Are Diet Sodas Bad for Your Health?

Purdue University released a report that suggests diet soda can not only cause weight gain, but can increase risk of heart disease and stroke.

For the review, researchers looked at a dozen studies published in the past five years that examine the relationship between consuming diet soda and health outcomes.

"There's been a drumbeat for some time about diet drinks and what they're specifically doing," says Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent. "What they're saying here is that if they look at all these various studies over the last five years, they find the people who drink diet drinks often are also increasing their risk of several things, diabetes, heart disease, stroke."

The question has been, why? If the drinks are non-caloric, why would these effects be occuring?

According to Dr. Gupta, what they are starting to say is, when you drink a diet drink, it tricks your body. It may raise insulin which could make your body crave sugar. So people drink diet drinks all day long, crave sugar and then binge.