Study links diet soda to cardiovascular risk

February 9th, 2011, 12:41 pm ·  · posted by LANDON HALL, OCREGISTER.COM

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Maybe Indra Nooyi is right. Maybe Pepsi isn’t bad for you. Especially compared with Diet Pepsi.

A study out of the University of Miami and presented at the American Stroke Association’s international conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday showed that subjects who drank diet soda on a daily basis had a 61 percent greater risk of suffering a stroke or heart attack than those who didn’t drink soda at all.

You’d think that the risk of a cardiovascular event would be even greater among those who drank regular high-calorie soda, but this group showed no higher risk than the non-soda-drinkers.

ABC News has an exhaustive explanation of the study, while MSNBC.com notes the possibility that there’ssomething in caramel, which gives cola its dark color, that could be to blame.

But the study’s authors note that there’s still a lot we don’t know, and the research has enough flaws that we shouldn’t assume diet soda is a killer. For one, the study relied on data covering a diverse population of New Yorkers: About 75 percent of the subjects were black or Hispanic, groups that are at higher risk than whites of cardiovascular disease.

Another factor that could skew the results: Although researchers knew the caloric intake of the subjects, they didn’t examine their eating habits. How many of us have ever seen someone at a fast-food joint who orders a giant burger and fries, then a tub of diet soda?

“In my 20 years of clinical practice, patients who consume diet soda tend to have more of a sweet tooth; to get more sweet cravings; to eat more foods with added sugar; and to like and eat more processed food than patients who avoid both regular and diet soda,” Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, told ABC News.

:o WHAAAT! was my first reaction when i read this article. I along with tons of other people always figured getting a diet soda would be better and healthier for us! To think that people who drink diet soda as appose to regular soda have a high risk of suffering from a stroke or heart attack. Of course as the article says they are not aware of what the people who drink the diet soda and were tested have been eating along with the diet soda so that may have a huge impact of the greatness of the heart attack but there is a trend for people who drink diet soda. This article proves to me that no matter diet or regular soda, POP is bad for you and it should not be considered an everyday drink with your meal. I personally LOVE pop and i could drink it all the time but to think if they say diet pop is supposed to be better for you then imagine what regular pop could do especially with all that junk food we consume everyday! YIKES, better re think ordering pop with my meal from now on.