Does Sparkling Water Cause Weight Gain? Here's What You Need To Know

Plain water is too, well, plain, for many people, causing them to opt instead for sparkling. Sparkling, seltzer, fizzy, bubbly, club, or soda water is water that has been put under pressure to create fizz. In other words, water is "married" with pressurized carbon dioxide to create those delightful little bubbles that dance all over your tongue.

This kind of carbonated water is sold across the globe as plain, ready-to-drink sparkling water (think San Pellegrino), as part of pre-flavored soft drinks (everything from La Croix to Lemonade), and can also be made at home via special appliances, the most common being Soda Stream.

Who? What? Where? How? Why?

A study undertaken by researchers from Birzeit University in Palestine, published in the peer-reviewed Obesity Research and Clinical Practice Journal, put carbonation under the microscope for a period of six months.

The researchers wanted to know whether carbonation alone contributed to weight gain linked to obesity, so they fed a group of male rats the same standard diet PLUS one of four different drinks each: tap water, plain still water, plain carbonated water, and diet carbonated water.

The verdict?

The rats that drank diet or plain carbonated drinks ate more and gained significantly more weight compared to the rats that drank flat soda or plain water. The researchers discovered the rats' weight gain was associated with increased production of ghrelin, the hormone responsible for telling you when you’re hungry.

To be more sure of these results, the study also compared the effects of carbonated drinks in 20 young men, which resulted in finding that they, too, had higher ghrelin levels after drinking the carbonated drinks versus drinking flat soda or still water. With all this said, it’s important to acknowledge the undeniable fact that poor diet and choice of carbonated drink will always play a huge role in the whole weight-gain-leading-to-obesity issue.

You don't need to put yourself out hundreds of dollars to hydrate — and you don't need to fill the environment with all of the packaging that comes with canned and bottles water either!

Happy (noncarbonated) drinking!