Artificial Sweetener Erythritol Linked To Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds 221
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Erythritol, a zero-calorie sugar substitute used to sweeten low-cal, low-carb and "keto" products, is linked to higher risk of heart attack, stroke and death, according to a new study. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic studied over 4,000 people in the U.S. and Europe and found those with higher blood erythritol levels were at elevated risk of experiencing these major adverse cardiac events. The research, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, also found erythritol made blood platelets easier to form a clot.
"Our study shows that when participants consumed an artificially sweetened beverage with an amount of erythritol found in many processed foods, markedly elevated levels in the blood are observed for days -- levels well above those observed to enhance clotting risks," said Dr. Stanley Hazen, senior author of the study and chairman for the department of cardiovascular and metabolic sciences at Cleveland Clinic, in a press release.
While the study doesn't definitively show causation, CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus says there's "certainly enough data to make you very worried." "Most artificial sweeteners bind to your sweet receptors but aren't absorbed. Erythritol is absorbed and has significant effects, as we see in the study," Agus explains. Sweeteners like erythritol have "rapidly increased in popularity in recent years," Hazen noted, and the researchers say more in-depth study is needed to understand their long-term health effects. "Cardiovascular disease builds over time, and heart disease is the leading cause of death globally. We need to make sure the foods we eat aren't hidden contributors," he said. "In the study, researchers looked at the levels of erythritol in the blood of around 4,000 people from the United States and Europe and found that those with the highest blood concentration of the sugar substitute were more likely to have a stroke or heart attack," adds the New York Times in their reporting. "The participants, who mostly were over the age of 60, either already had or were at high risk for cardiovascular diseases because of conditions like diabetes and hypertension."
"The researchers also found that when they fed mice erythritol, that promoted blood clot formation. Erythritol appeared to induce clotting in human blood and plasma as well. Among eight people who consumed erythritol at levels typical in a pint of keto ice cream or a can of an artificially sweetened beverage, the sugar alcohol lingered in their blood for longer than two days."
Dr. Hazen said: "Every way we looked at it, it kept showing the same signal."
"Our study shows that when participants consumed an artificially sweetened beverage with an amount of erythritol found in many processed foods, markedly elevated levels in the blood are observed for days -- levels well above those observed to enhance clotting risks," said Dr. Stanley Hazen, senior author of the study and chairman for the department of cardiovascular and metabolic sciences at Cleveland Clinic, in a press release.
While the study doesn't definitively show causation, CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus says there's "certainly enough data to make you very worried." "Most artificial sweeteners bind to your sweet receptors but aren't absorbed. Erythritol is absorbed and has significant effects, as we see in the study," Agus explains. Sweeteners like erythritol have "rapidly increased in popularity in recent years," Hazen noted, and the researchers say more in-depth study is needed to understand their long-term health effects. "Cardiovascular disease builds over time, and heart disease is the leading cause of death globally. We need to make sure the foods we eat aren't hidden contributors," he said. "In the study, researchers looked at the levels of erythritol in the blood of around 4,000 people from the United States and Europe and found that those with the highest blood concentration of the sugar substitute were more likely to have a stroke or heart attack," adds the New York Times in their reporting. "The participants, who mostly were over the age of 60, either already had or were at high risk for cardiovascular diseases because of conditions like diabetes and hypertension."
"The researchers also found that when they fed mice erythritol, that promoted blood clot formation. Erythritol appeared to induce clotting in human blood and plasma as well. Among eight people who consumed erythritol at levels typical in a pint of keto ice cream or a can of an artificially sweetened beverage, the sugar alcohol lingered in their blood for longer than two days."
Dr. Hazen said: "Every way we looked at it, it kept showing the same signal."
Nope. (Score:4, Informative)
Erythritol is no more an artificial sweetener than sugar is. It occurs naturally in Grapes, Pears, mushrooms and just about anything that ferments.
Yep. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Yep. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything overly processed from corn is starting to look suspect to me
Let me fix that for you: Anything processed is to be avoided.
Do the processing in your kitchen, not in factories. The only "factories" for proper food is the land on which it grows.
And remember how sweeteners actually increase diabetes and weight? Remember how tests with sweeteners in rats have shown increased anxiety, statistically significant two generations later even?
