Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Weight Gain, Heart Problems In Analysis of Data From 37 Studies (npr.org) 374
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The theory behind artificial sweeteners is simple: If you use them instead of sugar, you get the joy of sweet-tasting beverages and foods without the downer of extra calories, potential weight gain and related health issues. In practice, it's not so simple, as a review of the scientific evidence on non-nutritive sweeteners published Monday shows. After looking at two types of scientific research, the authors conclude that there is no solid evidence that sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose help people manage their weight. And observational data suggest that the people who regularly consume these sweeteners are also more likely to develop future health problems, though those studies can't say those problems are caused by the sweeteners.
The review, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at 37 studies. Seven of them were randomized trials, covering about 1,000 people, and the rest were observational studies that tracked the health and habits of almost 406,000 people over time.
The review, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at 37 studies. Seven of them were randomized trials, covering about 1,000 people, and the rest were observational studies that tracked the health and habits of almost 406,000 people over time.
no extra calories? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:no extra calories? (Score:5, Interesting)
The parent shouldn't be marked as a troll. Studies have shown that your body reacts to these sweeteners as if they were sugar. Meaning your body will release insulin in anticipation of the food spiking your blood sugar. However that spike never happens so excess insulin ends up causing low blood sugar levels and that signals you to eat more. So yes, using artificial sweeteners will cause you to eat more calories even though they don't have any.
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Obviously not true. That's so easily measured that it's ridiculous that it would even be a discussion. How long would it take to prove? A day? An hour?
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your body will release insulin in anticipation of the food spiking your blood sugar.
That would take exactly one twenty-minute experiment to prove true/false.
Where's the citations? Anyone....?
Re:no extra calories? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a 100% confirmed thing by any means, but here are the citations you were after
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
http://sydney.edu.au/news-opin... [sydney.edu.au]
Re:no extra calories? (Score:5, Interesting)
your body will release insulin in anticipation of the food spiking your blood sugar.
That would take exactly one twenty-minute experiment to prove true/false.
Where's the citations? Anyone....?
Sort of. I participated in a class once that did something along these lines as a demonstration of insulin reaction (indirectly, using blood sugar as a metric) to selected foods. Several guinea pig class members, I was one, used a glucometer and recorded serum glucose levels then we ate a bit of three different foods. One guy ate 1/2 a Snickers candy bar, one of ate a plain rice cake and I ate some ham. We waited a bit, took another blood sugar sample. Waited a bit more and took a final blood sugar test. Then we reported on how we felt
The ham guy, me, had almost no change. The Snickers guy saw his blood sugar rise then drop below baseline, got some energy then crashed a little. The greatest reaction, by far, was the plain rice cake. That person had the greatest rise in blood sugar followed by a greater drop and actually got a little shaky.
The point of the experiment was to show some misconceptions. Everyone thought the rice cake was healthy and the candy bar and fatty ham was unhealthy.
Wrong, at least from an insulin flooding standpoint. The rice cake is pure sugar. Starch is just glucose chained together. It turns out that the candy bar, poor nutritionally as it was, had a milder effect because of the fat it contains. Fat seems to blunt the insulin response. Doesn't make the sugar any less, but moderates the insulin reaction. The rice cake hadn't that moderator so it produced the most dramatic reaction.
That's why restaurants like to start you off with bread while you're perusing the menu. It ain't just being hospitable. They want your blood sugar to be plummeting when you order.
but wait, there is more (Score:5, Informative)
[T]he sweeteners appear to change the population of intestinal bacteria that direct metabolism, the conversion of food to energy or stored fuel. And this result suggests the connection might also exist in humans.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
Re: no extra calories? (Score:5, Informative)
The direct effect of artificial sweeteners on insulin levels (as described by GP) seems to be unsubstantiated. There is, however, an Israeli study [nih.gov] demonstrating an effect of artificial sweeteners on gut bacteria, which in turn does result in increased blood sugar levels.
Also, the negative effect of those sweeteners seems to be very apparent if you compare their usage on a national level (try finding a non-light product in a US supermarket, for example) with the prevalence of obesity (US way worse than other countries). I've often been flabbergasted by this, looking at the rows and rows of light products and the humongous people buying them and thinking "guys, wake up, this is obviously not working!". Not only is it not helping, it's actively making things worse.
