Moderate Consumption of Soft Drinks May have No Side Effects

Recent research has been conducted by Marie Reid and colleagues to clarify whether or not there are long-term effects of adding a sucrose drink to the diets of overweight women with BMIs of 25-30, namely on mood and dietary intake.
The results have shown that overweight women did not suffer adverse effects, like mood changes and weight gain, when they did not know whether or not they were drinking a sugary drink or artificially sweetened drink. Instead the women ensured an intake of fewer calories elsewhere within their diet, to balance the calories in the drinks.
It is widely believed that sugary drinks are harmful and form part of an unhealthy diet, with individuals behaving badly as a result.
Prof Marie Reid, Professor of Applied Psychology at Queen Margaret University concluded: “Widespread publicity about the supposed harmful effects of sugar may make such effects more likely, as believing sugar to be harmful may encourage negative emotions after eating sugary food and lead to the abstinence violation effect. In other words, knowing that you’re drinking sugary drinks, while believing that they’re harmful, might result in the derailing of a generally healthy low fat diet “.