Tushkateer Peg wants to know if her addiction to Diet Coke will kill her? Will the artificial sweeteners kill her? Read on and weigh-in! What’s your take on the artificial killer question?

Dear OLofWL ~ Is diet soda as bad as ‘they’ say? Will it make me crave sugar even though there’s none in it and it is zero calories? Will the artificial sweeteners in it kill me? Because I’m kind of hooked on it. I drink Diet Coke all day long. Please advise! Thank you. ~ Longin’ to Live Long Peg

Dear Longin’ to Live Long, Peg ~ Super questions, Peg! I did a bit of research and here’s what I uncovered. Warning: It ain’t pretty! AND to be clear, I’m not a dietician or a nutritionist.

Studies show that artificial sweeteners can:

Stimulate your appetite (spike insulin levels which will increase hunger very shortly after eating).

Increase carbohydrate cravings (consuming sweeteners will cause your sweet tooth to actually get worse).

Stimulate fat storage and weight gain (increase in insulin levels cause you to get hungry and eat more).

In addition, research suggests that aspartame (NutraSweet®) and sucralose (Splenda®) – the sweetening agents in artificial sweeteners – can contribute to other side effects. Even though sucralose, the sweetening agent in Splenda®, is actually made from sugar (sucrose), Splenda® then adds three chlorine molecules to these sugar molecules to create the final product.

And, there appears to be some evidence that aspartame can trigger or worse the following diseases:

Brain tumors
Multiple sclerosis
Epilepsy
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Parkinson’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease
Mental retardation
Lymphoma
Birth defects
Fibromyalgia
Diarrhea

The bottom line is this: You may want to further look into this and decide for yourself if you want to continue to drink artificially sweetened drinks. Do not rely solely on my reporting what I’ve read.  Again, I am culling together information from various articles.  I am not a nutritionist nor a dietician.

That said, water is always a good way to quench your thirst, cleanse your body and it promotes weight loss! And again, if it’s not real food, don’t eat it!