Expert reveals what a can of Diet Coke does to your body in just one hour after drinking it

An expert has revealed some of the potential health effects of drinking a can of diet soda.

While it's no secret that sodas contain a huge amount of sugar and that sugar is bad for you, there's perhaps less attention paid to the additives that go into the diet alternatives.

These don't contain any sugar, but they do still need to have something in them which gives them a sweet taste.

In the case of many sodas, including ones like Diet Coke, this is aspartame.

For those who aren't familiar with the names of food additives, aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is 200 times sweeter than sucrose.

Diet sodas don't have sugar, but they do have sweetener (Peter Dazeley / Getty)

Ella Allred is a technical nutritionist at NutriCentre, which sells health foods and supplements, and shared some of the potential risks of aspartame.

The main one is the body thinking that it has consumed sugar and behaving accordingly.

Allred told the Daily Mail that this could lead to an increased risk of health problems such as diabetes. This is because it would make the body produce insulin when it doesn't actually need to, with Allred claiming this starts immediately.

Allred said: "As soon as you taste the sweetness of Diet Coke, your body prepares for the sugar load and causes you[r] pancreas [to] release insulin.

"The insulin surge decreases the pancreases sensitivity to insulin, putting you at risk of developing diabetes type 2. The insulin triggers your body to store fat around your middle, and increases your risk of developing heart disease."

After around 20 minutes, Allred says that your body has released the insulin.

She said: "Now you have a lot of insulin in your blood stream, pulling all of your blood available blood sugar into your cells leaving you with a massive sugar low. You then need sugar in your blood to maintain equilibrium.

"The sweet cravings kick in and may find you are reaching for another Diet Coke, which starts the cycle again."

It's pretty common knowledge that soda is bad for you (Virojt Changyencham / Getty)

When you get to 40 minutes, she claimed that it can even risk 'addiction' due to it triggering the brain's 'reward centres'. And after the full hour, Allred said it can leave you craving more due to thinking you have had sugar when you haven't.

Aspartame is used in a wide variety of products even including toothpaste, and has been the subject of a lot of studies about its potential health risks.

A study by the World Health Organisation found that while there are some health risks from the sweetener, the amount of soda you would need to drink to exceed the recommended daily intake is a lot more than most people would reasonably consume.

The recommended daily intake is 0-40mg of aspartame per kg of bodyweight.

The WHO said: "An adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources."

So as with most things, moderation is key.

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