Study Finds Link Between Artificial Sweeteners and Glucose Intolerance 294
onproton (3434437) writes The journal Nature released a study today that reveals a link between the consumption of artificial sweeteners and the development of glucose intolerance [note: abstract online; paper itself is paywalled], a leading risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes, citing a critical alteration of intestinal bacteria. Paradoxically, these non-caloric sweeteners, which can be up to 20,000 times sweeter than natural sugars, are often recommended to diabetes patients to control blood glucose levels. Sugar substitutes have come under additional fire lately from studies showing that eating artificially sweetened foods can lead to greater overall calorie consumption and even weight gain. While some, especially food industry officials, remain highly skeptical of such studies, more research still needs to be done to determine the actual risks these substances may pose to health.
Does HFCS count? (Score:2)
Does HFCS count as a sugar substitute, or real sugar ?
A while back Mt Dew had a 'Throwback' drink that had 'real sugar'. Haven't seen it lately.
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is largely a myth. The difference isn't measurable in most practical cases.
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sugar: 50% fructose, 50% glucose
HFCS: 55% fructose, 45% glucose
zomg, clearly hfcs is the reason people are getting so much fatter.
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:4, Informative)
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That study has be taken apart many, many times.
Rats genetically engineered for something, show the thing they were genetically engineered to show. Must be the test.
Bad controls, be methodology, bad samples. Perhaps you should get a more scientific perspective?
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:5, Informative)
sugar: 50% fructose, 50% glucose HFCS: 55% fructose, 45% glucose
zomg, clearly hfcs is the reason people are getting so much fatter.
Most of the glucose one ingests goes directly to "blood sugar", where insulin (if you still have sufficient of the latter **) mops up any unused glucose, converts it to a storable molecule, and stores it in muscle or fatty tissues until needed. Fructose, on the other hand, mostly gets converted to fats in the liver, which are then stored until needed.
OK, "needed" does not only refer to exercise ONLY, but also to metabolic processes (e.g. breaking up more complex sugars/starches for digestion), thinking, etc. - it's a general cell fuel. So glucose is more readily available in the blood and thus gets used more and stored less. Fructose in the presence of glucose gets stored more than fructose alone.
Sorry, no citations, as I was hard pressed to find sufficient details (in layman's terms) on the internet to confirm this when I read it in an article. I had to track down a dietitian to confirm it - apparently it's common knowledge in that field.
** = Diabetics usually do not produce sufficient insulin, as you may know. The excess glucose in the blood damages proteins in a process called Glycosylation (layman's description, it's not that simple in reality) - including a lot of important tissues like coronary veins. HbA1c is glycosylated hemoglobin which can be easily tested via blood tests - a blood percentage HbA1c against "normal" hemoglobin above about 6.4% represents a sudden increase in risk of cardiovascular disease.
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Sorry, no citations,
Dr. Robert Lustig has a pretty detailed discussion of the differences between glucose and fructose metabolism about halfway through this lecture. [youtube.com] You've got the big picture about right. I would just add that fructose translates (via the liver) into VLDL cholesterol, which is a "prime suspect" in the increase in atherosclerosis.
Insulin Response from actual Sugar, Honey, etc (Score:5, Informative)
Coca-cola for example, anywhere else in the world, except the U.S. is made with sugar. You will (should) feel satiated after consuming a bottle of a sugary beverage. Whereas with HFCS you will be more inclined to have another.
This information has been known for more than a decade. This article Consumption of sugars and the regulation of short-term satiety and food intake [nutrition.org], is from 2003.
I imagine the Corn Industry lobby has done their best to suppress this information. The corn industry is heavily subsidized in the US, along with Sugar having import tariffs.
Hell, a few years back know their was a campaign to rename HFCS to Corn Sugar --- as HFCS has gotten too much bad press. I think it didn't get past the FDA
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Glucose is also stored in the liver as glycogen.
Right. Glycogen --> stored in liver and some in muscles (first line buffer, but limited in capacity). Lipids (fat) --> stored in fat storage cells (much less limited).
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Except that's the energy that goes on top of the stack, for immediate consumption, while fructose gets converted to fat which is moved to the end of the queue.
Also, glucose goes as glycogen into muscles, blood, brain...
Fructose goes into fat, waiting for you to use up the stored up glucose OR to produce some sperm, which uses fructose.
Hmm... Maybe Dr. Shukan Tokuho [google.com] wasn't completely wrong?
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Evolutionarily, there are quite good reasons for that. Fruits are seasonal.
