Diet Cola and weight loss

The Supplements and weight loss series, inspects various easily available supplements, to understand their benefits and disadvantages.

Weight loss for most people usually involves skipping meals and not eating big enough portions. Which deprives the body of necessary calories; this will definitely lead to weight loss but with it, also an unhealthy lifestyle and various health hazards. Dangerous diets make you destroy yourself; healthy diets make you want to celebrate life. There is an option however that will not compromise your calorie intake but help your diet, by substituting unhealthy foods with dietary supplements. This is considerably a better approach then starvation but still doesn't match the change that a healthy lifestyle will bring. 

Diet cola....Safe if consumed moderately. 

It may not be considered as a weight loss supplement by many but is popular as a low calorie, weight loss alternative in carbonated drinks.

Ingredients  ....Diet Pepsi is made by Pepsi-Co Corporation, and contains zero carbohydrates and zero calories. An 8-oz. serving of Diet Pepsi has 25 mg of sodium, water, coloring, caffeine, flavorings, 118 mg of aspartame, 20 mg of potassium and other ingredients for freshness. The aspartame in Diet Pepsi contains phenylalanine, which people with the rare disease, phenylketonuria, must not consume, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

None of the ingredients in Diet Pepsi will cause you to lose weight, but the zero calorie nature of Diet Pepsi may benefit your weight loss efforts.

Expert say.......While Diet Pepsi may have benefits in terms of reduced calories and no refined sugars, the Northern Manhattan Study, presented at the 2011 Conference for the American Stroke Association, concluded that drinking excessive diet soda may raise the risk of stroke. Additionally, a publication from the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that drinking diet soda may not help weight loss, but may be detrimental to weight-loss efforts in the long term. This phenomenon may be because of process your body undertakes to metabolize the artificial sweetener.

Strategies.....Diet Pepsi may not hurt your weight-loss efforts in the short-term, but drinking Diet Pepsi will not guarantee you lose weight. If you decide to drink Diet Pepsi, use the drink as an occasional addition to your diet and not your most commonly consumed beverage. Drink water with the majority of your meals, and monitor your Diet Pepsi intake to stay within your desired level.

Harmful or Not... 

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that is added to diet coke products. There is a huge amount of negative information about it. Aspartame suppresses serotonin and makes us crave carbohydrates.

More recently, researchers have reported a correlation between diet soda and metabolic syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic describes as a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

In order to understand the dangers of coke, it is necessary to understand the side-effects of aspartame. Aspartame has 92 side-effects including blindness and death. When the temperature of Aspartame exceeds 86 degrees F the wood alcohol in aspartame
converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. (Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants.) Methanol toxicity is similar to multiple sclerosis, but with a difference; while multiple sclerosis doesn't result in death, methanol toxicity can be fatal.
Aspartame which is also called as ‘nutraSweet’ is known to causes symptoms such fibromyalgia, spasms, shooting pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss.
Aspartame also changes the brain’s chemistry. It is the reason for severe seizures. This drug changes the dopamine level in the brain. This drug also causes birth defects.

Even though there is a lot of information regarding the dangers of aspartame, the National Experts of EFSA have not come across any new evidence regarding the safety of Aspartame..It is said to be safe at current levels of consumption.  

Bibliography

(1)http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/16/health/pepsi-fat-fighting-soda

(2)http://www.livestrong.com/article/306340-the-effects-of-aspartame-poisoning-from-drinking-diet-coke-or-pepsi/

(3)http://newsflavor.com/alternative/the-diet-pepsi-crisis/
(4)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198517/