WHO Warns Against Using Artificial Sweeteners 296
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday released guidance on non-sugar sweeteners (NSS), recommending against using them to control body weight. From the report: The recommendation is based on the findings of a systematic review of the available evidence which suggests that use of NSS does not confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children. Results of the review also suggest that there may be potential undesirable effects from long-term use of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults. The recommendation applies to all people except individuals with pre-existing diabetes and includes all synthetic and naturally occurring or modified non-nutritive sweeteners that are not classified as sugars found in manufactured foods and beverages, or sold on their own to be added to foods and beverages by consumers. Common NSS include acesulfame K, aspartame, advantame, cyclamates, neotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia and stevia derivatives.
The recommendation does not apply to personal care and hygiene products containing NSS, such as toothpaste, skin cream, and medications, or to low-calorie sugars and sugar alcohols (polyols), which are sugars or sugar derivatives containing calories and are therefore not considered NSS. "Replacing free sugars with NSS does not help with weight control in the long term. People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages," says Francesco Branca, WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety. "NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health."
The recommendation does not apply to personal care and hygiene products containing NSS, such as toothpaste, skin cream, and medications, or to low-calorie sugars and sugar alcohols (polyols), which are sugars or sugar derivatives containing calories and are therefore not considered NSS. "Replacing free sugars with NSS does not help with weight control in the long term. People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages," says Francesco Branca, WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety. "NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health."
Conditional Advice (Score:2, Interesting)
This is interesting advice. I once knew someone who would drink a couple 2L bottles of Pepsi per day. In order to lose weight, he decided to replace it with a couple 2L bottles of fruit juice instead. Not sure where he got that idea from, and he got fired a few weeks later because he kept falling asleep in the bathroom so I don't know how it worked out for him. However, surely replacing it with Diet Pepsi would've been a better move, as long as he didn't compensate for that loss of calories with additional
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Interpret it as "sweet - dangerous". Already well established for sugar and all other non-artificially sweet stuff. Was well-established for artificial sweeteners as well and has been for a long time, just not nearly as widely known, probably due to manipulations by the industry behind it.
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You're assuming he wouldn't have eaten some kind of sweet snack instead. To lose weight, you perhaps need to train yourself to like other kinds of less-sweet food.
Good study, bad prescription (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the study [who.int] rather than the press release. Page 1 tabulates the results.
The authors (subjectively) rate all the negative health correlations as 'low' or 'very low' on the GRADE scale. For reference "very low" on that scale means "The true effect is probably markedly different from the estimated effect" and "low" means "The true effect might be markedly different from the estimated effect."
My take is the WHO is perfectly justified based on the evidence in recommending doctors not suggest artificial sweeteners as a remedy to their obese patients, because on average and in the long term it is not proving an effective treatment for them.
But the same is stupid as a general population level edict (which is the press release, not the study). There's absolutely nothing there to give a good reason why you can't enjoy a zero-calorie drink to sate your thirst without adding sugar and calories to your diet. You're only going to be in trouble if you think of that as a justification to skip going to the gym and eat more junk food.
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well, more than an "edict", the recommendation to not use sweeteners at all is a good one. if nss have no benefit besides taste and "might be" dangerous, then the rational behavior is to avoid them or minimize consumption.
as i see it the problem is the indiscriminate addition of sugar to everything, and the solution is to just stop doing that, not substitute sugar with substances that "might be" harmful. just get rid of it.
and that's just a matter of habits. all food is perfectly fine without sweeteners unl
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> as a remedy to their obese patients
Sugar is the primary contributor to cardiovascular disease and cancers.
And 40% of Americans are pre-diabetic or diabetic.
And WHO is wildly and provably corrupt.
So not a surprised face on the planet.
Could the sugar lobby be behind this? (Score:3, Interesting)
The sugar lobby may be greasing the system to exaggerate the down-sides of artificial sweeteners. Perhaps artificial sweeteners do indeed have minor side effects or risk, but "real" sugar can really fuck the body up, especially in middle age and up.
