Nick Norwitz explains why diet soda isn't metabolically harmless. More than half of people develop insulin resistance after a week of daily artificial sweeteners, and their altered gut bacteria can transfer that damage to animals. Occasional diet soda is fine, but daily consumption rewires your microbiome.
Here's something everyone gets wrong about diet soda. Some people think one can will spike your blood sugar and insulin and therefore make it unhealthy. They're wrong. But other people think diet soda has zero calories and doesn't spike your blood sugar or insulin, and it's completely healthy. They're also wrong. The truth is more insidious. It's not necessarily about what one can will do, but routine exposure. In fact, landmark data, including in humans, shows that when you give people artificial sweeteners, like from diet soda, For a week, more than half of them develop insulin resistance, a marker of poor metabolic health and a precursor to diabetes. And this, this is fascinating. If you then give microbiome samples from these humans that had the artificial sweeteners to animals, those animals develop insulin resistance too. And what this shows is that the artificial sweetener is changing the microbiome in a way that contributes to poor health. So if you want to have a Diet Coke once per week, that's fine, but use it as a treat. Not as a habit.
