Diet Foods Making You Fat?

It looks like people really are starting to catch on to fact that we can't fool our bodies into optimal health and body weight.In this week's Time Magazine, they feature an article Do Diet Foods Lead to Weight Gain?

This article explores a couple of studies which link low-calorie sweeteners to something they are coining "metabolic syndrome. Basically, the body gets conditioned to crave sweet things, knows that the sweet things it gets don't have any energy, so it begins to condition the body to over-consume all sweet things.
According to the article "Two years ago, scientists at the University of Texas reported in an eight-year study that for every can of diet soda that a person drank, he raised his risk of being overweight by 41%, compared to a 30% increase in drinkers of regular, sugared drinks.

Someone posted a comment on Digg about my previous Diet Coke post saying something to the effect of "isn't this already commonly-known information...why post this?" Well, my friends, if it was commonly known, we wouldn't have such a problem nationally. If it were known, my new clients wouldn't gasp when I suggest to them that, if they MUST consume soda, that they consume the regular soda.

The official response to these studies from food companies is predictable: "This study simply defies common sense," wrote Dr. Richard Adamson, scientific consultant to the American Beverage Association, in a prepared statement responding to the study. "To suggest that foods and beverages with zero calories contribute to weight gain contradicts the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that supports that they can help you reduce calories and maintain a healthy weight."

In my opinion, further studies are going to show that it goes WAY beyond conditioning. There are millions of complex chemical reactions that occur each second in our bodies to maintain our metabolism and life. What defies common sense, in my book, is to assume that we can arbitrarily put these chemicals into our food supply and presume to even GUESS the long-term effect they will have on those reactions and our metabolic system. It smacks of arrogance to me. It also seems completely inauthentic to defend said chemicals when they are clearly being linked to problems simply because your company has financial stake in it...just my opinion.

If you want a healthy, lean body, start giving your body foods it had evolved to digest and metabolize. Clean fruits, veggies, and meats. Our world is full of delicious natural foods that are there for the eating if we can start challenging the line of junk we have been fed about diet foods.