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I think there may be other factors.
I'm not dieting.
I exercise modestly (a mile or two a day walking and 30 pushups and giving a couple hours of therapeutic body work a week).
My weight and blood pressure have dropped since I retired (at 51).
Blood pressure from 160ish to 112 last visit. Weight from 278 to 245.
I have 2-6 artificial sweeteners a day in my coffee/soda and I also cook with it.
My blood sugar has declined from 144 when I retired to 112 last doctors' visit a couple months ago.
I occasionally still g
Re:no extra calories? (Score:4, Interesting)
What I see is people jumping to conclusions that it's the artificial sweeteners that cause the problem, disregarding the simpler explanation of who the main consumers of artificial sweeteners are: People who overindulge, not taste seekers. When their problem of craving carbohydrates doesn't go away; they end up eating more to satisfy their craving. The fries and a Coke becomes two large fries and a Diet Coke.
So I think the parent isn't just a troll but an insightful troll.
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LOL. So many assumptions in your words.
You assume that the only people who eat stuff with artificial sweeteners are people who over-indulge.
Tell me this: How many friends do you have that are considered overweight? Amongst those friends, how many of them order two large fries with their Diet Coke?
I can see why a person might think that all overweight people overindulge because they lack the self discipline to fight off the cravings. I am certain that this is even true in some (many?) cases; however, humans
Fat people can't help it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I delivered pizza in college. 2 large Everything pizza's and 4 litres of Diet Coke. Who orders that? Yep, every time. Like the Diet Coke is going to offset 4 slices of Everything pizza.
I see it our community pool every summer. Some of these kids I don't see for 8 months. They come down each summer a little larger. Kids drink Diet Coke and then eat 4 hotdogs or 2 burgers. I see it every weekend. People eat multiple burgers/hotdogs, chips and fatty dip, strawberries with pound cake and whip cream, all while sipping their slimming Diet Coke.
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I delivered pizza in college. 2 large Everything pizza's and 4 litres of Diet Coke. Who orders that? Yep, every time.
Notice the same too
It is no the calorie free sweetener that is making the people fat, it allows them to get stuck into more unhealthy food than they would otherwise.
I watch the people who pull out the packet of artificial sweeteners to add to their cup of tea/coffee, then when the deserts come around, they have multiple helpings.
Then wonder why they put on weight
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:5, Insightful)
So far, there is no magic trick that lets people live indulgently and remain healthy. And, deep down inside, everyone knows it.
We can't make fat people thin with artificial sweeteners. We must give them a reason to want to be healthy. If they see no advantage in prioritizing health over immediate gratification, then why the hell should they change a damn thing?
We all know we are going to die. We all know that it doesn't really make sense to deny ourselves the joys of life just to gain a few more years of being old and miserable at the end of it. There is a degree to which it is rational to sacrifice quantity of life for quality of life. So, if the quality of a healthy life just doesn't beat the quality of an indulgent one, the decision isn't very hard.
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What makes you say the quality of life isn't affected much? The number of whales retiring mobility assistance certainly would indicate otherwise. So would the ability to walk up the stairs without taking a break, or paying with you kids in the park.
I was overweight (no where near obese) and by shedding just 30lb my life has improved incredibly. How did I do that? I indulged in delicious and good food rather than shoveling shit into my face. I actually got a new love for food as a wonderful experience rather
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Unmitigated and misleading BS. Eat less. Eat more variety. Move more. 100% guaranteed going to work. 30 minutes a day of cardiac exercise that gets the heart working is sufficient.
Everything else is wishful thinking. Losing weight takes effort and commitment. Or carry on being a fatty. Whichever works, I suppose. /ex-fatty. Dropped 60KG through the magic of eating less and moving more. Clearly I'm some sort of scientific marvel. :/
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I dropped from 343 to 180 without exercise and only maintain weight with fat intake and meat. I eat as much as I want, when I want and never count calories.
Clearly I'm the marvel, not you.
