Daily Diet Soda Linked to Abdominal Obesity

While many hope to avoid the dangers of daily soda intake by switching to diet beverages, these options may also increased risk of obesity and cardiometabolic syndrome, according to a new study.

In order to further study the effects of daily diet soda intake on waist circumference, researchers evaluated 749 Mexican Americans and European Americans (ages 65 years and older), measuring the participants’ waist circumference, height, weight, and diet soda intake at baseline and again during follow-up years (2000, 2000-2003, and 2003-2004).
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The study showed that the mean waist circumference of participants who drank diet soda was nearly triple that of their peers who did not consume diet soda.

Over the 9.4-year follow-up duration, the waist circumference increases were 0.77 cm among participants who drank no diet soda, 1.76 cm for those who occasionally drank the beverages, and 3.04 cm in those who drank diet soda every day.

The complete study is published in the March issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

-Michelle Canales Butcher

Reference:

Fowler SPG, Williams K, Hazuda HP. Diet soda intake is associated with long-term increases in waist circumference in a biethnic cohort of older adults: the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2015 March [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1111/jgs.13376.