Laura J. Martin, MD Type “diet soda” and “weight” into your
favorite search engine and you may be surprised by what you
find. “Drink More Diet Soda, Gain More Weight?” asks one
headline. “Diet Soda: Doorway to Weight Gain” shouts another. In
a recent search of a popular Web browser, 49 of the first 50
hits were for stories warning diet soda drinkers that the
beverages might make them pack on the pounds. The sole exception
was the Wikipedia entry for "diet soda," which also cited the
weight gain concerns. If you believe what you read on the
Internet, it’s clear that drinking diet sodas causes weight
gain, right? Maybe, but probably not, obesity researcher Barry
Popkin, PhD, tells WebMD. What is clear is that the science is
far from conclusive. Turns out all the news stories and blog
postings cite the same few studies: research in rats conducted
by two investigators at Purdue University and two studies that
followed soda drinkers over time. Popkin, who heads the division
of nutrition epidemiology at the Univers