Then, recent research shows cardiovascular issues growing linearly w
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Anything overly processed from corn is starting to look suspect to me
Let me fix that for you: Anything processed is to be avoided.
Obvious nonsense. It very much depends on what was done to it and why. For quite a few things, there are pretty severe risks if you do it yourself while not being an expert. For others, if you just do the same process in your kitchen (e.g. amounts of salt and sugar), you get the same negative effects as with the same amounts added in an industrial process.
It is completely irrelevant how something was made for how healthy it is. What counts is the nature and amount of what you eat. This simplistic "nature go
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Ok, aside from doing your own distilling, and the danger of methanol if you don't know what you're doing...I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with something a person would cook at home for consumption that would have "severe risks" if you weren't an expert???
Industrial food production has made things so safe, most people are not aware of all the dangers it removed. Here are some examples: If you grow your own cereal but are not aware of the risks from Claviceps purpurea and do not screen for it, you may well end up killing yourself. If you raise your own livestock, there are a number of diseases you _really_ want to recognize. If you produce your own milk, you really want to process that milk, although raw milk usually only kills old people and the immunocompro
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the sugar in grapes you don't need in isolation, you eat grapes, which have been safely consumed by humans for tens of thousands of years. How do you get this substance we call erythrtol? How do you know how erythrtol interacts with the body when consumed outside of grapes and pears, in a provided form? You don't.
This thinking is the perfect example of irrational behavior: you risk ruin -- stroke or heart attack or something else, because when you introduce something new in a complex system the only evidence of safety is a long time -- for no gain. You don't need the damn thing.
Mother U. 101: moderation & variety (Score:3)
> grapes, which have been safely consumed by humans for tens of thousands of years
There are probably a lot of common foods of which if you eat relatively large quantities of, you risk having problems. Too many nuts can cause kidney stones, for example. Eat everything in moderation and eat variety. That reduces that chance of something bad "piling up" inside of you.
Processed foods often concentrate certain substances to save a buck.
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This guy https://odysee.com/@KenDBerryM... [odysee.com] says it makes your blood levels of Erythritol go up by 1000x which is quite a bit. TFA is the first mention I've seen that they found clotting in mice using Erithritol. That's the biggest red flag out of this story I've seen.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol [wikipedia.org]. Funny thing is, sugar alcohols are already known to produce other side effects (of the gastrointestinal sort) in most folks. It's why the hilarious "hell bears" sugar-free gummy bears Amazon reviews are a thing - they're made with sugar alcohols.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
Don't poopoo them before you tried them.
Do it afterwards when the Jericho trumpet echos from your porcelain altar.
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"Funny thing is, sugar alcohols are already known to produce other side effects (of the gastrointestinal sort) in most folks. "
Erythritol less so because it is absorbed, a crucial point to this study. Congratulations genius.
"It's why the hilarious "hell bears" sugar-free gummy bears Amazon reviews are a thing - they're made with sugar alcohols."
But not Erythritol. The more ignorant you are, the smarter you seem, right?
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Interesting)
It occurs naturally
Tomayto, tomato. Cyanide is natural too. The issue is the quantity consumed when used as a sugar substitute.
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol, like sorbitol, and low-calorie because it is not metabolised. So it exists freely in the blood until excreted. That is the concern.
In contrast, aspartame is rapidly metabolised, so does not appear in the blood. It is also used in relatively tiny amounts, as is 300x sweeter, and has been far more thoroughly studied for safety.
Re: (Score:2)
Tomayto, tomato.
Nightshades
Cyanide is natural too
Almonds
Re: (Score:2)
Tomayto, tomato.
Nightshades
Cyanide is natural too
Almonds
Ok Miss Marple.
Dose makes the poison (Score:2)
How many grams of it would you get in a typical pear, vs. a serving of some processed food that uses it as a sweetener?
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Wikipedia describes "artificial sweeteners" more correctly as sugar substitutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"I'd like a coffee with cream and fake sugar."
Why do people have to make things so difficult!
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All current research tends to indicate our food supply has too many extremely processed food. Fruit juice is a continent way to get energy and vitamins, but the we made fruit by the foot. We need to eat food.
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"Like all sugar, it is safe and necessary when not overly processed."
