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Comment by jskdvsksnb | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, a lot of people I know who have trouble losing weight drink diet soda. I don't know what mechanism would cause that, but metabolism and satiety are complicated enough that I could believe there's a correlation. I'm lucky that artificial sweeteners taste disgusting to me anyways.

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This is likely misleading for two reasons: about half of Americans say they are trying to lose weight[1], and roughly 90% of people who lose a lot of weight eventually regain just about all of it[2].

So even if there is a mechanism that makes diet sodas counterproductive for weight loss, it's clearly part of a much broader problem. There are also possibly confounding factors, e.g. people most serious about their health and weight loss may have already determined that diet sodas are not good for them.

[1] https://time.com/5334532/weight-loss-americans/ [2] https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/health-management/weighing...

I don't know the details, but evidence seems to suggest that artificial sweeteners can still contribute to obesity in other ways.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29159583/

If you drink enough soda that drinking diet soda seriously impacts your calorie count, you probably aren't making the healthiest food choices.

I don't think it's about calories, there's some speculation that artificial sweeteners still spike your insulin, messing with people's ability to lose weight.

Jury's still out AFAIK though.

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