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I also believe that the body has a natural weight maintenance scheme where it can moderate how much calories it can burn based on how much is consumed. What exercise does though is convert unhealthy weight, in fat, into healthy weight, in muscle. Muscle being more dense than fat means getting thinner even if no weight is lost.
Having greater muscle mass also means the body is better able to moderate weight, since muscle burns more calories than fat. Yes, fat cells burn calories, they are live cells after
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This sounds like a lot of marketing bullshit for the latest "take this pill to correct your chemical imbalance" cure that doesn't actually involve making an effort or maybe you're just a fat person grasping at straws to make excuses that your body is pre-programmed to be fat. Yes, the body has some resistance to losing weight - it's after all a survival mechanism to preserve energy in times of shortage. All it means is that it takes a while before the body will accept your new weight as normal and keeping i
this has nothing to do with marketing (Score:3)
Did you know that the level of insulin during fasting is higher for obese people? This has been demonstrated time and again, and if you know someone with type-2 diabetes that needs insulin shots, they will confirm to you that it's really difficult to lose weight when you're swimming in insulin, and it's not a matter of being hungry, the body simply won't shed weight.
They did an experiment in the 90s, giving gradually larger doses of insulin to subjects for a period of 6 months while cutting their calorie in
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The "autoleveling" capacity of your body is greatly exaggerated.
Eat to much: you get fat. Plain and simple.
However you can influence it by looking at your insulin level, e.g. don't eat stuff that is converted super fast into sugar (or is sugar) and combine it with fat.
High sugar levels in blood lead to high insulin levels. High insulin levels lead to quick transportation of fat into the fat cells (and conversion of sugar into fat).
This is why low carb "diets" are so en vogue.
But before you get all excited:
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:5, Interesting)
To lower the target weight, the key is not to exercise more or eat less, it's to gradually increase sensitivity to leptin, by having a carefully tuned rotation of high fat and carbs aspects to the diet.
My personal experience is that that is BS. In January I decided I should do something with my weight. I had a BMI of 34.1 then. As of today I have a BMI of 25.6, a net loss of 29kg.
I didn't do any "careful balance" of anything except making sure my daily energy intake was ~500kcal below my target. I still eat pizzas and hamburgers whenever I feel like (which is quite often). I'm still losing weight, as I'm still consuming less energy than I expend on a daily basis.
My key for losing weight was to figure out ways to hit my reduced kcal target without feeling like I was on a diet, so that I wouldn't have to resist urges for a snack or an extra meal.
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Real life example. Posting anonymously so there's no way for anyone to validate when I'm saying of course, but this is a topic near and dear to my heart so hopefully most folks will take me at my word.
I'm a 41 year old male of Pakistani background, but born and raised in England. During my early years, I spent a lot of time playing soccer, cricket, and going to the gym for an hour or two every day. Once I started working (around 23-ish), I stopped having time for the gym and slowly my cricket and soccer
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You really cannot trust a word from Wikipedia on any topic that is more controversial than 5+2 = 7. And this entry reads like some sort of Healthy at Every Size trash. Not surprising since interest groups have taken to group-editing Wikipedia to further their own propaganda (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-feminist-edit-a-thon-seeks-to-reshape-wikipedia, https://www.moma.org/calendar/... [moma.org], https://hclib.bibliocommons.co... [bibliocommons.com]) etc
The whole of dieting can be summarized in "Energy in, Energy out".
Eat les
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Diets like 5:2 uses the 2 days of not eating to cleanse the blood from extra sugar - which are consumed the days of not eating alot.
That is nonsense, basically your whole post is nonsense.
Insulin removes the sugar from the blood. You would simply die if you have to much sugar in your blood (for various reasons).
Sugar is stored in the liever. About 45 minutes of energy under exercise is stored in the liver. The blood is only used for transport, not for storage.
Sugar is as fast as possible converted into fat and stored in cells or as said above stored in the liver.
Atkinsons diet uses the fact that protein rich food contains less energy to get people to eat the same amount but consume less energy.
That is nonsense.
He uses the fact that low carb and low insulin levels prevent transport of fat into the fat cells.
Can't be so hard to actually read a book about the body works instead of believing and spreading such nonsense.
