Get off the diet soft drinks!

I know this is a personal finance blog. However, there's no point getting rich and then dying and leaving all the money you have worked hard to accumulate to someone else! So, from time to time I will approach health and lifestyle issues.

I was told the other day to be careful with diet soft drinks, because they can lead to neurological disease. There is a history of it in my family, my grandfather had Parkinson's disease. Today, whilst procrastinating on an assignment on "Technical Analysis", I decided to do some research.

The artificial sweetener in question is called "Aspartame". Next time you have a diet soft drink, look at the ingredients. Aspartame is listed as Sweetener - 951. Basically its in Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Pepsi Max, etc.

There's heaps of info out there on the net, and its got me thinking. Apparently the world's most famous Parkinson's Disease sufferer, Michael J Fox, lived on Diet Coke (he was even the spokesman for Diet Coke for a while), my grandfather used to have those "splenda" artificial sweeteners in his coffee and a friend who has recently been diagnosed with MS, has lived on Diet Coke in the time that I've known her.

Could be coincidental, but very scary. Whilst I don't live on soft drink, i have never really liked normal coke, preferring the taste of the diet options, and often in the afternoon when i need a caffeine hit and don't feel like a coffee end up with one of these diet drinks. Not any more though. Considering it does run in the family, I'm going to be extra careful.

Whilst the sugar in normal soft drinks is definitely not good for you, at least a workout at the gym can burn that off, not so with these artificial sweeteners.

You're body, you're choices. Take it or leave it.