Right now, as usual, I’m 35,000 feet in the air flying over a red state (funny – they all look the same from up here) but not as usual, I’m thinking about diet soda and pancreatic cancer instead of listening to my iPod. Why?

Well, not because of the supposed link between artificial sweeteners and cancer in laboratory rats. Actually as far as I’m concerned, the more rats that get cancer the better. It’s because the guy sitting next to me, the one with the big belly lopping over his seat belt (who I hope doesn’t glance over to my laptop screen lest a fight breaks out on US Airways Flight # 965) just ordered a diet soda. Here’s the scoop.

Years ago I remember a study coming out that linked coffee consumption to pancreatic cancer. This particularly alarmed me because I was in dental school at the time, had just learned that pancreatic was one of the fastest and deadliest forms of cancer, and was living on a diet of coffee and tuna sandwiches. Fortunately it turned out that the study was flawed – turned out people with early signs of this disease liked to drink hot liquids because it soothed their stomachs.

Kinda gets you thinking, doesn’t it? How many studies report accurate findings yet are flawed in their logic? For example, one may think that it is dangerous to drive a Corvette. After all, the insurance on one is expensive as hell because they get in so many accidents. But thinking more logically, it is probably just true that people that own a car like that may have a tendency to drive more recklessly. I remember when I was a kid people would always say that sitting too close to the television would ruin your vision, but I always thought it was the other way around – people with poor vision would tend to sit closer to those tiny sets just so they could see! Which brings us to diet soda.

I have made the totally unscientific yet logical observation that people who are on the heavy side tend to drink diet sodas. This practice is so commonplace that typically they just say “I’ll have a diet” and everyone knows what they mean. Of course, a normal person would reason that of course this observation is true because one who is trying to lose weight would make diet sodas part of their weight loss program. But a right brainer like me may step back and say hey – fat people drink diet soda; could it be that artificial sweeteners actually promote obesity?

Turns out there may be some truth to this, and here’s why. Many many years ago when humans were first around (which could be thousands of years ago or millions, depending on how you were brainwashed) artificial sweeteners did not exist. The only sweet food that was around was sugar, be it milk sugar (lactose), fruit sugar (fructose) or some form of what is now common refined table sugar (sucrose). When our bodies sensed that something sweet was coming in, it was always sugar, so we reacted by having our pancreas produce insulin, which counterbalanced this.

Fast forward many years to today. We ingest some form of artificial sweetener, be it the blue stuff, the pink stuff, the yellow stuff, or a “diet,” and our body gets the same basally generated message – “Something sweet is coming in – must be sugar!” So what does it do? It produces insulin just as it is programmed to. But in this case, there is no sugar to balance it out, so the free insulin continues to float around your body. And what does that do? It sends a message to our caveman brains that screams “I’m hungry – gimme a Big Mac!” Do this every day or even many days and what happens? All that “diet” is making you fat! Pretty weird, isn’t it?

Now I don’t claim to be an expert on healthy eating, but at 6’ 1” and 180 pounds I’m in pretty decent shape, especially compared to some of the balls of blubber my age that I see walking around. Going to the gym three times a week and walking a lot certainly helps things, but I think that much of this is due to my “drinking diet.” Here are the simple rules. Don’t drink anything with artificial sweeteners, and only drink things that contain sugar (including fruit juice) on rare occasions. Pretty much the only things I drink are water, black coffee, unsweetened tea, and of course alcoholic beverages, especially red wine. (Hey gotta have some fun!!) It seems pretty simple, but many people seem to have trouble keeping these unhealthy drinks out of their regimen. (I also don’t eat dessert and have really cut back on the greatest food of all time – French fries.) I have actually seen some studies that show if a person just removes sodas from their diet they can drop up to a pound a week. Now that’s a pretty big payoff for something that takes so little effort.

So the next time you find yourself saying “I’ll have a diet,” remember – that’s no diet!! Okay – time to slap on the iPod. After all, there’s a new album out by The Honeydogs!!

I’ll see you soon-

Rich