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:4, Informative)
Well the other wrinkle is the effect that insulin has on the body storing or burning fat. When insulin levels spike, the fat cells are unable to release fatty acids back into the blood stream for consumption.
So, if a person eats fruit, sure the fructose is converted into 'fat' by the liver, but the body is able to use it for fuel immediately. When glucose (and insulin) levels spike, the fat cells in effect take up the nutrients, but don't release anything back into the blood stream to meet the body's energy needs. If a person is gorging themselves on high carb food; it's completely understandable why they'd continually feel hungry, despite putting on fat. =/
Personally I think this explains why fat people are always hungry, and why high carbohydrate meals lead to hunger so quickly after eating. The difference between individuals isn't in willpower, or that trope 'calories in vs calories out', but in how sensitive different tissues are to insulin.
(Also why exercise leads to weight loss, since training makes muscle tissue more sensitive to insulin, and fat cells less so. Seriously the amount of calories burned through exercise is laughable.)
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:5, Insightful)
sugar: 50% fructose, 50% glucose
HFCS: 55% fructose, 45% glucose
zomg, clearly hfcs is the reason people are getting so much fatter.
You expect a 50/50 mix, and you're getting 45/55 mix.
You key off of the 45 (glucose), so you're expecting 45 fructose.
You're getting 55/45 the fructose you expect.
Bottom line: 22.2% of the fructose in HFCS isn't handled properly. Fructose isn't a problem unless you have tons of it. Fruit has fiber so it generally isn't a problem - you'll be full or bored of fruit before you consume too much fructose by eating fruit. Fruit juice is bad. HFCS is bad. HFCS being used in some many things can make it hard to avoid.
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There are differences though. For example, a diabetic in an insulin coma can be treated by applying glucose to the mouth lining, but sucrose needs to be broken down in the stomach before it can be absorbed.
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:4, Insightful)
The main difference is it is cheaper because it can be produced from corn.
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Was cheaper...
Because some states were pushing Ethanol pretty heavily, the price of HFCS actually went up enough to justify the cost of real sugar. The only reason why the price of sugar is so high though is because apparently we have to protect the farmers in Hawaii with tariffs on any imports. Subsidies and Tariffs can be the devil sometimes.
Farm Subsidies also are responsible for keeping the cost of HFCS down below the price of sugar cane.
Re: Does HFCS count? (Score:2)
Not Hawaii. Florida and Louisiana.
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Pop quiz, hot shot?
Why do those subsidies exist? what did they replace?
You don't know, do you?
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:5, Funny)
Does HFCS count as a sugar substitute, or real sugar ?
A while back Mt Dew had a 'Throwback' drink that had 'real sugar'. Haven't seen it lately.
It's still very popular here. Though, I live in hippy central. I know a lot of people that refuse to eat fake sweeteners and corn sugars. They're switching to these "throwbacks" and, for example, Hunts Ketchup because it has regular sugar. Anecdotaly, none of them have lost weight as a result that I know of. But they certainly have gotten more annoying.
Re:Does HFCS count? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's other reasons for avoiding HFCS besides wanting to lose weight or trying to be healthy. I avoid it because I hate corn farmers and wish the Cuban embargo would be lifted to dramatically decrease the cost of cane sugar.
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Also ask your hippie friends if they eat honey, since it's almost identical to HFCS 55 [wikipedia.org] with regard to the glucose/fructose ratio.
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Explain how living across the street from tract housing increases property value versus living across the street from a corn field? It most certainly doesn’t according to my wallet.
I’ll take farm land over McMansions any day, thanks.
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Maine has other problems, like lack of jobs. Plenty of little damn kids though, unless you live where there aren't any jobs or Internet.
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You missed the part where you justify your distaste...
There's nothing inherently wrong with additives or profits.
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So you're saying you homebrew cereal malt beverages? Why not make beer?
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I know what you use it for. He is not making beer. Beer contains nothing but malted barley, water, hops and yeast.
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Fructose is the nasty sugar, which makes high fructose corn syrup also nasty. Sucrose is only 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Glucose is the "standard universal" sugar used to make everything from starch to cellulose. And artificial sweeteners are the "weird new thing" which our bodies haven't adapted to yet.
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HFCS is more of a "super sugar" than a sugar substitute. Fructose is a natural sugar, and HFCS in its pure laboratory form is only a highly concentrated fructose derived from corn. (high fructose corn syrup).