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you insist on eating a lot of food the body will grow in weight and if you eat less you won't.
This fundamental misconception is why so many people are struggling to lose weight.
Energy retained = energy in - energy out
You can regulate energy in by eating less, although you body will fight you. But what is much harder to regulate is energy out.
Exercise can burn a few hundred calories if you really go at it every day. Unfortunately your body can save way more than that just by adjusting your rest state to burn less energy. Studies have found that when the body decides to go into "starvation mode" a person can get to the point where they would need to eat so few calories just to maintain weight that they couldn't get enough nutrition and would be extremely lethargic an unable to function in daily life.
So when you start dieting, you body fights back. Figuring out how to control this response is the key to helping people lose weight. Surgery that reduces the size of the stomach has been shown to work, but it would be better if we could find some chemical way to do it, i.e. a pill or injection.
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:4, Interesting)
One problem with the energy balance argument is the balance part. 10 kcal per day surplus over 10 years is 36,500 kcal -- does that result in someone morbidly obese? Would the same amount as a deficit result in famine-like thinness?
If it did, then maintaining any body weight would be extremely difficult and diets would either be extremely trivial (a 100 kcal deficit over 2 years should result in extreme weight loss) *and* extremely difficult, since we would need extremely accurate measures of energy consumption to regulate energy intake correctly.
The more likely explanation is that the body has a regulation mechanism where both deficits and surpluses are regulated in a way that requires either sustained, major energy consumption, major energy intake reductions, or both, to affect weight. And experience suggests that the regulation system works so well that even doing this seldom results in significant weight reduction (or results in side effects of lack of vigor that it is abandoned).
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> This is a lot of horse shit. There is very little you can do to alter your BMR.
Not at all. Otherwise the Russians wouldn't have survived Stalingrad. Not everyone can do it. That's why a lot of people died. But quite a few people can down clock to only needing 500 calories a day and not quickly die.
If you try to starve yourself and not exercise, your metabolism WILL slow and sabotage your starvation dieting. Doesn't matter if granny was at Stalingrad.
Re:Fat people can't help it? (Score:4, Interesting)
I had diet coke when it was brand new. Never had diet drinks before. It was a test market so no one in other places had heard of it ("you mean 'Tab'?" they'd ask).
The thing is, I don't drink it because it's slimming. I drink it because it tastes better. I can't even bother with real Coke, it just tastes wrong, it's too syrupy, whether or not it's real sugar or high fructose corn syrup. I can't even stand diet Pepsi.
So do you think ordering 2 large Everything pizza's and 4 litres of regular Coke would be better? Would those people get your respect? Or is this just more of the old "lol, fat people, so funny!" trend?
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Some people LIKE diet (Score:2)
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eat 4 hotdogs or 2 burgers. I see it every weekend. People eat multiple burgers/hotdogs, chips and fatty dip, strawberries with pound cake and whip cream, all while sipping their slimming Diet Coke.
How do you even eat multiple burgers? I have a moderate weight problem (85kg and slowly climbing [angband.pl]), yet when I try American food in that 1-in-2-years visit to McDonald's, after a BigMac with medium fries I feel bloated.
So you'd need to overcome that bloated feeling and keep stuffing yourself.
Re: Fat people can't help it? (Score:2)
What's worse? One nuke or two? Does it matter when you are in the kill zone?
Restaurant buffets are a blessing and a curse - you have to learn how much to pick and what and still get a healthy and good meal.
Re: Fat people can't help it? (Score:3)
It's the diabetes itself that creates hunger feelings. Type 2 diabetes is because the cells are immune to insulin and insulin tells the cells to absorb the sugar. So the cells that needs energy are screaming for more and you feel hungry but the blood sugar level is high so the body converts it to fat. An evil circle.
Low carbohydrate and exercise may turn it around unless it's too late.
Drink filtered water (Score:3, Interesting)
I've struggled a bit with weight for years and recently started a new diet which includes not drinking zero calorie fizzy drinks. Instead I keep chilled filtered water in the fridge and drink that. I've also calorie controlled my diet like I have previously but this time the weight is falling off. The only real difference is the lack of these zero calorie fizzy drinks. Anecdotal yes, but seriously worth considering.
