Knowledge, Attitude and Practise about Beneficial and Harmful effects of Diet Soda

Background and Aim: Soda or light drinks are sugar free and don't contain calories. Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame drastically affect our health by causing various diseases like stroke etc. The main aim of this study is to determine the level of knowledge possessed about diet soda and their attitude towards it.

Materials and Methods: A Cross sectional survey was conducted among dental populations with a sample size of 102. A self administered, structured questionnaire was prepared based on knowledge, attitude and practice about diet soda and consisted of 10 questions. It was circulated to the participants through Google forms. The statistics were done using SPSS software, a chi-square test was used to check the association and the ‘p’ value of 0.05 was said to be statistically significant.

Results: From this survey it was inferred that 81.37% people find diet soda unhealthy whereas 18.63% felt it isn't healthy. 56.86% felt it contained calories but 43.14% felt it didn't. Around 61.76% think that artificial sweeteners will lead to more headaches whereas 38.24% felt it won't cause headaches.

Conclusion: This study revealed that many people have little knowledge and are unaware of the consequences of diet soda. Therefore this study may help to gain wide knowledge about diet soda and also help them to change their attitude towards it.