For me at least, it is a health concern since if I eat or drink some things that contain HFCS I am more prone to asthma attacks. This may not be due to the HFCS itself; it may be some impurity in food quality HFCS, or it may be some other additive that is commonly used with HFCS. I don't care: I know i
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Fructose is a natural sugar, and HFCS in its pure laboratory form is only a highly concentrated fructose derived from corn.
It's only "highly concentrated" compared to plain corn syrup. Despite the name, HFCS isn't pure fructose; it's about 55% fructose and 45% glucose, whereas sucrose is closer to 50/50. And the fact that HFCS tastes sweeter means that you can use less of it for the same result.
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Parent post is a good example of quibbling over words.
The stuff is called "high fructose" because sucrose, or normal table sugar, is one fructose molecule bonded to one glucose molecule but HFCS contains 5% of fructose that is not bound to a glucose molecule. This is significant. Hydrogen peroxide used in wound treatments is only 3% H2O2 and 97% H2O, but has very different physiologic effects than plain H2O.
While HFCS could be used in lower quantities for the same level of sweetness as sucrose, it is ofte
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"Does HFCS count as a sugar substitute" Fuck, not that idiocy again. It's nothing else but sugar in its very chemical essence. Fructose can be absorbed directly into the bloodstream and all of our cells that live on sugar can metabolize it.
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Does HFCS count as a sugar substitute, or real sugar ?
It contains concentrated fruit sugar but there are a bunch of issues.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/is-fructose-bad-for-you-201104262425 [harvard.edu]
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I think by sugar substitutes they mean zero-calorie ones, like aspertine (sp). But I didn't RTFA because I wanted second post.
Aspartame
What about Pro-Biotics, though? (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue here seems to be an alteration of the gut-flora caused by artificial sweeteners (assumably by reducing sugars in the gut).
But might not this problem be addressed with pro-biotics? Gut flora seems an easy enough issue to address, no?
You are assuming (Score:2)
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According to the article, the effect was transferable to other mice via a fecal transplant. So even if your probiotic yogurt happens to contain the right strains (it probably doesn't) then the existing bacteria are likely to just convert the new ones. Of course, if your yogurt is artificially sweetened (many are) then the bacteria are stewing in the artificial sweeteners while on the shelf, which they also showed caused them to change.
Re:What about Pro-Biotics, though? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the SPECULATION is that it's due to gut bacteria.
They don't even know if it's a real effect. It was 4 out of 7 people, and not with the best controls.
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Artificial sweeteners reduce sugars in the gut.
We are encouraged to reduce sugar intake.
Artificial sweeteners reduce sugar intake.
What's the problem?
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The researchers asked that question as well, Intriguingly — “superstriking and interesting to us,” Dr. Segal said — the intestinal bacteria of the people who did experience effects were different from those who did not. This suggests that any effects of artificial sweeteners are not universal. It also suggests probiotics — medicines consisting of live bacteria — could be used to shift gut bacteria to a [nytimes.com]
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...Here, they're making the distinction between "natural sugars" -- substances that are chemically sugars -- and "artificial sweeteners" -- sweet substances that contain no sugar compounds...
It would be interesting to see similar studies performed on stevia. It is a natural sugar, but is ~300 times sweetener than sucrose. Such studies might help to determine if promoting glucose intolerance is a function of artificiality, or a function of sweetness
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IIRC, the sweeteners in stevia are glycosides, which is to say that they're a sugar bound up to an alglycon. While eventually they're broken down and one of the by products is sugar, it's far enough down the digestive tract that it's not absorbed. So... it's only kind of a sugar.
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Such studies might help to determine if promoting glucose intolerance is a function of artificiality, or a function of sweetness
It could also be a function of glucose starvation. Think about it, you avoid sugars for long enough and your body has to start making its own. Since you body is making only the glucose it needs, there's no longer any reason to make insulin (there's no excess glucose for the insulin to clean up), so your body stops making it and dumps any remaining insulin reserves as waste. Then, when you ingest sugars and your glucose levels shoot up, your body has no available insulin until your body starts producing insu
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There's no easy way to avoid "making" of your own glucose -- it's simply the digestion of carbohydrates that you eat. If you're not living on a carbohydrate-free diet, there's glucose absorbed in your small intestine, continuously, and it has nothing to do with whether you eat sugary snacks or not. If you eat anything with flour in it, you're absorbing glucose in the gut :)
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It is a natural sugar, but is ~300 times sweetener than sucrose.
It's not a sugar, it's a non-sugar sweetener. Chemically, it's a glycoside, rather than a sugar.
