There is a lot of chatter this week about a study, as yet unpublished, that finds that people who drink diet soda may have increased risk for cardiovascular problems like strokes and heart disease.  Ouch!

The study was premiered at a recent American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference. The American Heart Association’s website has a summary on its website.

I quote directly from them:

Even if you drink diet soda — instead of the sugar variety — you could still have a much higher risk of vascular events compared to those who don’t drink soda, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2011.

In findings involving 2,564 people in the large, multi-ethnic Northern Manhattan Study (NOMAS), scientists said people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events than those who reported no soda drinking.

“If our results are confirmed with future studies, then it would suggest that diet soda may not be the optimal substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages for protection against vascular outcomes,” said Hannah Gardener, Sc.D., lead author and epidemiologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Fla.
In separate research using 2,657 participants also in the Manhattan study, scientists found that high salt intake, independent of the hypertension it causes, was linked to a dramatically increased risk of ischemic strokes (when a blood vessel blockage cuts off blood flow to the brain).

In the study, people who consumed more than 4,000 milligrams (mg) per day of sodium had more than double the risk of stroke compared to those consuming less than 1,500 mg per day.

Although controversial, with some experts distrusting this study as being unscientific, or even flawed, there is a lot of evidence against sodas in general.  The sodium is one thing, and carbolic gas might be a problem, the chemicals and the artificial sweeteners might be another.

As I’ve written many times over the years, I don’t ever recommend people drink diet sodas.  Best to have a little fruit juice in spring water.

There’s a good blog about this from Marion Nestle, a renowned NYU professor of nutrition and food studies, here, in The Atlantic.