The bullshit starts early. No sugar is "necessary", much less "all sugar" and not conditional on "not overly processed".
"The only issue with chewing sugar cane, for instance, is it will rot your teeth."
The only issue in your mind.
"All current research tends to indicate our food supply has too many extremely processed food. "
Indeed, "all current research" is directed to an extraordinarily poorly defined term intended to incite prejudice.
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Erythritol is no more an artificial sweetener than sugar is.
It's almost as if "natural" and "unnatural" cannot be used as proxies for "good" or "bad." You have to investigate each item separately.
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Nope. Erythritol is typically industrially made and hence typically an artificial sweetener. That is also happens to be present in nature is immateriel. Of course, the term "artificial" is used by a certain type of moron as a synonym for "bad", while nothing of the sort is true. The meaning here is that it gets manufactured on industrial scale and is added to things were ordinarily sugar would be used and hence its risks get amplified compared to its natural presence in things. And _that_ means it is import
Limit your Artificial Sweetners (Score:5, Insightful)
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ONE WEIRD TRICK TO SPOT A FAKE (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, many "stevia"s that are sold are either entirely Erythritol or partly Erythritol. Check the label.
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Yeah I just checked the "stevia" I use in my daily cup of coffee. It's a "stevia blend". Guess what the main ingredient is. RIP me.
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plain sugar is also bad. to me the most striking in all of this is that ... coffee is perfectly fine, delicious, aromatic and energizing when simply consumed black! even more so if it is an expresso or even ristretto. and people add poison to it just to ... spoil it because sugar junkies!
ofc same goes for tea, yoghurt, what have you. there is absolutely no need to put sugar in anything we eat, on the contrary, it just distorts the flavor of stuff and degrades the experience, and is bad for our health. and s
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I make home-brew cheesecake, and the added sugar is about 10%.
The biscuit base has its own sugar content, but I add nothing to that.
All in all, it probably is above 10% pure sugar, but that is sweet enough for us.
We tried going lower, and it wasn't really sweet enough to classify as a cookie
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Let me stop you there. Coffee is energising because it contains a poison, caffeine. The LD50 is high enough that coffee is not an effective way to commit suicide, but occasionally people manage to consume enough coffee to intoxicate themselves and need medical treatment.
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Re: ONE WEIRD TRICK TO SPOT A FAKE (Score:3)
I got a bag of pure stevia from nuts.com years ago and it lasted me a very long time. While sweet it has a bitterness to it that makes it fine for use in black coffee but weird tasting in more sugary things like plain yogurt. True pure stevia is quite powerful so you only need a pinch where you would put a teaspoon of sugar.
Most store bought stevia is mostly some other filler substitute and the product itself contains some stevia but it is not stevia. Like most cranberry juices are apple juices with some cr
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Some kind of dark chocolate sweetened with Stevia has a declared content of 0.05%.
Re: ONE WEIRD TRICK TO SPOT A FAKE (Score:2)
Right. Regulations only allow stevia "product" used in foods is a derivative - one cannot patent natural extracts. That's why they altered it.
If you want stevia to sweeten your cake, you will have to grow the plants yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
"Artificial" doesn't make something healthy or unhealthy. There's plenty in nature that will kill you and it is most certainly the case that not everything science has brought us in relation to food has been bad.
In relation to Stevia, we've been sold the "something for nothing" line on non sugar sweeteners over and over again over the years only to have problems with virtually every one come up decades later. Sure, Stevia looks clean now but give it a few decades of mass consumption and we'll see how it doe
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Personally I would suggest that instead of chasing the whole "something for nothing" trip people should just change their diets and lower their sugar consumption without replacing it.
Hedonism always has a price is an old trope. Probably borne out of a misunderstanding of the causes of illness, disease, and addiction.
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Meanwhile people throughout history have always sought out the ever elusive "something for nothing" only it never seems to pan out.
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Just last week I was at a theme park experiencing g-forces that primitive man would've only felt a few moments before being splattered against the bottom of a cliff. I think we're getting better at coming up with ways of cheating our monkey brains, and not ending up any worse for wear from the experience.
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Meanwhile people throughout history have always sought out the ever elusive "something for nothing" only it never seems to pan out.