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HFCS is a ~50/50 mix of glucose and fructose. Both of those occur naturally.
That's like saying salted almonds occur naturally.
High Fructose corn syrup is called HIGH fructose because it contains a higher concentration of fructose, not because someone thought it would be cute to be friendly to it. :)"
"Hi Fructose!
It's a 55 to 42 mix for HFCS55 and 42 to 53 mix for HFCS42.
Guess which one is used in sodas? One that has 30% more fructose than glucose.
I.e. 30% more sugar that goes to fat to be used later than the sugar that goes to immediate use and into glycogen for inter-mediate use.
O
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From your reply I can only assume that you are deliberately being dense.
I.e. You are trolling.
Or, you would not have acted like you haven't realized that when I'm talking about there being 30% more fructose, and then saying that there is 4:3 mix in favor of "sugar for later" - that I'm not talking about sucrose but of fructose as "sugar for later", i.e. FAT.
In fact, if you weren't trolling you could NEVER EVEN THINK that I was talking about sucrose, because you apparently acknowledge that you know that sucr
Study evaluated sacharin vs glucose (Score:4, Insightful)
Saccharin isnt used in diet drinks anymore for the most part
and who consumes pure gluecose in any quantity?
They should have tested sugar vs hfcs vs Aspartame vs Sucralose
Re:Study evaluated sacharin vs glucose (Score:5, Informative)
Saccharin isnt used in diet drinks anymore for the most part
and who consumes pure gluecose in any quantity?
They should have tested sugar vs hfcs vs Aspartame vs Sucralose
Per the study they tested saccharin, sucralose and aspartame.
Re:Study evaluated sacharin vs glucose (Score:4, Informative)
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starchy foods break down into pure glucose no? (a potato or shredded wheat for example.)
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Starch is just a long chain of glucose molecules, so yes.
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Are you sure? the only info I can find comes from one woman making a claim. and most of that article was paywalled.
It smells of typical soda conspiracy nonsense.
References I found all link to here:
http://www.boston.com/news/loc... [boston.com]
Re:Study evaluated sacharin vs glucose (Score:4, Interesting)
Saccharin isnt used in diet drinks anymore for the most part
Actually, it IS... in the fountain varieties. AFAIK, there are at least three varieties of "fountain" Diet Coke... all-saccharin (popular with convenience stores and low-volume users who prefer it for its long, relatively temperature-indifferent shelf life), saccharin+aspartame blend (used by most fast food restaurants & 7-11 -- still has a reasonably long shelf life, but has to be kept cool to prevent the aspartame from prematurely breaking down) and all-aspartame (AFAIK, it's classified as a "specialty item" manufactured on demand only for the largest clients, including McDonald's and Burger King), which has a relatively short shelf life (~3-6 months).
In theory, most restaurants probably have enough product turnover to use the all-aspartame version... but Coca-Cola doesn't want the burden of having to actively engage in the kind of aggressive inventory management and rotation they'd have to do to make the all-aspartame more widely available. I believe it was actually McDonald's that approached Coca-Cola and convinced them to make it for them as a special product, then a few years later Burger King used it as a bargaining chip when negotiating their switch from Pepsi products to Coke products (basically telling Coca-Cola, "You're already making it for McDonald's... going forward, make enough extra for us whenever you make a batch for them.")
As far as I know, sucralose & ace-K aren't used by ANY Coke or Pepsi fountain drink. I believe the problem was that syrup is a low-margin cost-sensitive market segment, and restaurants wouldn't pay significantly more than current prices to get diet drinks made with sucralose & Ace-K.
Anyway, that's the real reason why "diet coke" from gas stations & nightclubs tastes like complete shit, and why Diet Coke from McDonald's and Burger King tastes better than fountain Diet Coke from just about everywhere else.
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Citation?
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It's in everybody's interest to have a population that is morbidly obese, diabetic and wracked with all manner of diet related diseases so that the Big Pharma-Insurance-Hospital/Hospice Industrial Complex can continue to bleed the American People dry.
Dry as a funeral drum...
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Its becasue it's nonsense, and you are trolling.
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Stevia might be "naturally occurring", but by the time you've processed it enough to transform it into a bulk ingredient with predictable & consistent taste & sweetness, it's practically an artificial sweetener itself.
