I recently facilitated a discussion where a participant pointed out that he doesn’t like plain water. He drinks artificially sweetened flavored water instead. A health care provider in the room commented about a study where drinking artificially sweetened beverages led to weight gain.
What is a person with diabetes to do? Drink sweetened beverages and have high blood glucose levels? Drink non-nutritive sweetened beverages and gain weight? Drink water and hate it?
The thing is, there are studies on both sides: some research says that artificially sweetened beverages lead to weight gain, while other studies show non-nutritive sweetened beverages do not.
I drink an occasional “diet soda” and I drink a lot of water. I am fortunate that I really like water. If you can tolerate water, drink a lot of it! If you cannot tolerate water and you have diabetes, you will need to find other beverages that don’t wreak havoc on your blood glucose. If you find that when you drink artificially sweetened beverages you have a tendency to snack on (or crave) high calorie foods, you might consider cutting back on those drinks. If that isn’t happening to you, it’s probably not an issue.
Ultimately your use of non-nutritive sweeteners is your call. Many people don’t want to consume them because no one is 100% certain what we’ll find out about them years down the road. As with everything else, moderation is probably a good idea.