Diet sodas pack on pounds more than regular soft drinks

• People who drink diet soft drinks don't lose weight.
• In fact, they gain weight, a new study shows.
• The findings come from eight years of data collected by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.
• Fowler reported the data at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego.
• "What didn't surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity," Fowler tells WebMD.
• "What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher."
• In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.
• "There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day," Fowler says.
• Fowler's team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64.
• Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.
• For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person's risk of obesity went up 41%.