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The idea is you a meant to swap to diet drinks as part of an entire diet change. Low sugars and carbs and up the proteins and roughage (vegetables, whole meal bread). The fake fizzy drinks, after all the other diet adjustments tend to be way, way, over flavoured and I am down to around a thirty percent mix (the majority water) to make the palatable. Diet drinks will absolutely not help you manage your weight one iota, they are just part of your diet change, and you just drop full sugar drinks along with all
Re:Drink filtered water (Score:4, Informative)
I have not had any weight problems until recently. I did two things to reduce my calories. First, I cut out my end of day beer. It took me a while to figure out why people enjoyed a beer at the end of the day but for some reason I started the habit. It's relaxing and dulls the aches from the day but it also has a lot of calories. I lost 20 pounds fairly quickly after dropping that habit. Second, I started to keep bottled water around the house. When thirsty I tended to grab whatever I had in a single serve bottle or can. This usually meant a fizzy drink. With bottled water on hand I can grab one of those instead.
Bottled water comes in handy when there are things contaminate the city water like floods or some idiot put a backhoe through a water main. This does not happen often but when it does and city water is deemed undrinkable then bottled water can get real hard to find. I keep a few bottles in the freezer for when I need to put ice in a cooler, when the ice melts I drink the water from the bottle. Also good for adding thermal mass to the refrigerator and freezer for when the power blinks.
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An ex-smoker once told me that you get over the craving for a cigarette after one or two puffs, but smoke the rest of it anyway. It's a bit like that with "single serving" anything too - in my anecdotal experience, most 'single servings' are about 30% bigger than you actually need (and when I visit the USA I'm always amazed how much bigger 'single servings' of things are there compared to Europe).
For example, a 330ml can of drink - I love the very occasional diet coke (or recent new favourite is diet pepsi
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And if you want to make it a little more exciting, you can drop 2 slices of cucumber into a pitcher of water and it gives the whole thing a nice refreshing flavor.
Re:Drink filtered water (Score:4, Interesting)
...you can drop 2 slices of cucumber into a pitcher of water and it gives the whole thing a nice refreshing flavor.
They do that a lot in restaurants here (Stockholm). It actually tastes just fine. Of course, so does a slice or two of lemon, lime, or orange.
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As do mint leaves.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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The only real difference is the lack of these zero calorie fizzy drinks. Anecdotal yes, but seriously worth considering.
Actually known since ages.
The taste of sweetness already increases the insulin level.
So the less sweet you eat, the lower the insulin level (before actual sugar hits the blood), and the less fat is transported into the fat cells but burned or metabolized.
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If I want a zero-calorie fizzy drink, I keep my fridge stocked with carbonated bottled water, which has a tiny bit of flavoring added but doesn't add any significant caloric or nutritional impact. Amazon ships Perrier right to my doorstop, but if you can find a source, Talking Rain is good too. I was never a big soda drinker, but I still had cravings for carbonated drinks on occasion.
Some people don't like the unsweetened drinks, as they're probably an acquired taste, but I absolutely love them.
Confounding by indication? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can anyone say confounding by indication? In the same way that people who get a lot of EKGs are at much higher risk of having a heart attack, people who consume artificial sweetners are at increased risk of obesity.
No one would suggest that getting an EKG increases your risk of heart attacks but people who get a lot of them are certainly at a much, MUCH higher risk of heart attacks. That is because if you have risk factors and complain of chest pain and shortness of breath to a doctor, she will send you for an EKG. In the same way, people self select to consume artificial sweetners if they are fat.
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However there are some (admittedly contradictory) experiments with rats showing that consuming artificial sweeteners can cause obesity.
Some people prefer Diet Coke because they think regular Coke is too sweet. I agree that most Diet soda consumption is by overweight people trying to cut calories, however.
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Don't forget the dental factor. Diet or not the citric acid is not good for the teeth, but sugar in the Coke/Pepsi is worse if you're sipping at it much of the day.
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My dentist: "The ONLY thing that soft drinks are good for is destroying your teeth. There is no more effective tooth-destroyer, short of a hammer."
