Written by Melanie Kozlan, Four Green Steps

We already know that diet soda is unhealthy, but is it also addictive? I suppose you could become emotionally addicted to almost anything if it becomes part of your routine and you condition yourself to become depend on it, but health experts have recently noted that diet soda may be physically addictive as well:

From Health.com:

Women who drank water that was alternately sweetened with sugar and Splenda couldn't tell the difference—but their brains could. Functional MRI (fMRI) brain scans revealed that even though both drinks lit up the brain's reward system, the sugar did so more completely.

In other words, artificial sweeteners may spur drinkers—or their brains—to keep chasing a "high" that diet soda keeps forever just out of reach. It's not clear that this teasing effect can lead to dependence, but it's a possibility, Dr. Paulus says. "Artificial sweeteners have positive reinforcing effects—meaning humans will work for it, like for other foods, alcohol, and even drugs of abuse," he says. "Whenever you have that, there is a potential that a subgroup of people...will have a chance of getting addicted."

Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

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