Malik also notes that compared to drinking regular sodas and other sugary drinks, diet options seem to be better. “When we looked at this at Harvard, we found that diet soda was associated with less weight gain compared to regular soda,” she says. She also references two randomized, controlled trials that showed less weight gain drinking diet vs regular. “Really, the evidence is pointing to benefit of diet consumption and weight maintenance at least in the short term.” There is some evidence that diet soda drinkers have a similar type 2 diabetes risk to regular soda drinkers, Meni says. “It could just be the idea of reverse causality, and that those people are already at risk,” she adds. But it’s likely a combo of that and some other mechanism.