It’s About Making Babies!

Gil, your interpretation of ‘41% of diet drinkers are obese’ - that the obese are more likely to choose diet drinks because they are obese - seems just as superficial as the oft repeated research results: that drinking diet drinks leads to increased obesity.

I think the issue is lifestyle choice. Choosing diet drinks is a symptom - that diet is determined by marketing (companies selling flavors or peer pressure) rather than by nutrition choices (first).

How long has it been, since you heard someone compare which well had the best water? And how obese was the speaker? Simple tastes - just as rich as anything from Coca-Cola’s labs - may lead to better choices. Salty snacks, diet drinks, glamorized meal presentations - anyone that doesn’t deliberately choose to actively disregard all the messages to ‘eat this, drink that’ is likely to buy into - obesity.

Someone picking the meal by picking the restaurant, then letting the restaurant’s menu of what is available determine portion size ..

The phrase ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ comes to mind. Choosing the diet drink for all the (commercial) flavor is still eating according to marketing. And marketers are *lousy* at selecting appropriate portion sizes and meal combinations. We came to the conclusion as a nation that we think advertising liquor and tobacco lead to poor choices - why don’t we think advertising food will also lead to poor choices?

So, looking at a report that 41% of drinkers of diet drinks are obese, and deciding that obviously, this is just because those obese people choose diet drinks - that isn’t obvious to me at all.