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Diet Soda May Raise Risk of Premature Birth
Diet soda has a long history in the United States. In 1952, Kirsch Bottling in Brooklyn, New York debuted a sugar-free ginger ale called No-Cal, targeting it to diabetics.
It wasn’t until 1963 that Coca-Cola entered the diet soda market with Tab.
To keep calories down, diet sodas are sweetened with various sugar substitutes, cyclamates, saccharin, and aspartame. But fears of cancer have spooked many customers away from artificially sweetened drinks.
In 1970, the Food and Drug Administration banned cyclamates in the U.S. on evidence that they caused cancer in lab rats.
And premature birth may be another concern. Writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers say women drinking at least one serving of artificially sweetened soda each day during pregnancy were 38% more likely to deliver preterm, compared to women who did not drink diet soda.
Women drinking at least four diet sodas a day had an 80% higher risk of delivering prematurely. The researchers point out that artificial sweeteners, not the soda itself, may be what’s contributing to the risk of premature birth.
Previous studies have found that drinking diet soda might actually increase weight-gain in people and raise blood sugar levels. Artificial sweeteners may interfere with insulin response.
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