Yep. But this goes hand in hand with most people being stupid and only learning from experience when the experience is drastic. Or not even then.
It is true that sometimes you get "a lot more for a lot less effort". Industrial production is a prime example. But essentially nothing is ever "free".
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"Artificial" doesn't make something healthy or unhealthy
missing the point entirely. sugar isn't unhealthy because it is artificial, but because artificially producing it allows people to consume it unhealthy dosages.
erythritol occurs "naturally" in trace amounts in fruits, thousands of years prove that this "natural" dosage has no severe consequences. there is no similar evidence that shoveling a spoonful of this same stuff "artificially" isolated down your throat does neither. guess what, it is artificial and unhealthy. this is why any "artificially" processed
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"guess what, it is artificial and unhealthy. "
Not proven.
"...should be considered very carefully. "
Not a new idea.
"...not because they're worse or better, but because we really don't know fuck all about them."
Nor will we, with thinking like yours.
Funding Erythritol research make sense now given its rise in popularity...if you're the sugar lobby and you want to spread FUD. Makes the same sense as spreading FUD like "artificial", "processed" and "we can never know". All great lies.
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It's not just the unhealthy amounts. It's also the rate of absorption.
In nature sugar is usually bound up with fiber, which slows its rate of absorption, and allows it to be metabolized throughout the body. When consumed in concentrated form it is absorbed too quickly, hence metabolized only in the liver, which over time causes NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) as well as increasing resistance to insulin, ghrelin, and leptin, which encourages consuming even more, and the cycle continues resulting
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The issue is that, except salt, sugar is probably the cheapest ingredient in a kitchen. And, locally, we paid double or triple for sugar as compared to salt.
I pay for sugar around 6 per kg, and good cheese for cheesecake is 30/kg. Eggs would be around 20+/kg, double cream also some 30/kg.
You can see the economic part too - replacing 200g of cheese by 200g of sugar in a 1kg cake saves about 10% of ingredients cost.
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Indeed. The primary problem is "sweet", not how "sweet" is created. Personally I find most regularly "sweet" things overbearing and disgusting. When I cook a recipe with sugar, I usually use 1/3 the amount specified, sometimes less. It does help that I am in the minority that finds many artificial sweeteners to taste "chemically". You really do not need the amounts of sugar routinely used today and substituting them does not make things better.
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Yes, fortunately, stevia is not artificial.
It also tastes like shit, but being artificial really isn't a reason to avoid something. But a good reason to avoid it is...if it tastes like shit.
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It also tastes like shit, but being artificial really isn't a reason to avoid something. But a good reason to avoid it is...if it tastes like shit.
Stevia isn't too bad in cold tea and non-carbonated fruity drinks. I can't stand it in hot drinks though, and it's absolutely revolting in anything carbonated.
My partner bought some Stevia sweetened diet cola (I can't recall the brand, but it was something sold at Target) once because they were out of his usual diet coke, due to the ongoing supply chain issues. He tried one sip, turned to me and said "Ugh. This tastes really off." So, I told him it really can't be that bad and tried it for myself.
Turns
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My partner bought some Stevia sweetened diet cola (I can't recall the brand, but it was something sold at Target)
I got "Zevia" creamy root beer a couple weeks ago and it has tasted pretty good. Stevia flavor might go better with root beer though.
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I looked it up to see if I could find it, and it was this stuff [amazon.com]. Judging by the fact it doesn't seem to be coming up on Target's site anymore and Amazon has it for some crazy jacked up price by a third party seller, I'm assuming it might've been discontinued. Good riddance, I guess.
I've tried one of the Zevia flavors (I can't recall which, though) at a friend's place, because his fiancé is into the whole health food thing and that's all they had. If anything really stood out about it, it was the unp
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but given the choice I'd prefer Coke Zero, Diet Pepsi, or that Pina Colada flavored Walmart brand diet soda.
Yeah, and aspertame has been well studied and found to be safe, whereas stevia has not.
I would also add I tried using pure stevia to make a cake, but first of all pure stevia is really expensive and hard to find, but secondly it has a strong anise flavor, which means you definitely can't use it straight as a substitute for sugar.
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Niether is Erythritol. Unlike Stevia, Erythritol doesn't taste like shit.
