Diet drinks, and new zero sugar drinks, are a staple in the beverage industry. Almost every soda brand offers a zero-calorie, zero-sugar, diet option. Although diet drinks have been popular for many years, they really aren’t beneficial to a person’s health. Soft-drink companies advertise their diet alternatives as a “healthier” version, but that’s not necessarily true.

Diet soda can offer a short-term benefit to cutting calories, but the body soon catches up with all the artificial sweeteners diet drinks include. The artificial sweetener used in diet drinks is called aspartame- a drug that can be 200 times sweeter than sucrose. Although aspartame is not real sugar, the brain still reacts to the chemical like it is and causes the same level of addiction. Ingesting diet drinks, or regular drinks, can cause your brain to crave high-calorie foods ultimately leading to weight gain.

“Another study found that people with overweight or obesity who switched to diet soda were likely to consume more calories in food than people with overweight or obesity who drank regular soda.” Cleveland Clinic said.

Just like sugar, fake sweeteners are addictive. Getting hooked on diet drinks is just as easy as getting hooked on the regular kind. The biggest effect of a drinking diet is an increased desire to eat foods with a higher sugar content. Regular drinks, though, are not much better for your health.

A common misconception of diet drinks is their link to cancer. A normal adult would have to ingest nine to fourteen drinks- like Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi- a day for it to cause any damaging effects. However, not enough research has been done on aspartame to understand how addictive it is or the effects it has on health.

There are many alternatives for drinking soda. Drinking coffee or tea can cover the caffeine levels soda offers, drinking sparkling water or flavored seltzers can cover desirable carbonation, adding lemons or natural flavors to your drink can provide sweetness and trying a new fun drink like kombucha can break the soda habit altogether. It is also important to make different lifestyle choices to avoid sugary sodas. Being thirsty is a giant cause of craving sweet drinks, so drinking water instead can get rid of a sugar craving.