The Cancer Myth of Diet Sodas Fizzing Out

The days are starting to get warmer and I'm ready to start drinking soda again, but I need to be watching my figure, so I'm going to be drinking the diet variety of drinks. That is all that I really need to keep hydrated, right! And there are no calories. What could be wrong with that.

Well cancer. That's the answer you will get the most. But is it really true, do I need to be afraid of cancer while drinking my Diet Coke?

Most diet sodas are made diet by replacing the sugar with a low calorie or a zero calorie sweetener such as NutraSweet or Equal. These are just a couple of brand names of the compound aspartame. This is the chemical people talk about as causing the adverse health affects. A quick look on PubMed.com makes it pretty clear that several studies have been done trying to find a connection between aspartame and cancer. In all the articles I looked at I couldn't finding any correlation between the two at all.

The FDA and the European Food Safety Authority says a safe daily allowance is about 40 -50 mg/kg bw/day. A study conducted in dogs, rats, mice, and hamsters showed a safe level of up to 4000 mg/kg bw/day.

The answer to the cancer question, go ahead and drink your diet sodas, you won't get cancer. I also found several studies conducted to determine the neurological effects these studies to give people reason to fear aspartame if the article is not read. These studies have shown that there is no linking between seizures and aspartame.

Like almost everything, some people may have adverse effects to chemicals in the drinks. Simple things like headaches though may just be caused by a carbonated beverage.

If you want to treat yourself to a cold drink filled with caffeine there is nothing wrong with diet soda that do not match problems you may get from drinking a regular soda. If you want to just stay hydrated, drink water.