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In the latest Diet Soda: Evil or Not? saga, The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging determined that people who drink diet soda occasionally put on three times as much belly fat as those who don’t. Over nearly 10 years, occasional drinkers gained 2.11cm of fat to their midsections, while non-drinkers gained only .77 cm. The bad news doesn’t end there: daily drinkers gained a whopping 3.04 cm.

The study’s sample group was 750 Americans ages 65 or older. The study ruled out factors including age, smoking, and exercise. Belly fat is not only unsightly, it is linked to increased risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The study appeared in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

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Over nearly 10 years, occasional drinkers gained 2.11cm of fat to their midsections, while non-drinkers gained only .77 cm.

Over the years, diet sodas and sugar substitutes have been accused of many things: tricking the body into thinking its ingesting sugar, causing a release of insulin (fat storage hormone); changing digestion by affecting gut bacteria in the large intestine; and causing a glucose-resistance, making us pre-diabetic.