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Even diet colas have been linked to brain cell damage and higher risks of diabetes.

America has a drinking problem. No, not booze. I’m talking about soft drinks. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the average American guzzles 44.7 gallons of the sweet stuff every year. Not sure what 44.7 gallons looks like? It’s about what you’d need to fill a small kiddie pool.

But the truth is, you don’t need me to tell you that soda isn’t healthy. We all know that America’s drink of choice contributes to our country’s ever-expanding obesity problem. But, as Rodale.com writer Leah Zerbe discovered, love handles are just the beginning. Read on for her report on three shocking soda facts that will have you saying “Just water, please” from now on.

Read more: 3 Surprising Reasons to Give Up Soda

There are two schools of thought when it comes to the health benefits or hazards of diet drinks.

Once and for all, we wanted to know: Can diet soda make you fat? So we went to the SHAPE diet doctor, Mike Roussell, PhD, to get his opinion. Here’s what he had to say:

In a word: no. While drinking diet soda every day isn’t exactly good for your health, the chances of it sabotaging your weight-loss efforts are slim. The common misconception regarding the role of diet soda and weight gain comes from a couple of studies that received a lot of media attention. One such study looked at more 6,500 participants and found that diet soda drinkers were 67 percent more like to have diabetes and 37 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome (a combo of symptoms that is basically where pre-diabetes meets heart disease). What’s more, data from the Framingham Heart Study, the longest running heart disease study in the US, found a 56-percent increase in metabolic syndrome when people drank one or more diet sodas per day!

Read more: Is Diet Soda Making You Fat?

Nutrition researchers have found that these popular snack foods are the top waistline assassins.

For people trying to lose weight, here’s the good news: Nutrition researchers have scoped out the enemy. Turns out potato chips and soda are the top waistline assassins.

Everyone knows to cut back on junk food, but in a recent large study examining what foods were most associated with weight gain, potato chips and sweetened drinks stood out as the ultimate arch villains. Indeed, not all snacks are created equal. Here’s why:

Scientists have started to suspect that when it comes to junk food, some snacks are worse than others. In a recent Harvard study, researchers tracked 100,000 Americans who were not overweight to begin with every 4 years to see who gained the most weight and what foods they ate. They found that an expanding waistline was most strongly linked to potato chips and sugar-sweetened drinks.

Read more: Two Worst Foods for Your Weight

People who drink diet soda for years can have much larger waists than those who don’t.

Think you’re making a healthier choice when you reach for diet soda instead of a sugary soft drink? Think again.

Diet soft drinks may have minimal calories, but they can still have a major impact on your waistline, according to two studies presented at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego.

Researchers at the Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio tracked 474 people, all 65 to 74 years old, for nearly a decade, measuring the subjects’ height, weight, waist circumference, and diet soft drink intake every 3.6 years. The waists of those who drank diet soft drinks grew 70 percent more than those who avoided the artificially sweetened stuff; people who drank two or more servings a day had waist-circumference increases that were five times larger than non-diet-soda consumers.

Read more: Diet soda may be making you fat

Carbonated pick-me-ups can seem like a harmless indulgence, but your health pays a price.

Sugar rushes and caffeine highs followed by a depressing energy crash are what happens to your body if you drink a soda right now, but plenty of Blisstree readers actually seem to be okay with that. Some of you think it’s alarmist to compare a caffeine and sugar rush to doing drugs, and some just don’t really care about the slump they’ll find themselves in after drinking 39 grams of sugar, but what makes us really worried about a soda-slurping habit is what happens over the long term.

Here’s a quick snapshot of you, in a few years, after drinking soda on a regular basis:

You’ll Be Fatter: According to research in the Nurse’s Health Study, which monitored the health of 90,000 women for eight years, drinking a single soda every day of the week added 10 pounds over a four-year period.

Read more: What happens to your body after you drink a soda every day, for a long time

Drinking two or more soft drinks a week may nearly double a person’s risk of developing pancreatic cancer, researchers are warning.

Cancer of the pancreas, the disease that killed actor Patrick Swayze last year, is one of the most rapidly fatal tumours in adults; only 6% of people are alive five years after a diagnosis. The pancreas makes insulin, and scientists believe high concentrations of insulin can drive the growth of pancreatic cancer cells.

Read more: Weekly pop may double pancreatic cancer risk