James Colin's BLOG MONEY WIKI

I drink Coke Zero (Coca Cola Zero, as we don't say Coke over here) and enjoy it, I also drink water, but rather at the gym where I drink 1,25liter at each training and with my protein shakes and also sometimes on its own at home, yes it happens. Coke Zero says there is no carbs and no fat, only aspartame and some chemicals, so it's fine... Today I read an article by Nick Nilsson (author of the fat loss program I'm following, Metabolic Surge) entitled "Nine Sure-Fire Ways To Gain Fat" in which he states:

Drinking soft drinks (even diet drinks) with fatty foods will make you gain fat

A sugary soft drink will result in a high insulin response. Insulin is a storage hormone - it helps the body store carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

There is also evidence to suggest that the artifical sweeteners commonly found in diet drinks can cause an insulin reaction in the body. It's a simple reaction to the sweetness, not carbs as there are no carbs in diet drinks. The body simply associates the taste of sweetness with the presence of carbs and assumes that carbs are present, increasing insulin levels in response.

What do you get when you have fatty foods in the presence of increased insulin levels? Simple. You get fat.

My advice is this: if you're going to eat fatty foods (we all do it at some point or other), drink water, not soft drinks or even diet soft drinks. Save the diet drinks for times when you're not eating fatty foods.

Because that reminded me of my brother telling me about the same thing, that diet drinks prepare your body to take all the subsequent carbs and transform it into fat (my brother is not a scientist and neither am I) and I was not 100% convinced about that: could the body be so dumb as to react not to pure chemistry but be fooled by a mere sweetness taste? So I asked.

I asked Nick Nilsson by email, I also asked the same question to two bloggers:

1. one is Israel, a familiar commenter of blogs such as John Chow, John Cow, Problogger and the rest of the money/blog marketing/trendy bloggers, he's blogging mainly about his fat loss journey.
2. the other one is Adam Waters who has done the most difficult part of his physique transformation journey (the beginning) and took daily pictures which resulted in a now famous time lapse video on YouTube.

Here's what they had to say...

First, Nick Nilsson replied promptly and with good information, Israel replied he doesn't know and Adam is currently overwhelmed with emails because his video has been featured on a TV show and the resulting feedback is BIG! Update: Adam Waters replied on sunday (his training-free day) that he's sorry but really doesn't have that much advanced knowledge on the topic I discussed in my email.

Here's what Nick Nilsson told me:

Honestly, my sentence in the book needs editing, and I appreciate you pointing that out - I want to keep things accurate. You're right about the body reacting to chemistry rather than taste. I thought I remembered reading about that sweetness reaction somewhere in my research but can't find the studies to back that up.

Anyway, I have links to a couple of studies for you. These show the insulin response to Aspartame, but the aspartame was injected directly rather than fed to rats. Hard to taste something that's injected!

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=2887503 "Acesulfame K (aspartame) acts directly on the pancreatic islets and potentiates glucose-induced insulin release."
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=2887500 "The effect of Acesulfame K on insulin secretion was similar to that observed by injecting or infusing the same doses of glucose (150 mg/kg body weight for injection and 20 mg/kg body weight/min for infusion), except that no hyperglycemia was observed with Acesulfame K"

I then asked him (watch out for the scientific discussion) about Coke Zero, which has in my opinion a better taste than Diet Coke, and boasts on the label 0,3 calories for 100ml with 0g proteins, carbs and fat and fiber, with only 0,01g sodium. I know water is always better than water + things inside the drink, but I still hoped Nick would tell me "Go ahead you can drink a lot, it's good for your body and tastes great!" not quite so:

With Coke Zero, you're unfortunately still looking at a pretty significant chemical soup. You're definitely right about water being best but sometimes it can get to you after a while! What you might try is a few drops of lemon juice concentrate in the water. That helps give you flavor without the chemicals.

I'm not really sure how Coke Zero would compare to fructose or sugar in terms of insulin response but it does have Aspartame in it, so there will be some reaction.

Basically, it's not going to kill to drink Coke Zero, but it's probably better to minimize intake as best you can. Eventually, you find your body loses that craving for that kind of stuff. I honestly can't remember the last time I had a soft drink (used to drink them regularly) - now even if it's right in front of me, I don't want it. I'll go for water instead. I've gotten used the look of disappointment from the wait staff at restaurants when I say I just want water :)

So, that's something new to me, and when you're doing low carbs (meaning you eat mostly proteins and fat) then drinking Diet Soda Drinks all day long is probably doing the opposite of what you're trying to achieve, despite the label saying there's no Calorie.

Did you know about it? What do you think?