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And that "non artificial" helps how? Because it has no impact on the nature of the thing you are consuming. There is no magical "natural" blessing on it.
Dr. Mercola is a quack (Score:5, Interesting)
Aspartame both puts weight on you and has been linked to anxiety issues.
Established medical science has proven that aspartame is safe, and unless you're violating the laws of thermodynamics it is impossible for something that contains no calories to make you "put on weight".
The three main reasons people demonize artificial sweeteners (and it's already been mentioned, there's a mistake in the title, Erythritol is not artificial) are:
1. Unscientific studies. There have been some studies released where people who use sugar substitutes are compared against those who don't, and frequently the people who don't use the sugar substitutes have greater success at sticking to their diets. Correlation does not imply causation [wikipedia.org], though, and to truly test if non-caloric sugar substitutes lead to weight gain, all of the study participants would be required to rigidly adhere to the same diet.
However, we can save those hypothetical research participants the time and agony of such an ordeal, because we already have ways of determining how many calories are present in a food. I'll give you a hint: it's already printed on the side of that box of Equal.
2. Dr. Mercola. This quack has all sorts of pseudoscientific reasons why certain things are bad for you, and if you buy his books (or whatever else he sells), you'll learn how to avoid them! How immensely helpful of him. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the internet, misinformation spreads just as well as facts (and sometimes even better), so you'll find that most of the belief that artificial sweeteners are harmful, ultimately traces back to this doctor.
3. The cancer warning on saccharine. People get their artificial sweeteners confused, and since one of them did at one time have a cancer warning, it's easy to assume they must all be bad for you. By the way, are you wondering whatever happened to that cancer warning? Well, as it turns out the rodents used in the food safety study turned out to have a propensity for developing cancer through a pathway that isn't applicable to humans. Oops.
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and to truly test if non-caloric sugar substitutes lead to weight gain, all of the study participants would be required to rigidly adhere to the same diet.
No, the theory is that using sugar substitutes makes it harder to rigidly adhere to any diet by throwing off the brain's hunger controls and causing people to crave more food in general. (It's this extra food that is consistent with the laws of thermodynamics, BTW.) Making all the participants strictly adhere to a particular diet would prove nothing since a *change in diet* is the alleged cause of the weight gain.
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No, the theory is that using sugar substitutes makes it harder to rigidly adhere to any diet by throwing off the brain's hunger controls and causing people to crave more food in general.
Or they're just proving that people who have the willpower to give up sweetened foods are more likely to stick to their diet regimen.
However, is the inverse true? If someone lacks the discipline to stick to a diet, does denying them sweetened foods improve their chances for success? There might very well be a psychological factor in play, in the same way as military boot camp doesn't let you forget that your days of living a lazy routine are completely over. Some people might very well need that proverbi
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The psychology of it all is certainly very interesting, but none of it changes the fact that zero calorie sugar substitutes, by definition, still contain zero calories.
Certain drugs for treating mental health conditions also contain zero calories, but have well-known side effects of significant weight gain. (And many other drugs often cause significant weight loss.) The calorie count of the drugs themselves are obviously irrelevant, though, and it would be silly to focus on that when considering the effects on the patients' weights.
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Certain drugs for treating mental health conditions also contain zero calories, but have well-known side effects of significant weight gain.
Drugs are tested by following proper scientific methodology to determine efficacy and screen for side effects. If artificial sweeteners caused increased hunger cravings by a specific mechanism of action as a function of their chemical makeup, such side effects would've been revealed when the sweeteners underwent similar forms of human trials.
It turns out that when the science is done properly [cambridge.org], artificial sweeteners produce a result that is indistinguishable from plain water.
If there truly is a causal effec
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This point cannot be made strongly enough. It is absurd to ignore affects on appetite, in fact that is all that matters.
Appetite is a biological function, not. a sign of weak character or inferiority like people assume when demonizing fat people. Weight gain, beyond daily variations, is due to something going wrong. We all usually have a calorie surplus but we all don't gain weight because of it.
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"...the fact that zero calorie sugar substitutes, by definition, still contain zero calories."
But not zero impact to metabolism and they are included in foods that contain calories.
Unsurprising to see the "willpower" argument though. We all know that fat people are simply weak in character, right?
