NEW YORK, Jan. 4, 2007

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(CBS) For many people there's only one real reason to drink diet soda.

1) To not consume the calories that are in regular soda, 2) for diabetics to avoid the sugar in regular soda. Whoops, that's two.

"Because it's got no calories and, yeah, you try to watch your weight," says Raymond Tomczak.

But, as The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay reports, some experts are now saying diet soda may be doing the exact opposite: making them gain weight.

Diet soda makes you gain weight. that's Dr. Senay's conclusion after reading the reports. Mind you, she's not even doing any studies herself. All she has to do is have the ability to READ what OTHER experts are saying.

Epidemiologist Sharon Fowler, from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, presented research data on soda consumption to the American Diabetes Association.

"What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drinks, the more weight they were likely to gain," she says.

All other things being equal? no, it doesn't say that. Dr. Emily Senay must also think that smoking pot leads to doing heroin, b/c all heroin addicts tried weed at one point. They all also tried milk at some point, so Dr. Emily must conclude that Milk ---> heroin

That finding was a big surprise, but it reflected what nutritionist Melainie Rogers saw in her work with obese patients in New York.

"When we would switch them on to diet soda off regular soda, we weren't seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us," Rogers says.

and were these subjects forced to keep everything else the same? or was it just a "hey guys, instead of drinking regular soda, drink diet."

But why would diet soda make some people gain weight? There are only theories at this point but it may be as simple as people consciously eating more because they think they can.

So, does Dr. Emily conclude that diet soda alters your brain to make you CONSCIOUSLY eat more?

Khristianne Corro says, "If I'm having one of those pig out days, then yeah, I figure maybe it'll balance it out a little bit."

Wow, those brain altering drugs in diet soda are really strong.

And Tomczak says, "I'm drinking the diet soda and you know let me have that hamburger and fries, instead of just the hamburger alone."

Hey, Dr. Emily, you stupid retard, maybe it's the FRIES that are causing the people to gain weight (or to not lose weight), not the diet soda.

Researchers say physiology may also play a role.

Diet soda has physiology as an ingredient?

"When I put anything to my stomach that's not water then my stomach responds by increasing the gastric acid secretion," Fowler says. "Does that increase my sense of hunger and does that drive me to eat more?"

Since when are questions the same as conclusions. That's a question that needs to be studied. The title of this article should be "we don't know anything", but that would scare the soccer moms as much.

If diet soda really doesn't take the weight off, it wouldn't be the first time a diet product failed to perform as expected.

Has anyone made the claim that diet soda takes weight off? It doesn't have NEGATIVE calories.

"You know, much the same as when we went through the fat free craze, people overate – not because there was anything wrong with the products, but they overate," says Rogers, the nutritionist. "So we're wondering are we seeing a similar phenomenon with the diet soda."

Look at that...."not because there was anything wrong with the products". Go back and read the title of this article. Where is there any evidence of people gaining weight FROM drinking diet soda?


There are still plenty of questions that researchers need to answer. For instance, are these results associated with all artificial sweeteners? Or just certain ones?

But that won't stop Dr. Emily from reporting!

And of course, it's all just a theory until larger controlled studies can be done, but the early findings are fascinating.

I haven't seen anything fascinating yet, and we are close to the end of the article.

In the meantime, there are alternatives for people who are trying to lose weight.

There's juice and water or coffee and tea. Dr. Senay says the one thing to take away from this is moderation. Whatever you put in your mouth, don't overdo it. A diet product won't really help you lose weight if you're still getting too many calories from other foods.