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Potato chips are pretty bad too, not just for your health.
Of course they have loads of fat and carbs in them, in addition to heaping amounts of sugar. That's a bad recipe for your general health, but the sticky gooey carbs also wreak havoc on your teeth. It can be a lot worse than soda, because it tends to stick around between your teeth, whereas soda gets washed away by saliva relatively quickly.
Also, don't swirl the soda around in your mouth, drink it straight down if you must.
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I think you're making shit up. Let's have a citation or three.
Re:Confounding by indication? (Score:5, Interesting)
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EKG is diagnostics. Artificial sweeteners are also used preventatively. I see a culture around them without relation to obesity. E.g. North Germans will find aspartame on every restaurant table, the Dutch will look at you with a confused expression when you ask for it. Southern Europe and SE Asia generally give you what you ordered the first time round, the USA and parts of Eastern Europe you'll get confirmations if you want diet, zero, out whatever the latest coke trend is.
There's an element of confounding
The Sweetener That Cried Wolf (Score:3)
My understanding is that eating something sweet causes an insulin rush (actually, merely the taste of sweetness on the tongue triggers this, you don't even have to swallow it.) If the insulin arrives, and finds no real sugars in the bloodstream, this is like crying wolf. Eventually the insulin stops responding to the sweetness trigger, which is 'insulin resistance.' This causes real sugar to linger in the bloodstream longer before it's processed, although I forgot how that leads to obesity; probably a secondary metabolic pathway converts the 'leftovers' to fat.
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Think I remembered. An insulin rush causes one to be hungry, this is why diabetics who inject insulin have to resist the urge to eat that it creates. Thus, artificial sweeteners make one eat more since they create hunger but no satiety.
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I'd suggest you take back Human Biology 101 instead of posting on
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This causes real sugar to linger in the bloodstream longer before it's processed, although I forgot how that leads to obesity
The prevalent theory is leptin resistance. The point at which the body feels like it's at its appropriate level of fat slowly goes up.
There's also a possibility that insulin resistance wrecks havoc in the hypothalamus, which ultimately leads to unfixable obesity.
Re:The Sweetener That Cried Wolf (Score:4, Informative)
Prove to me the sugar industry didn't pay for this (Score:2)
It's BULLSHIT until you prove they weren't involved.
This is yet another bullshit study, with an obvious result.
oil, lead, sugar, etc. industries that have paid billions to debunk their harm.
I assume false, based on experience.
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Full fake coke would be better. Fat makes you feel more full, takes longer to digest, and takes more energy to digest. Fat doesn't make you fat. Stop avoiding fat.
Key Phrase (Score:3)
The key phrase in the above summary is:
"those studies can't say those problems are caused by the sweeteners"
meaning the studies are pretty useless, and the /. headline:
"Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Weight Gain, Heart Problems In Analysis of Data From 37 Studies"
is completely misleading.
Undoubtedly as many other posters have suggested the problem is behavioral, which will surprise no one and doesn't require 37 studies to demonstrate.
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There's nothing misleading about it. Association is correlation. There's nothing in the headline saying it causes it, just that the two are linked.
The study itself is also not useless even if the link is the result of behaviour as it shows a measurable way of identifying people's destructive behaviours. There's also a question of justification in the behaviour, e.g. weight gain caused by increased unhealthiness due to the incorrect justification that since sugar is now cut out of me coffee I can eat another
But what would be the alternative ? (Score:3)
For many people the alternative is not healthy lifestyle with diet soda and healthy lifestyle without, the alternative is unhealthy lifestyle with lotta sugar and sugary drink OR unhealthy lifestyle with diet cola , that is slightly less sugar. As such , yes people consuming artificial sweetener soda seem to are more likely to get lifestyle related disease... But the alternative may actually be they get those disease earlier if they consumed sugary drink instead.
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In my case, many years ago I started drinking tea as an alternative to sodas, partly because of vague concerns about artificial sweeteners, but mainly because I was afraid that all of that phosphoric acid was not good for my guts. I was never much of a fan of normal soda because the lingering film made my teeth feel like they were going to rot, but I was kind of addicted to diet sodas.