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This would be true if you ONLY ate aspartame. But people consume other things too, so it is possible for ingredient X which itself has no calories, to cause:
a) people to eat/crave for other foods that do have calories
b) think that they can eat more calorie rich foods because one thing they are eating doesn't have calories or is "diet" food
c) cause body to store more of the eaten calories as fat instead of burning them directly
d) canada
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Artificial sweeteners have undergone extensive testing for the sort of side effects you're describing. The only studies where people gain weight are the ones where the participants fail to stick to their diets, which you could just as easily blame on a lack of willpower. I'm not discounting the possibility that there may be a psychological component to tasting something sweet and then wanting to stuff your face as a result. The problem with that though is that the results of such a study may not necessar
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'...unless you're violating the laws of thermodynamics it is impossible for something that contains no calories to make you "put on weight".'
While we are on the same side of the argument, this is not true. We don't consume single items in a vacuum and one substance can influence weight gain without itself providing calories. The evidence that aspartame does this is weak, at least at this time. Metabolism is complex and weight gain is a product of metabolism more than it is one of excess calories. Excess
You are so wrong (Score:3)
Re:Limit your Artificial Sweetners (Score:5, Informative)
I speak as someone who has come late to the good nutrition game, so I'm not trying to preach here.
If you're new to it, it goes without saying to do a lot of research, except most sources of "information" far exceed the recommended daily allowances of bullshit. A few signs you're being bullshat by nutrition advice:
1) Advocating for anything "natural" as being better or in any virtuous. That's a big trap and people fall into it far too easily.
2) Advocating for anything organic. The science on that is very clear: Zero benefit. Anybody who tells you otherwise doesn't know a damn thing.
3) Complaining that something has "chemicals" in it (I really don't need to explain this one.)
4) Advocating against GMO (the scentific consensus on GMO being safe is slightly higher than the scientific consensus on climate change.)
5) Advocating any kind of "all-in" diet, e.g. vegetarian, vegan, keto, paleo, etc. Unless you've got a specific medical condition that benefits from one of these, then this is pretty much uniformly bad advice. Oh and the "frutarian" diet is just total nonsense that nobody benefits from, unless you want a fast track to fatty liver disease.
6) Anybody who says limit or avoid dietary cholesterol, saturated fats, or salt (again, barring some medical condition) is most likely using outdated information. In fact, a few years ago the FDA removed its recommended daily intake on cholesterol outright, something it should have done decades earlier.
7) The word "superfood" is complete and utter bullshit. It's actually just a marketing term, has zero basis in science, and nobody who advocates "superfoods" can even agree what the word even means.
8) A few websites that are ideogically motivated and contain high amounts of bullshit if not pure bullshit (and are best avoided): nutritionfacts.org, mercola.org, foodbabe.com (many others I can't think of right now, but you get the idea)
9) Fear mongering against processed food. If they can't explain what exactly they mean by processed food, then they probably have no idea what they're even talking about, as "processed" is really vague. Literally cutting onions is processing them. An example of something highly processed, by definition, that health food fanatics tend to enjoy while advocating heavily against processed foods is coffee. So either they're talking about a very specific thing (like say, nitrate cured meat) or they're really not talking about anything at all.
10) Saying "x causes cancer, therefore avoid". There's a lot of things wrong with this, but it mainly comes down to this: https://xkcd.com/1252/ [xkcd.com]. In general, pretty much everything has some chance of causing cancer. However, if it's GRAS, then it's not going to kill you. Contrary to what basically every health food fanatic everywhere tells you, the rates of cancer, when accounting for longer lived populations than in the past, are actually decreasing, and the survival rates of people who get cancer are increasing.
11) Advocating to avoid something because of an unknown. Especially true when somebody gives incredibly stupid advice like "stay away from anything with ingredients that you can't pronounce." (For why that particular tidbit is bad advice, see this: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com])
But limit any artificial sweeteners in your diet.
No offense, but this is classic bullshit advice, because like most crappy clickbait health advice, it's overly generalized, and advocates a position that more than likely isn't in everybody's best interest. First, not all artificial sweeteners are created equal. Second, the evidence against most of them is at best inconclusive, or at worst (like superfood) is deliberately overblown for one of two reasons: Somebody wants ad revenue, or somebody is trying to market an alternative product.
