Researchers want to know if the consumption of diet soda raises the risk of depression.
A recent 10-year U.S. study of more than 250,000 adults “found that depression was more common among frequent consumers of artificially sweetened beverages,” the BCC reported Wednesday.
At least 1 in 10 American adults suffered from depression in 2006 and 2008, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
While no specific cause for the link between the consumption of diet sodas and depression was found, researchers noticed that when diet sodas were replaced with unsweetened coffee, risk of depression decreased.
The findings will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting this upcoming March.
Coffee drinkers — people who drank four cups of coffee a day — were 10 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression. Inversely, people who drank four cans of diet soda or glasses of artificially sweetened juice a day “increased their risk of depression by about a third.”
“There are many other factors that may be involved,” the BBC wrote, stating that findings might apply differently outside of the populations tested — which focused on “people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and living in the US” — and that the safety of artificial sweeteners has been tested “extensively” by regulators and scientists.