It took a couple of months for the craving to switch from soda to tea, but now I would pretty strongly prefer tea over diet
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Drink water. If you find that a bit plain, drink sparkling water with a slice of lemon or lime instead. You don't have to drink soda, no one's forcing you.
Half-a-Study (Score:5, Interesting)
Aspatame (Score:2)
Aspatame influences the sugar and fat transfer from the digesting track to the blood and has an influence on insulin levels (insulin is already set free when you taste the right sweetness in your mouth) and hence amplifies transfer of fat and sugar into the fat cells.
I know that since over 25 years, so I guess the science is 30 years old or older ...
I think I know why (Score:2)
I like science and all... (Score:2)
...but I'd sure as hell like to have an easy-access, nicely detailed list of funding parties for this research, along with the head researchers background, with their past work clear and conclusions accessible.
I like my research unbiased and authorship transparent. That also applies to headlines around the subject - I see none of that in this post.
Or did everyone already forget, now that it's silly season, that big sugar is a large research patron?
Which sweeteners did they check up on? (Score:2)
Article, summary, and even the abstract of the study are all completely useless garbage because none of them tell us which sweeteners they actually studied.
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This is even trickier than it looks. The artificial sweeteners are so realistic that they fool the body into thinking that you just drank tons of sugar, so insuline level is adjusted, but since there's no actual sugar it makes you crave sweets.
So yes you probably should use actual sugar, if possible natural sugar (brown) not white processed poison, but if you can progressively dial it down to a point where you don't put sugar at all your body will thank you.
Let's be clear: the body has no need for sugar, it
Re:GREAT... (Score:4, Informative)
"brown sugar" isn't natural sugar. It is refined sugar with molasses added back in. The molasses is what they removed in previous steps, slightly burnt.
Natural sugar, which you can buy in most stores now, will be labeled "raw sugar" or "washed sugar" and it will be large crystals of a honey blond color.
The advantage of brown sugar is only that the flavor is so strong, you can modify recipes to use less. At a 1:1 ratio with no reduction, the brown sugar is more processed and more unhealthy than regular refined sugar.
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"brown sugar" isn't natural sugar. It is refined sugar with molasses added back in.
Not necessarily. See Wikipedia:
Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content (natural brown sugar), or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar (commercial brown sugar).
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Yes the brown sugar is more processed than refined sugar, but why are you saying that it's more unhealthy? Just the added molasses? I suppose that would marginally increase the calories if measured by volume, but wouldn't that also marginally decrease the calories if mea
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You have no idea what you are even talking about.
Carbohydrates and calories have no nutritional value whatsoever?
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So yes you probably should use actual sugar, if possible natural sugar (brown) not white processed poison,
Oh, dear. Where to begin....?
(facepalm)
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FYI: The Designing Women sisters' surname is Sugarbaker. No idea why you stuck quotes in there.
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This is even trickier than it looks. The artificial sweeteners are so realistic that they fool the body into thinking that you just drank tons of sugar, so insuline level is adjusted, but since there's no actual sugar it makes you crave sweets.
I've been hearing about this for a while. What I do is I always drink sugar-free sweetened beverages together with food (or at least a snack), never by itself.
That's even worse because when aspartame get metabolized by the liver, it creates byproducts that interfere with dietary fat absorption and overall gut health. So whatever you're eating while you drink diet soft drinks is not going to have a smooth ride in your system.
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when aspartame get metabolized by the liver, it creates byproducts that interfere with dietary fat absorption
So it does make you slimmer? That's great news!
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Hey feel free to subscribe to common misconceptions instead of educating yourself. This whole subject area has been plagued by such shallow beliefs and unproven "truths" that resistance from the lemmings is to be expected when they're presented with new information.
Re:GREAT... (Score:5, Interesting)
I should start putting actual sugar in my coffee again
No. You should give up sugar to the extent possible and just not expect
artificial sweeteners to help much with that goal, and don't expect them
to be entirely harmless.
(I'd not worry about the added sugar in stuff like ketchup, unless you find
yourself eating large quantities of it, but do keep an eye on food labels
and eliminate anything that has way more sugar than you'd expect.)