Case in point: Aspartame. Health food nuts love to
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Yes the word "natural" is misleading. Many things occur naturally, but not in the same form/concentration that they're being used.
Personally i'd stick to things we've been eating for thousands of years, in the same forms that we've been eating for thousands of years. The more they try to mess with foods, the worse things get, and they then compound this by forcing even worse changes in a misguided way to solve the problems they've already caused.
First it was fat, then salt, and now sugar.
Governments pushed
Re:Limit your Artificial Sweetners (Score:5, Informative)
Advocating for anything organic. The science on that is very clear: Zero benefit. Anybody who tells you otherwise doesn't know a damn thing.
O RLY? [nih.gov]
Even a small benefit is non-zero. (See also some of the similar articles linked.)
Who was it who didn't know a damn thing?
Advocating any kind of "all-in" diet, e.g. vegetarian, vegan, keto, paleo, etc.
I lost 100 pounds on a ketogenic diet while not feeling hungry and with my health generally improving. I had a cholesterol test towards the end of the process, and my cholesterol was on the low side of healthy.
Aspartame. Health food nuts love to advocate against it, but when asked why, most of them will answer with "because it's not natural",
Anybody could look this stuff up but you chose not to [usrtk.org]
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"But limit any artificial sweeteners in your diet. The body can't understand them and reacts in ways that eventually hurt you."
Sounds like religion.
"Just get off of them and go to a balanced diet and you'll be happy you did when you get up their in age."
The diet recommended by 4 out of 5 18 year olds.
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Let me simplify that: Limit any sweetener in your diet. Sugar is quite dangerous too. Sugar substitutes are generally not any better, the effects are just more varied.
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Let me simplify that: Limit any sweetener in your diet.
Stevia extract appears to have substantial health benefits, including assisting in regulation of blood sugar levels. Not just that, but there is indication that benefits persist. Official, NIH-style studies suggest that it is at worst harmless.
Not artificial (Score:2)
"Erythritol is an organic compound – a naturally-occurring, four-carbon sugar alcohol" [...] "Occurs naturally in some fruit and fermented foods"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In industrial quantities, they make it from from glucose by fermentation with a yeast, Moniliella pollinis. Not sure whether that counts as artificial.
Either way this is interesting to me, as I fully switched from sugar to erythritol (and stevia). They can't be worse than sugar, can they?
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I personally switched to all natural hemlock extract. Very good at preventing death from cancer I hear.
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That's actually a pretty good way to avoid dying from cancer.
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Generally, the more common something is in nature, the higher amount you can tolerate.
That sounds suspect.
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Along with everything else in his post.
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Generally, the more common something is in nature, the higher amount you can tolerate.
71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water.
Too much water can kill you, as this radio station learned the hard way [wikipedia.org].
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You say that as though it contradicted GPP, but does it? How many substances are there that you can safely consume over 7kg of in one sitting?
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The claim wasn't "too much consumption of a substance in one sitting is bad for you", it was "too much of anything is bad for you". Too much success? Satisfaction? Joy? Happiness?
Platitudes don't contribute to the conversation, by definition. Platitudes and dodgy assertions were all that the post offered.
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But you can tolerate more water than, say, Triflic acid [wikipedia.org].
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Generally, the more common something is in nature, the higher amount you can tolerate.
I can't second that. The amount of bullshit and insanity in nature is rising every day and I can tolerate it less and less.
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...I fully switched from sugar to erythritol (and stevia). They can't be worse than sugar, can they?
Well... Sugar, isn't intrinsically unhealthful. Eating too much of it and, especially, replacing healthful whole foods with highly processed sugary food like substances is a problem. So it probably depends on how much of each sweetener you consume and, in the case of sugar, whether it is in a highly processed form.
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"Sugar, isn't intrinsically unhealthful."
False. Sugar is a powerful trigger of metabolic syndrome.
"Eating too much of it and, especially, replacing healthful whole foods with highly processed sugary food like substances is a problem."
Same can be said for cyanide, so cyanide by your standard isn't "intrinsically unhealthful" either.
"So it probably depends on how much of each sweetener you consume and, in the case of sugar, whether it is in a highly processed form."