There's no grand conspiracy against stevia. The fact is, people expect ${THIS} can of Diet Coke to taste EXACTLY like ${every_other} can of Diet Coke, with zero acceptable variation from batch to batch and can to can. That's a MUCH harder problem to solve on an industrial scale than "a
No, they don't cause weight gain (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, they don't cause weight gain (Score:5, Informative)
If artificial sweeteners are actually giving some people diabetes by disrupting their sugar absorption, then that is indirectly leading to their weight gain through the problems caused by diabetes or at least a diabetes-like state in their blood stream. It doesn't mean that the artificial sweetener itself is directly causing the weight gain.
Disappointed this submission didn't link to the article in New Scientist [newscientist.com] which does a better job explaining the paper.
Details (Score:5, Informative)
I read up on this yesterday when it was posted to ArsTechnica. I'm a type 1 diabetic so studies like this catch my interest. The interesting part is that the mice that were given artificial sweetners had higher glucose levels than those with regular sucrose diets. The theory is that the artificial sweetners are affecting the bacteria in the gut of the mice, which is affecting how glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream.
One should not though that the human trial only included 7 volunteers, which is hardly enough for a good sample. I'm interested to see the findings of a test conducted on a larger sample group.
More details (Score:2)
Sucrazit (5% saccharin, 95% glucose), Sucralite (5% Sucralose), Sweet’n Low Gold (4% Aspartame).
and:
As saccharin exerted the most pronounced effect, we further studied its role as a prototypical artificial sweetener.
I wonder how stevia or erythritol compare.
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That's something I wondered as well. I find this intriguing:
"Sucrazit (5% saccharin, 95% glucose), Sucralite (5% Sucralose), Sweet’n Low Gold (4% Aspartame)."
So what are the other ingredients in Sucralite and Sweet' n Low Gold?
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Bulking agents generally maltodextrin because it is cheap, colourless and tasteless. Even looks a bit like sugar. If you did not bulk them out you would have to add them in impractically small quantities that they would be useless for end users. A big soft drinks manufacturer on the other hand can add them neat to their products.
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Most artificial sweeteners sold in powder form contain a simple sugar or starch to add bulk and give the product free-flowing granules more similar to sugar. Since saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame all taste hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, they are used in much lower amounts, with bulk added for the consumer-serving preparations so that you don't have to add micrograms of sweetener to your coffee to get the equivalent sweetness of sugar. Either glucose (usually listed as dextrose) or maltodextrin ar
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There's more concern with artificial sweeteners than just glucose intolerance. They've also seen "thickening of the gut lining" -- it's demonstrable and a clear indication that SOMETHING is going on.
Likely there is an issue with stomach bacteria and an issue where the brain "tastes" sweet and thus primes the body for sweet.
I've moved to using Stevia as much as possible, because I don't look at artificial sweeteners as harmless. It seems that almost all artificial foods should be avoided. There's no point in
Re:Details (Score:4, Insightful)
"a lot of Genetically Modified foods show tumor acceleration in rats and infertility in three generations" Um, no, Just no. Stop it.
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So this is crazy....from Ars:
"the team got seven healthy volunteers to start consuming high levels of saccharin (the FDA's recommended maximum daily dose). At the end of a week, four of them ended up with a reduced insulin response."
from cbc.ca:
"gut bacteria were analyzed from 381 non-diabetics averaging age 43"
So which one is correct? Does anybody have the data from the actual Nature publication? It's paywalled on their site.
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Oh I see it now. Shame on Ars for not mentioning the initial 381 :-(
Re:Details (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of thoughts:
The researchers did show some suggestive evidence that gut microflora impacts glucose metabolism and that use of artificial sweetners can disrupt that. The numbers are low and it's not clear how germaine the results are too humans (poor mice...).
However, consider this: The microbiota changes only occur in mice fed ONLY the artificial sweetener. The thesis being that this clogs up some unknown regulatory pathway in the microbiota which leads to glucose intolerance. Although the did perform some mix-back experiments (n=7), they did not perform the standard 'rescue' experiment which, for humans anyway, would be very telling:
What happens with a Diet Coke and a Snicker's Bar? It's always best to test these ideas under real world conditions.
Inquiring minds want to know.
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Gf = grandfather, not gf
Heh, I was starting to wonder just how old you are!
According to a sample size of 1 (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a steady weight for about 2-3 years and started drinking a lot of diet soda and gained 10 pounds. I have cut it out almost entirely (before I saw this study, in fact) and I'll see what happens. I still do like carbonated beverages, so I've switched to an unsweetened, naturally flavoured carbonated drink in a can ("Pure Life" by Nestle. Water, CO2, flavour). I was drinking soda water for awhile but the lack of taste eventually made me lose interest, plus there's salt in it.
