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Recently i have been drinking a bit of those diet drinks(diet coke, etc) and I am a bit worried that even with 0 sugar they will spike up the insulin level. While they certainly aren't healthy food but I do get the sweet rush sometimes @@ Just want to make sure that i am not screwing my diet over sweet tooth @@

Only water is 0 calories. 0 carbs on a product means <1 actually.

beow2k5 wrote:Recently i have been drinking a bit of those diet drinks(diet coke, etc) and I am a bit worried that even with 0 sugar they will spike up the insulin level. While they certainly aren't healthy food but I do get the sweet rush sometimes @@ Just want to make sure that i am not screwing my diet over sweet tooth @@

Perhaps this "rush" is the caffeine??

beow2k5 wrote:Recently i have been drinking a bit of those diet drinks(diet coke, etc) and I am a bit worried that even with 0 sugar they will spike up the insulin level. While they certainly aren't healthy food but I do get the sweet rush sometimes @@ Just want to make sure that i am not screwing my diet over sweet tooth @@

I drink several liters a day (but I avoid aspartame in favor of sucralose) and never experience any symptoms of low blood sugar that you'd associate with an insulin spike.

I don't check my BG with a meter though. It seems a little excessive in light of the fact that I've always had excellent fasting glucose readings. I'm only willing to go so far in the name of scientific dieting!

Different bodies have different insulin responses to artificial sweeteners. I've monitored my blood sugar before (I'm out of test strips right now, ought to buy more and make some charts), and I experienced a slight dip after ingesting artificial sweeteners. That dip, however, was just a few mg/dl... very much like the slight dip I experience when I start to eat a piece of meat. A healthy human body body secretes insulin in response to you eating ANYTHING. Insulin works rather slowly, so your body has to anticipate your blood-sugar maintenance needs before the blood sugar actually hits the blood.

Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and Dr. Larry MacLeary's "The Brain Trust" both cover this phenomenon in some detail. If I understand the research correctly, the insulin response to artificial sweeteners is most pronounced in people who routinely have such artificial sweeteners alongside a very carbohydrate-heavy meal: the classic "burger, fries, and a Diet Coke" phenomenon. Their body has been trained to expect a lot of carbohydrates to accompany ingestion of that flavor, so the insulin pours out in preparation for digestion of the massive amount of starches about to pour down the gullet.

That said, I believe your body can re-train itself. I feel no cravings for carbohydrate when I consume diet beverages anymore; there was a time when I would experience such cravings. Cravings are themselves the product of insulin-induced low blood sugar, and just thinking about high-carb foods is enough to cause a strong insulin release in many people.

--Matt B.