Park Avenue Diet

CNN AMERICAN MORNING

Aired June 30, 2005 - 08:30 ET

S. O'BRIEN: Also ahead this morning, are diet soft drinks actually causing people to gain weight? We have details on a new study when we continue right here on AMERICAN MORNING.

S. O'BRIEN: Dr. Sanjay Gupta has got the day off today. In this morning's medical segment, a surprising new study on diet soft drinks. Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio studied 622 people of normal, their term, weight; 57 percent who drank two or more sodas each day were overweight, seven or eight years later. Nutrition expert Dr. Stuart Fischer joins us with his take on the study. Nice to see you. Good morning.

DR. STUART FISCHER, NUTRITION EXPERT: Good morning.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's look a little more closely at this study. Fifty-seven percent who drank two plus a day overweight after seven to eight years.

FISCHER: Yes. In other words they're achieving the exact opposite purpose that you would think. A diet soda is supposed to inherently, I would think, make you thinner instead of gaining weight.

S. O'BRIEN: Right, we would think, wow, it's good news. They all lost weight. They did not. Do you say diet sodas are making you fat?

FISCHER: Well, it's hard to say, because there's two explanations. One is that people are inherently hypocritical when they use an artificial sweetener, and that they will offset this with having something very rich or high caloric, in other words, to make up for it. The other thing is that our brains are doing it. Artificial sweeteners might actually be changing our physiologic response to this artificial product which is not natural sugar, which is a manmade invention and telling our brains you just incurred a 200 or 300- calorie deficit, now make up for it; overeat.

S. O'BRIEN: Isn't there also an option that people who are drinking two diet sodas a day are already people who are struggling with their weight a little, so no surprise that seven or eight years later, they've lost the battle?

FISCHER: True, but we're talking about let's say 100 or 200 calories per day, and someone who is making an error of thousands of calories per day. In other words, it's not the entire picture. There's -- what they're eating is 10 or more times as bad as the sugar, the natural sugar, that I think they should be having in the first place, and secondly, that they're somehow avoiding. This is a -- we're not saying this is a health advocacy for regular soda. Not at all. But could you imagine a blood pressure medicine that increases someone's blood pressure or an osteoporosis medicine that causes osteoporosis? My fascination is this has never been studied before.

S. O'BRIEN: Why aren't people up in arms you mean?

FISCHER: Why aren't they up in arms? There's a reason, I think. I think the last 40 years are the dark ages of dieting. We've just gone along very blissfully ignorant of what it takes to lose weight, and we are fighting a losing battle.

S. O'BRIEN: What do you think is the role of the artificial sweeteners? If we put up a little graphic here, we can show folks how much sweeter an artificial is than regular sugar. Splenda, 600 times sweeter, Saccharin, 300. Aspartame, 180. I mean, obviously much, much sweeter.

FISCHER: Much sweeter.

S. O'BRIEN: Do you think that there is sort of a trigger when you have these artificial sweeteners that increases your appetite?

FISCHER: It certainly seems that way. There have been animal studies, which we wouldn't shouldn't extrapolate from. It's not fair to say humans are laboratory animals, but the animal studies do bear this out. Laboratory animals fed artificial sweeteners will overeat to a great extent. This is not to be put into this human study. But I think the question is why are we looking at this now, that 60 percent of the United States is obese or overweight? We have a tremendous problem and we accept the fact that artificial sweeteners are part of the mainstream. But are they a health product? Are they helping people to stay a normal weight or be thin? This is a critical issue now. I will address this in the book I'm writing called "The Park Avenue Diet," which is a much more comprehensive way of looking at weight. But right now on this study, I think people should sit up and listen and think why are we not looking at this and why is there not more objective evidence of what succeeds and doesn't?

S. O'BRIEN: And maybe off the diet soda for a while.

FISCHER: Lay off the diet soda and stay with Mother Nature, also.

S. O'BRIEN: A lot of water. Dr. Stuart Fischer, nice to see you. Thank you very much.

FISCHER: Thanks so much.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles?

M. O'BRIEN: Stay with Mother Nature. Good advice...