Ask any person who buys a diet soda what their reason is for doing so and they will most naturally tell you to reduce weight or stay thin. Well that is the reason diet sodas were invented after all, zero calories and of course zero guilt has led millions to use them as an alternative to their calorie laced rivals.

But a new study is finding out that just because a soda has zero calories doesn’t mean it is helping with weight loss. In fact according to Sharon Fowler who is an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, it might be doing just the opposite (increasing weight).

But what is the reason for this? So far there are only theories but many of them are plausible. The first one states that even though the diet sodas do contain zero calories, this in turn leads the individual to eat more because they unconsciously think that since they are consuming a drink with zero calories, they can eat more liberally of calorie rich foods.

The other theory states that even though the drink may say “zero calories” on its nutritional label, that does not take into consideration the high amounts of sugar contained in the drink which are converted into calories by the body.

One of the things people forget is that just because a food has “zero calories” doesn’t mean that it will stay like that through the digestion process. There is a great possibility that if high amounts of sugar are present these will be converted into calories through the digestion process.

Of course this is just a theory and cannot be proven unless proper studies are conducted. But it does shed some light as to why that regular soda might be a blessing in disguise. In the end its moderation that counts. Your body doesn’t view everything the same way you do and what you might think is fine for it, might be the causative problem of that weight problem.