne Ulrich: 1:02:06
I'm going to point them towards caffeine, the coffee thing.
Philip Pape: 1:02:08
The coffee one. Yeah, yeah, all right. So we're going to have a nice library of links in here Point people to. Is there anything else you want to send them to IG or anything else?
Dustin Lambert: 1:02:22
Not really. I am on Instagram, but not terribly. I'm just not too terribly active on social media, so the podcast is probably the best way, sounds good, dwayne, same thing.
Philip Pape: 1:02:28
Just go to the podcast.
Dwayne Ulrich: 1:02:29
Yeah, go to the podcast, Absolutely.
Philip Pape: 1:02:31
All right, man. Well, thanks guys for coming on. We threw this together last minute this week and it came together really nicely and I hope people learned a ton. That's the goal is to learn to be curious, to apply this to themselves, to ask questions, don't just assume that what you see on Instagram is correct and that's the way we do it. Thanks for coming on, guys. Yeah.
Dwayne Ulrich: 1:02:49
Good deal.
Philip Pape: 1:02:50
Yeah, thanks for having us Thanks a lot.