An occasional life saver, sucked not chewed, should be able to take the
edge off at first when you hit a severe jag... note that one 12oz can of
sugared coke is 3 of those, despite not even being very sweet compared
to the sucralose diet coke, and not much sweeter than the aspartame
diet coke.
I've quit daily sugar intake twice now; it is not easy for some people to do.
I had been off sugar for about a decade, started indulging again, and
gained 10lbs in a year. Am now still considered overweight by 5lbs despite
being mostly back off the sugar, but weight has more or less stabilized.
Cholesterol went down after getting back off, as well.
During that whole decade before the weight gain I was drinking more sucralose
and aspartame than anyone would think healthy. Still am. There is no "artificial"
taste for me anymore... sugar actually tastes weak and underwhelming. The
artificial sweeteners probably do screw up the gut a bit... but sugar is worse overall.
Drink something that tastes better than coffee. or better coffee; you won't need
to sweeten it so much.
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Correction, 1 12 oz coke is 8ish lifesavers. Not 3, Don't know why I typed 3.
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Sugar is not that big of a problem. The main problem is if your consumed processed food where it is already added, so you are getting too much of it. A bit of sugar in your coffee is a lot healthier and more slimming than not drinking coffee or drinking lattes. Both sugar and coffee are hunger supressing, and will make you eat less (unlike artificial sweeteners that makes you more hungry and eat more).
Re: GREAT... (Score:3)
Or better, skip sugar.
Milk, no sugar for me.
The problem is that we have too much of easily available carbohydrates in our food today causing the blood sugar levels to do bungyjumping all over the place resulting in us being tired, hungry and develop diabetes.
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I should start putting actual sugar in my coffee again?
Nope - learn to enjoy black coffee. Or water. Believe me, there is no limit to what a person can actually learn to enjoy the taste of; black coffee is a very minor challenge.
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Artificial sweeteners are the equivalent of having sex with a condom on.
Re:Seems flawed (Score:5, Interesting)
There's many ways that it could have that effect. The part of the puzzle you're missing is poop. Calories in exercise + calories added to fat stores + calories in poop = calories taken in.
The number of calories left in the poop can be dramatically different depending on how the digestive tract is working. Different bacterial flora in the intestines can lead to dramatically different absorption rates of calories from some foods.
Certain foods (I don't know if artificial sweeteners are one, but it wouldn't surprise me) dramatically affect the bacterial flora.
Re: Seems flawed (Score:2)
And any fat you exercise away goes out in sweat or urine.
The poop is just the part of what you digested that couldn't be absorbed.
Re: Seems flawed (Score:5, Informative)
And any fat you exercise away goes out in sweat or urine.
Much of it goes out your breath, actually. Both water and carbon dioxide are byproducts of the oxidations.
Re:Seems flawed (Score:5, Interesting)
But if science is science, then calories in is equal to work done with excess calories becoming weight gained.
This is a simplistic and flawed conclusion. The body is not a closed system that lives in a vacuum with only calories as input/output, it's a lot more complex than that.
Also, calories are not equal. For instance, given a same amount of calories, dietary fat is absorbed a lot more easily by the body than proteins. This doesn't simply mean a difference in energy expenditure, it also means that time is involved.
Here's another example. If you stop eating carbs but you compensate by eating more proteins but not more fatty acids (like omega-3), your body won't go into ketosis, and because your brain can't find neither glucose or ketones to feed itself, it's going to start eating your muscles, not your excess fat. With less muscle your metabolism will progressively slow down. And this can happen no matter how many calories you eat or how many reps you do at the gym.
This just in ... (Score:2)
Some guy's anecdotal evidence more convincing than peer reviewed research.
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The review, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at 37 studies. Seven of them were randomized trials, covering about 1,000 people, and the rest were observational studies that tracked the health and habits of almost 406,000 people over time.
Emphasis mine, on the part you left out.
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In a rare burst of insight, he tweeted a couple years ago that Diet Coke doesn't seem to help him control his weight because it only made him hungrier.
He was referring to he type of coke you snort
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He was referring to he type of coke you snort
Those piggy nostrils are probably not well suited for that particular habit. Of course, it can be administered the other way too, if your reach is long enough...