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NHANES: Obese adults consume more calories from food vs. diet drinks
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Recent data suggest overweight and obese adults who drink diet beverages consume more calories from food compared with obese or overweight adults who drink regular soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages.
“Although overweight and obese adults who drink diet soda eat a comparable amount of total calories as heavier adults who drink sugary beverages, they consume significantly more calories from solid food at both meals and snacks,” Sara Bleich, PhD, associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management, said in a press release.
Bleich and colleagues analyzed 24-hour dietary recall of adults aged 20 years or older (n=23,965) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES; 1999–2010).
They established that 11% of healthy-weight, 19% of overweight, and 22% of obese adults drink diet beverages.
On a typical day, the total caloric intake was higher among adults who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) vs. diet beverages (2,351 kcal/day vs. 2,203 kcal/day; P=.005), with significant differences observed in healthy-weight adults who consumed SSBs vs. diet beverages (2,302 kcal/day vs. 2,095 kcal/day; P<.001), researchers wrote.
In looking at calories from solid food intake, calories tended to be higher among overweight diet beverage drinkers (1,965 kcal/day vs. 1,874 kcal/day; P=.03) and obese diet beverage drinkers (2,058 kcal/day vs. 1,897 kcal/day; P<.001) vs. SSB drinkers, according to data.
The net increase in solid food consumption among diet beverage drinkers was significantly lower for healthy weight adults (–73 kcal/day) and significantly higher for overweight (88 kcal/day) and obese adults (194 kcal/day; P<.05), according to researchers.
“The results of our study suggest that overweight and obese adults looking to lose or maintain their weight — who have already made the switch from sugary to diet beverages — may need to look carefully at other components of their solid-food diet, particularly sweet snacks, to potentially identify areas for modification,” Bleich said.
Disclosure: This study was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
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