2) As noted above, correlation does not equal causation. Since I switched several years ago from drinking about two cans of diets soda and six cans of regular soda a day, to drinking the equivalent of a 12 pack of diet soda and no regular soda a day, I lost over 50 lbs. But again, it’s just a correlation, and I have no real proof that diet soda was the reason I lost all that weight. If it was factor, it was probably a minor one. It certainly didn’t hurt in my case though.

3) Actually, if you read that article carefully, the study described in the article only says that drinking diet soda is just as likely to increase your risk of heart disease at all, not that diet soda consumption will increase your risk of heart disease as much as an equal amount of regular soda.

4) First off, a random blog where the author talks about googling to find this information him or herself, is not the most impressive of sources. Secondly, yes, the phosphoric acid in diet soda is not very good for your teeth. It is also not nearly as bad for your teeth as the sugar in regular soda is. Or the sugar in fruit juice for that matter.

5) As mentioned above, the article only mentions interference with magnesium absorption. I do agree that Diet Coke Plus is a dumb idea though, and it tastes like Diet Coke Plus Chalk. I would’ve been much more impressed if they’d managed to add a bit of calcium and vitamin C as well.

6) This is true. Not all diet sodas have caffeine though, and coffee has about three-to-four times as much caffeine per ounce as most diet sodas. Diet Cranberry Canada Dry is delicious, and contains neither caffeine nor phosphoric acid.

Look, you come off extremely like you have an agenda here, considering how cherry-picked your sources are and considering how you misinterpreted or exaggerated what was said in half of them. This is not a good thing and building an argument in this fashion does more to undermine your credibility than it does to get your point across. I’m slightly biased myself, as after I became diabetic, switching to diet sodas probably saved my sanity. However, there’s something you probably should know: you actually missed some of the biggest legitimate health problems associated with diet soda. If I lost a lot of weight, dropped my cholesterol from over 200 to just over 100, got by blood sugar completely under control, and lowered my blood pressure down to the normal range, all after becoming diabetic, and with only making small lifestyle changes aside from cutting out sugar, it was because I decided to read as much as possible about nutrition in general. Critically, I did this _without_ a prior agenda, because I just wanted to know the truth. So here are some things you missed about diet soda:

1) They are a diuretic. Not as much as regular soda, but they will still generally dehydrate you. This can be offset however if you simply drink enough water to compensate. And listen to your body, as drinking so much water that you get nauseous isn’t particularly good for you either (putting a bit of lemon juice in your water will help a bit though).

2) With some people, aspartame will switch the bodies metabolic response to sweetness, meaning that when someone who drinks a lot of diet soda eats something sweet with real sugar, the body’s metabolism won’t increase to offset it like it normally would. Regularly doing some mild exercise after eating something sweetened with real sugar may help restore one’s proper metabolic response, although I imagine that’d be quite a chore. I don’t eat sugary things often enough where I feel that this is a problem, although I will still usually try and follow it with exercise due to my diabetic condition.

3) This is the one missed by the most people, and is particularly important to women: the phosphoric acid may strip calcium from your bones. You actually need a certain amount of phosphorus for your health, but if you get more phosphorus than calcium, your body makes up the difference by taking it from your bones, and most dairy products have a roughly equal amount. This can be remedied however by taking a single daily calcium supplement or a rolaid or two, even if you drink four liters of the stuff a day. This is only true of sodas (diet or otherwise) with phosphoric acid, which includes most colas. So check the label.

Seriously though, it’s my fuel, my delight, and I know it’s cyanide in a can, but don’t give a damn because we’ve got to go anyway. I’d rather life to see fifty than go without and reach eighty ~~.

Anyway, with regards to the diet version, I’ve always thought that it’s more dangerous that the regular one.

Sugar replacements are often more dangerous because they’re synthetic.

She bragged for a week that she had given up caffeine and she never had any withdrawal effects.

After I had got a good laugh, I gave her the bad news.

“Thank You for Smoking” – great flick. Yes, I agree it’s all spin. I’m not aware of a support group for Mountain Dew. I understand it’s a pretty tough one to break. Good luck!