I agree that ideally you use NO sweeteners of any kind, but many foods suck without it. Artificial sweeteners are probably the least evil between the two.
And the sugar lobby has played games before.
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Ah, yes? Has been known for a long time? (Score:2)
I guess the sweetener mafia did forget some payments to WHO officials recently...
Rebuff to the food industry (Score:2)
#1 Maximising profits, which means increasing sales & cutting costs which means selling the cheapest possible products at the highest possible volumes thereby causing ongoing, persistent obesity epidemics.
#2 Avoiding public scrutiny & regulation, which means adoptin
Very funny (Score:2)
Don't use artificial sweeteners for your coffee, you should have get used to black coffee 50 years ago, now you must die.
Not very helpful.
The WHO is corrupt (Score:2)
*All* artificial sweeteners? (Score:2)
*All* artificial sweeteners? Even those that work by different mechanisms?
Doesn't sound like the basis for sweeping recommendations. But that's probably the news story vs. the actual study.
womp womp (Score:2)
FTFA:
Because the link observed in the evidence between NSS and disease outcomes might be confounded by baseline characteristics of study participants and complicated patterns of NSS use, the recommendation has been assessed as conditional
READ: This is bullshit jumping-to-conclusions stuff which is based in surmise, not science. Equally, lumping all NSSes together is grade-A bullshit. Notably, there is scientific evidence that stevia helps regulate blood sugar levels [nih.gov]. Even if it does not assist with weight loss, it still may have significant positive health effects regarding hypoglycemia and diabetes.
There are ample reasons to be suspicious of artificial sweeteners. But there are absolutely no valid bases upon which to lump them all tog
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OK-- In August 2021, during the spike in Covid, 90% of the fatalities were unvaccinated.
How's that?
Re: Thanks WHO (Score:3)
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OK-- In August 2021, during the spike in Covid, 90% of the fatalities were unvaccinated.
How's that?
Antivaxxers are full of shit, what else is new. I don't think it makes any sense to seriously debate them at this point.
Oh come on, they were comletely right when they said the toxins would be activated [imgur.com]. Remember the bodies lying in the streets?
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true, the number looks small, but it still +100 people dying per 100k people ... also, we all know that younger people had more resilient to the virus, but that doesn't mean that they were all symptom free... specially with the original strain of covid, that was much stronger than the later ones
Finally, you are clearly ignoring the fact that older people had much higher problems with covid and that, yes, the vaccines helped a lot to reduce the number of deaths
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Re: Thanks WHO (Score:3)
Re:Thanks WHO (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say they are basically the same
Pro-tip. If you start with "I would say" and you aren't a professional in that field, then whatever you have to say has roughly the same contribution to the subject as a sack of rocks has helping a drowning person.
I am not saying that it does not work at all
is not too scientific
Serious question. When you indicate "I'm not saying that it does not work at all" do you honestly believe that's conveying a "scientific" quantity? Because for what you're splitting-hairs with the original person over, you're guilty of pretty much the same thing you're tossing at someone else. If you're argument is that "we shouldn't put a whole lot of faith into the statements of the other person because they are not being specific enough" why should anyone put any faith in your argument for exactly the same reason?
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The numbers you quoted are the smallest available of the range published in that article because it was for the youngest age group, thus the least affected, among those groups described (which you acknowledge). The numbers are pro-rata for given sample. This is for the US, so lets assume the US population of that age group is a round 200,000,000. Then 0.13 deaths per 100k become 260 deaths, versus 0.02 deaths/ 100
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These both are very small numbers
Wow, are you really this dense? Yes, the percentages as a number out of a small fraction of the population look small. When you convert them to actual number of people in a population - say, the US population - then they become significant numbers of people.
I would say they are basically the same, due to the uncertainties.