False. It is conceivable that there is an
Maybe more a result of Keto diets, than Stevia (Score:2)
Keto diets lead to a lot of health risks. https://www.prevention.com/wei... [prevention.com]
These risks can include heart attacks, depending on where the proteins come from.
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Truly a garbage article not worthy of anyone's time. Written for the most ignorant among us, by the slightly less ignorant.
Third paragraph: "including healthy carbs like fruits and vegetables". Once you see something like this, you know not to read further!
Also:
"The keto diet is notorious for delivering a quick initial slim down. " NOTORIOUS? How about famous? Is weight lose a negative side effect?
"That’s because carbs hold on to more water than protein or fat". Pure ignorance.
"if you veer off
I had been using erythritol, but ... (Score:2)
Having said that, just because monkfruit is natural it doesn't mean it's safe. It's known to be safe, but so was erythritol.
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"but so was erythritol"
so IS erythritol. That hasn't changed.
Try BochaSweet since you clearly haven't. Monkfruit is better than Stevia but that isn't saying much. It needs to be blended with other sweeteners, though, that's why it's "hard to find" not blended. Once you try BochaSweet you will stop searching. It by far tastes most like sugar. Then allulose, then erythritol, then a dozen other things, then monk fruit.
BochaSweet and allulose are sugars, not sugar alcohols. No doubt they will be discover
versus being obese? (Score:2)
But it can help a lot of obese people lose weight, and we know obese people are a high risk for those (plus other) things too.
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I kinda doubt this. Artificial sweeteners often have the opposite effect because it makes the body prep for an onslaught of sugar that never comes and the body reacts by getting hungry.
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"Artificial sweeteners often have the opposite effect because it makes the body prep for an onslaught of sugar that never comes and the body reacts by getting hungry."
Expecting ignorance and you did not disappoint!
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Indeed. Whis is a well-known, well-documented process, but almost nobody seems to know about it. The fix is really simple though: Do without "sweet", regardless from what source it comes. Or rather make it an exception to consume sweet stuff. The craving minimizes itself over time.
As compared to sugar? (Score:5, Interesting)
The right question is: did it lower or raise the risk as compared to people eating the equivalent amount of sugar.
People will choose between sugar or other sweetener, NOT between using or not using sweetener (artificial or otherwise). Useful information is the comparison between two common choices, not with a non-choice.
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As sugar in the amounts that many people would consume is pretty deadly, this is a very valid point. The real health fix is to limit "sweet", not to create it by other means.
Re:This ad paid for by moderna (Score:5, Funny)
TFA is about artificial sweeteners dum-dum. You must be suffering brain fog from long COVID or something.
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TFA is about artificial sweeteners dum-dum. You must be suffering brain fog from long COVID or something.
Pretty much my first take as well. Or maybe these people never left the fog and never learned how to think clearly.
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If you can't see the parables then, judging by the low ID, you might want to get examined for dementia.
lolol parables, you're the prodigal fuckup
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Your days are short and numbered, Mr. Espinoza.
All of our days are short and numbered, coward. Nobody gets out of life alive.
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If I were gay, you and everyone else would know.
Being called gay isn't insulting no matter who does it. Being called fake by a coward on Slashdot means it's a day that ends in y.
Re: (Score:2)
Simple: Too many complete idiots with huge egos. Somebody pushing one single issue everywhere is a dead giveaway for that person to a) not have understood the issue in question, b) that person having a huge ego and believing their one issue is most certainly the most important issue ever and c) the person being a complete asshole.
You know, people of negative worth to society. It is these assholes that do the real damage. True believers in their own unlimited superiority.
Re:erythritol VS xylitol (Score:5, Informative)
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Or he could just use sugar and brush his teeth.
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Brushing teeth after each meal might cause more damage to enamel and teeth than chewing xylitol gum or tablets that will stop the acid attack of the bacteria. Also you can take xylitol directly after the meal, but should wait 30+ mins before brushing, so it isn't very convenient to brush after every meal.
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"I'd stick to stevia."
Because you're paid by a stevia lobby?
I'd do without before I'd ever use Stevia for anything. Tastes absolutely terrible.
There are better alternative sweeteners than sugar alcohols, stevia is not one.
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See extended data figure 1 (page 14) for comparisons with other polyols, including Xylitol.