“Can I order a double cheeseburger, large fries and a large Diet Coke? » I hear this request at fast food restaurants almost every time I wait in line. The irony of washing down a high-calorie meal with NutraSweet-flavored sparkling liquid makes me wonder why they don't just order regular soda. Although diet soda consumption can reduce a few hundred calories from the diet, current research suggests that diet soda does not effectively help individuals reduce calories or lose weight because the chemical properties of artificial sweeteners can actually promote weight gain and other health complications. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay. Mainly, artificial sweeteners are not a truly effective substitute for sugar. The body desires real sugar in the form of sucrose or fructose because sugar provides the body with a source of energy. From an evolutionary perspective, it is adaptive and advantageous to like the taste of foods containing sugar, because sugar is converted to energy and energy supports the life of the organism. This is why, simply put, people love sweet foods. In fact, they love it so much that the soda industry pours over 35 grams of sugar per can into their soft drinks and can sell over a billion cans a day according to Coca Cola's own website. To provide a guilt-free alternative to soft drinks, these companies have used artificial sweeteners as substitutes for the sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup traditionally added to soda. Artificial sweeteners like NutraSweet, Equal, Sweet and Low, and Splenda are mixtures of chemicals like sucralose, saccharin, and aspartame that taste sweet on the tongue, but are not digested in the body and add so no calories. Although it seems like a "sweet" idea to save hundreds of empty calories by switching to diet soda, current research suggests that simple substitution isn't so simple after all. According to Sarah Hill, study author and psychologist at Texas Christian University who has done extensive research on artificial sweeteners and their effects, artificial sweeteners in diet soda do not, in the long term, help reduce obesity. calories. She tells Time Magazine the following chain of events regarding diet soda consumption: On the surface, you get a nice sweet taste without the calories, but my research shows that this could lead to cognitive changes that could promote more overconsumption. late. When you get this unnatural combination of softness and no increase in energy, it causes the body to perceive an energy crisis. It triggers thoughts and behaviors consistent with a mode of scarcity. (Hill 1)The scenario above describes a sort of red herring for the body. The body senses the presence of something beneficial (in the case of a red herring, a detective dog smells the pungent odor of a herring on the trail), becomes excited and later discovers that there is had no power source (or evidence indicating the presence of a suspect). In response, the body and the detective dog begin to panic. What Hill means by “scarcity mode” is that the body does everything it can to survive. Stress hormones increase dramatically, the digestive system slows down, and the immune system is temporarily suppressed. It is for this reason that many people have?