Is Sparkling Water Bad For You?

We asked the experts...

- Olivia Blair and Chloe Bowen

Fizzy water has long been heralded as a healthy drink choice. One to turn to once you’ve finally weaned yourself off that hardcore Diet Coke addiction. Or when you’re trying to keep hydrated but are getting bored AF with plain old tap water. It is water after all... It might be fizzy, but it’s still water, right?

SO, IS SPARKLING WATER HEALTHY?

Fizzy drinks are mainly considered unhealthy because of their sugar content. But researchers from Palestine’s Birzeit University wanted to find out whether it was actually due to the gasses in the drink rather than the sugar.

In the study, they gave rats tap water, flat water, ordinary soda, and diet sugar-free soda. The scientists, who published their study in the journal Obesity Research and Clinical Practice, found that when they gave rats fizzy drinks over water they gained weight at a faster rate. This weight gain was because the rat’s levels of the hormone that controls hunger, called ghrelin, was elevated.

The researchers then looked at 20 young men to see if the same findings as they found in the rats could apply. They found that the men also had higher levels of the ghrelin hormone. Even though the study didn’t test for the effect of fizzy water, it has been assumed that because the scientists found it was the gas in the drinks, as opposed to the sugar—the same could be applied to fizzy water.

The thing is, sparkling water contains zero calories so it is highly unlikely it can make you gain weight.

CAN YOU GAIN WEIGHT DRINKING SPARKLING WATER?

The UK-based National Health Service points out that this study was only tested in rats and then a very small sample of men—meaning we can’t really generalise