*Two glasses of calorie-free drinks a day ‘doubles risk’

Diet drinks can be just as bad for you, according to a study by scientists at the

Many of us have ditched our favourite sugary drinks for their diet alternative in a bid to boost our health and keep off the kilos/pounds.

But it seems that diet drinks can be just as bad for you, according to a study.

Scientists found drinking just two glasses of diet drinks a day more than doubles the risk of developing diabetes.

They believe that calorie-free drinks make us feel hungrier, prompting us to crave sugar-laden snacks.

And they also suspect that artificial sweeteners interfere with the bacteria in our gut – which may trigger diabetes.

The team from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden studied 2,874 adults who had completed a year-long diary about their intake of drinks. Those who had two or more sweetened drinks a day were 2.4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. This included sugary beverages and artificially sweetened ones, such as Diet Coke or sugar free cordials. Having five or more sugar-free drinks a day increased the risk by 4.5 times.

In fact, the researchers found that artificially–sweetened drinks were almost as bad as those laden with sugar.

They established that every 200ml glass of a sugary fizzy drink consumed each day increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by 21 per cent.

Meanwhile every diet drink increased the risk by 18 per cent, according to the findings published in the European Journal of Endocrinology.

*Adapted from DailyMailUK Online