Diet Soda and Metabolic Syndrome

This should, of course, surprise me more, but it doesn't. Researchers have correlated diet soda consumption to metabolic syndrome -- which is obesity, hyperlipidemia, diabetes and high blood pressure. This could of course be something in the diet soda. Or it could very well be the psychology of someone who consumes an unhealthy carbonated carbohydrate. From the NYTimes.

Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels, and elevated blood pressure.
The scientists gathered dietary information on more than 9,500 men
and women ages 45 to 64 and tracked their health for nine years.
Over all, a Western dietary pattern — high intakes of refined
grains, fried foods and red meat — was associated with an 18 percent
increased risk for metabolic syndrome, while a “prudent” diet dominated
by fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry correlated with neither an
increased nor a decreased risk.
But the one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk
by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and
surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent
higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with
those who drank none.

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