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Comparison

Does switching to diet cola save your teeth or your bones?

Daily cola tracked with lower hip bone density in women, diet included. Teeth are where the switch shows: soaked seven days, Coca-Cola took more enamel than Coca-Cola Light, both less than juice.

Phosphoric Acid

Coke Zero reads as the harmless one. Bone density did not follow: women drinking cola daily had lower hip readings than women drinking almost none, and the pattern held for diet cola, which points at phosphoric acid rather than sugar. Teeth are where the switch shows: over seven days of soaking, Coca-Cola took 7.5mg off enamel and Coca-Cola Light 5.2mg, below the eight other drinks tested, juices among them. Those were teeth in a dish, and the bone figure is diet recall taken once.

The findings behind this

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Physical & bodyWomen who drank cola daily had lower hip bone density; men did not

Against women drinking less than one cola a month, one hip site ran 5.4% lower. The pattern held for diet cola too, and non-cola sodas showed nothing.

★☆☆Contested — the evidence disagrees with itself, or the finding carries a caution. A caution or conflict always shows one star, however strong the sources are.CautionThis is diet recall at a single point in time, so daily cola drinkers may differ from occasional ones in ways nobody recorded, including what they were drinking instead. The difference showed at the hip and not the spine. Daily cola drinkers were not taking in more phosphorus overall, which makes phosphoric acid the authors' inference rather than something they measured.Click to keep this openAge wellPhosphoric Acid
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Physical & bodyCola dissolves enamel, and fruit juice did more of it in the same test

Over seven days of soaking, Coca-Cola took 7.5mg off enamel specimens and Coca-Cola Light 5.2mg, below the other eight drinks tested, fruit juices among them.

★★☆Single study — solid evidence, such as one good trial or a large observational dataset, but not replicated at the top tier.Both tests soaked teeth in the drink for a day or a week at a stretch, with no saliva rinsing between sips. In one of them the damage did not track a drink's measured acidity at all, so phosphoric acid's own share never separates from the rest of cola. The seven-day test used bovine enamel, a stand-in for human enamel rather than the thing itself. Twelve of the nineteen studies in the review are lab work too.Click to keep this openAge wellPhosphoric Acid

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