Want fries with that?

Diet drinks may not "save" you calories

From Sharita Forrest, University of Illinois

Want fries with that diet soda? You aren’t alone, and you may not be “saving” as many calories as you think by consuming diet drinks.

A new study that examined the dietary habits of more than 22,000 U.S. adults found that diet-beverage consumers may compensate for the absence of calories in their drinks by noshing on extra food that is loaded with sugar, sodium, fat and cholesterol.

University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Ruopeng An examined 10 years of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, which asked participants to recall everything they ate or drank over the course of two nonconsecutive days.

An compared participants’ daily calorie intakes, including their consumption of discretionary foods and five types of beverages – diet or sugar-free drinks; sugar-sweetened beverages, such as sodas and fruit drinks; coffee; tea; and alcohol.

Using a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture food database, An compiled a 661-item list of discretionary foods, which includes foods that do not belong to the major food groups and are not required by the human body but may add variety to a person’s diet. These energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods include products such as cookies, ice cream, chocolate, fries and pastries.

More than 90 percent of the people in the study consumed discretionary foods daily, averaging about 482 calories from these products each day, An found.

Although previous research on beverage preferences and consumption of discretionary foods focused on between-meal snacking, An chose to look at the nutritional quality of the food participants consumed rather than when it was eaten. His paper will appear in a future issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

About 97 percent of the study population consumed at least one of the five types of beverages daily, with about 41 percent of respondents drinking beverages from at least two of the categories. More than 25 percent of the participants consumed three or more types of beverages daily.

Coffee was participants’ beverage of choice, consumed by more than half – 53 percent – of the population, followed by sugar-sweetened beverages (43 percent), tea (26 percent), alcohol (22 percent) and diet beverages (21 percent).

Alcohol consumption was associated with the largest increase in daily calorie intake (384 calories), followed by sugar-sweetened beverages (226 calories), coffee (108 calories), diet beverages (69 calories) and tea (64 calories).

Continue reading at the University of Illinois.