I would say you're a complete fucking idiot and don't know how numbers and math work. The difference between 0.13 per 100k and 0.02 per 100k is 455 people dying per week versus 70 people dying per week. At that rate in a small rural unvaccinated town i
Re:Thanks WHO (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike dietary advice, vaccine advice is based solidly on experimental trials, not merely observational studies.
Why do vaccines bring all the nutjobs out of the woodwork?
By all means, argue over the effectiveness of masks and lockdowns, as advice there was based on estimates and modelling. But anyone with some basic science literacy can soon learn about how vaccine advice is made: on real-world controlled trials.
BTW, Deaths per capita in US, UK , Brazil: 0.33% .
In Australian states where Covid-Zero was maintained until everyone was vaccinated: 0.04%.
That difference translates to 200,000 British and 600,000 Brazilians, almost a million extra dead Americans.
You cannot look at vaccination simply at the individual level. It is a collective public health matter, that works in a broader context.
Re:Thanks WHO (Score:5, Informative)
Damn, I went on a rant and forgot to bring it back to sugars. Must not get triggered by nutjobs.
Beware media exaggeration of health advice. The WHO publication is a guideline, based on available observational data, and should not be seen as a firm scientific claim on the effects of sweeteners.
The PDF is here: https://www.who.int/publicatio... [who.int]
Some examples of the language from the executive summary:
However, there is no clear consensus on whether NSS are effective for long-term weight control or if they are linked to other long-term ... ... in short-term RCTs, but was associated with increased BMI and risk of incident obesity in long-term prospective observational studies
health effects at habitual intakes within the ADI.
studies found that higher NSS consumption by adults led to lower body weight and body mass index (BMI),
Re:Thanks WHO (Score:5, Insightful)
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And to address directly your question, when working in the US I had a colleague who had a one gallon cup (yes! basically a bucket with a handle, a cap and a long straw). In the morning she would arrive with it full of coke and drink it al
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It left a dire taste in my mouth all afternoon
Taste is a strange thing that develops constantly as you age, *especially* if you change you diet. The word "aquired taste" exists for a reason. But where I'm going with this is that I agreed with you. Past tense. Coke was lovely. Diet Coke tasted like a sugar coated ballsac. Now fast forward a year and a "no sugar month" challenge later I literally cannot stand the taste of Coke (neither Diet nor Classic, though can tolerate Zero). My palate changed when I stopped hoovering up sugar by the bottle worth and
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and it is always clear, sugar is by far the most unhealthy sweetener.
From the summary:
"People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages,"
Also bad health advice. Substitute known unhealthy sugars for substances for which there is no proof that they are deterimental.
"NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value."
Irrelevant. NSS are substitutes for sugars which are also
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Shit, imagine drinking 8 diet sodas a day. A coke zero is 40 mg of sodium and the ideal human consumption of sodium is 1,500 mg. 20% of your sodium intake just in caramel colored liquid. It's so salty you get desensitized to the salt and now you are salting your food. Now you have stage 2 hypertension and die years too soon.
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It didn't translate to instant weight loss, but I did lose weight from it. I also generally feel better, don't have crashes every day, and don't feel that crazy addiction to sugar I used to (the caffeine still has me though, but I'm fine with unsweetened teas).
Artificial sweeteners may not be "healthy" for you, but they're not particularly unhea
Re:Thanks WHO (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware media exaggeration of health advice. The WHO publication is a guideline
This should apply to everything including your earlier advice for GP to debate mask effectiveness. Really most of the hysteria has resulted from people not understanding the meaning of words. At no point in the first 6 months of COVID did the WHO state non-medical masks didn't work. They stated they aren't recommended on the basis of a lack of information about their effectiveness, and then commissioned studies to see if they were effective. 2 months later the studies concluded and the guideline was updated.
Media: "WHO flipflops, says masks work where as previously they said they didn't - be angry about this sheeple!"
Medical reporting is atrocious.