You Kids Get Off My Lawn (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately if you want to solve this problem, don't eat sugar OR artificial sweeteners. Don't put anything that could be found in a vending machine in your body. Good dietary tip right there. If everyone in the world just stopped drinking soft drinks, that'd be an enormous win for humanity's overall health. Sure, it would destroy a few of the most powerful companies on the planet in the process, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
Re:You Kids Get Off My Lawn (Score:5, Funny)
Don't put anything that could be found in a vending machine in your body. Good dietary tip right there.
I've read some dietary advice the other day (paraphrased): Read the label for hidden sugars. Better yet, don't eat anything that has a label.
Re:You Kids Get Off My Lawn (Score:5, Interesting)
"Artificial" means "some lab tech trying to feed his/her family on 50k/year synthesized it and then it passed FDA testing without killing anyone or making them sick right away"
If you want a Diet avoid Diet food. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have lost 75lbs. Part of it was exercise, and the other part is cutting out Diet food from my Diet.
If I want something sweet, I eat something with Real Sugar.
If I want something fattening then I will eat something fattening, like with real butter.
I am not about organic and all natural. But you should focus more on foods that you know of. They will tend to fill you up and stop the craving.
Diet food, doesn't fill you up or solve your craving. So you eat more of it.
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You're half right. Most diet food is low in fat and high in refined carbohydrates. Snackwells are a great example of this push towards a low fat dogma that has plagued the USA since the 70s. So yes, if you eat "diet" food, you can actually gain weight. However, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. High fat/low carb diets trump all others, so eat that butter, but you should eschew sugar if you're trying to lose weight. There's no clear cut evidence that artificial sweeteners have a negative effect on
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Peple blame sugar when it's other carbs that turn into the bulk of glucose in your body.
Almost half the calories in a Big Mac are bun. Non-sugar Carbs, via calories, are why we are fat.Chips, bread with everything, buns. Seriously, watch what's on your plate as you eat for several days.
There was a study 40 years ago where they fed. prisoners two diets of a whipped concoction, with varying amounts of fat and sugar. The fatter you were, the MORE you preferred the. high fat one, and the thinner people prefe
If you want a Diet avoid Diet food. (Score:2, Insightful)
I trained with an exercise physiologist for 2 years and learned quite a bit about diet and exercise from him. While I wish I had the time to dig up all of the relevant papers, he summarized it this way (paraphrasing, of course):
"Your body gets into a routine and 'learns' how to function with your caloric intake and activity level. If you eat less but stay at the same activity level or become more active while eating the same, your body will go into starvation mode. It will make more efficient use of the cal
I know this is going to sound crazy... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this is going to sound crazy, but instead of drinking diet soda or regular sugar sweetened soda, why not drink water?
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For me? Because when the rest of my diet is reduced to basic carbs, a dietary supplement (hospital grade sustagen) and liquids, then sometimes a diet soft drink is preferred.
Can't speak for the rest of people out there, my opinions are my own.
And if you are wondering why the dietary lockdown, crohns + T2 Diabetes. Basically anything with fiber, acid or undigestible matter (seeds, etc) is off the menu.
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7UP has no caffeine, now he's dating Billie Jean (Score:2)
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**Breaking news** (Score:2)
sample size? (Score:3)
7.
Nothing to see here at this time.
Diet sodas have ruined millions of lives (Score:2)
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I think getting an interesting result from a sample of seven people is enough to say a larger study should try to reproduce the experiment. It's not really big enough to stand on its own for anything more than that.
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So in other words, artificial sweeteners have no bearing on weight gain at all and eating high calorie foods does! I never would have thought!
Unless you output 0-calorie turds, your body isn't absorbing every calorie you put into it. Your body absorbs until it has what it needs; if your diet isn't balanced, that means it's absorbing a lot more of whatever you have an excess of in your diet before it gets enough of whatever's deficient. Balance has a much higher impact than caloric intake.
If only someone would do a study to prove that (or fund me, I'll put together a team since I know I'm, personally, not qualified).
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Ever heard of emergent behavior [discovery.com]? After "magical thinking" got debunked, it was failure to recognize that complex systems are not intuitively obvious in their behavior that needed to be overcome for medicine to progress to where it is now. This is also why data-mining is not sufficient evidence for medical journals....research should (almost has to be) double blinded, randomized clinical trials to sort through the noise and empirically test the complex system under study. Otherwise we would have developed