Overweight adults who use diet drinks to help them lose weight should take another look at the food they eat, according to researchers who reported Thursday those people ate more food calories than overweight people who drank sugar-sweetened beverages.

The scientists writing in the American Journal of Public Health did not say the dieters should give up on no- and low-calorie drinks; rather, they said the dieters should look at what else they’re consuming, especially sweet snacks, to find other ways to modify their diets.

“Although overweight and obese adults who drink diet soda eat a comparable amount of total calories as heavier adults who drink sugary beverages, they consume significantly more calories from solid food at both meals and snacks,” Sara Bleich, lead author of the study, said. Bleich is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.

She and her colleagues used data about people age 20 and older from the 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The issue is important because the consumption of diet beverages has increased from 3 percent of adults in 1965 to 20 percent today, and the beverage industry has said it is responding to the obesity epidemic in part by producing more low- and no-calorie choices for consumers.