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Brazil mostly killed people by not having a good enough healthcare system due the population being mostly poor and unable to either contribute for a good public system or being able to afford good hospitals.
The vaccination happened quite early and got basically the entire population, despite the president's dumb act.
But with 1/16 of the healthcare fund of UK per capita, it was quite inevitable.
But that does contribute to your argument anyway, given as i just pointed out, UK has 16 times the fund per capita
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Having a generally stronger healthcare system also meant that countries like the UK had a lot more elderly among their population.
Countries with poor healthcare systems didn't have a lot of elderly residents to start with, since the healthcare system wasn't as good at prolonging their lives.
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If countries with good healthcare had problems and many people died, what to expect from countries with weaker healthcare ... even worse when the people in charge denied that covid was a problem, like Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in USA and Boris Johnson in UK... but at least in the USA and UK, the healthcare is more independent and they made preparation for taking care of covid patients. In Brazil it was mostly denied.
Finally, even countries with good healthcare and leaders trying to control the covid spread
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While Bolsonaro himself was publically denying covid, the government was already working on getting the vaccines and applying em
It's yet another good example why it's good to spread the power, instead of just letting one man have the final word on everything.
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Solid trials on 8 mice.
Not a safety trial, duh! You need to ask why a minor tweak to an existing vaccine does not need them.
I was surprised, but the only people complaining seem to be those who think all vaccines are the work of the devil.
It also remains to be seen whether the modified vaccine is more effective in the real world than the previous version, and how much so.
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It would really help if you understood what that trial was about instead of trying to parade it out as a "proof" for your position. All you prove that way is that you don't know jack shit about how vaccination and clinical trials work.
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Wikipedia is not always a perfect source :)
Old numbers from before the border was opened. Actual rate in WA was over 95% for adults when we let is spread. More for high-risk groups.
Of course it took a bit of persuasion. For a little while, you had to show proof of vaccination in liquor stores. That persuaded a few who'd been too lazy to bother.
Fortunately, vaccination had not become a tribal/political issue here like in the US. Not so many conspiracy theorists here, so willing to get vaccinated for conve
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As stated before, survival ain't everything [nih.gov]. It's like saying gangrene ain't so bad, you can just have the foot amputated and you'll survive.
What the vaccine did was not only to lower your chance of contracting the disease, it also had a considerable impact on your chance to not have a severe case. Both good enough reasons to get vaccinated.
If you prefer math to hysteria, of course. But hey, to each their own.
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I don't care much about short term effects like 110 days of sickness, I am more scared of a lifelong reduced heart capacity from a severe case of myocarditis.
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What is really interesting to me is how myocarditis is even a side effect of covid-19! Look it up, not one covid patient ever had it and ...wait I'm being told that is not true and that....
Among nearly 43 million people in England, ages 13 and older, who received at least one dose and up to 3 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, fewer than 3,000 people (0.007%) were hospitalized or died with myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, during the study period of December 1, 2020 through December 15, 2021.
Only 617
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Obviously not, unless you believe that they have internet access in the afterlife.
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I would like to introduce fat people to the concept of moderation.
That you believe all obesity is because of over-consumption belies your ignorance. Sure, if you eat less, you gain less weight. For many people though, eating little enough to lose - or even maintain - a target weight means being hungry, all the time. It's called dieting. It has never worked, and it will never work.
I realize this is entirely anecdotal, but simply by seriously reducing my carbohydrate intake (not quite a keto diet, more like keto-lite), I lost 30 lbs. With zero reduction in caloric intake. I
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Sure, if you eat less, you gain less weight."
See, if you hadn't added all that fat to your sentence it would be edible.
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+1, Funny
Re:Pour Some Splenda On Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Most obese people I know (and my family has several of them) are in denial. They eat a LOT of food. If you ask them, they'll tell you they are cutting back. But there's always an excuse to get a snack, and it's not carrots they grab.
Your keto-like died likely works not because it's keto or low-carb, but because you keep track of what you eat. This is the key I've seen in everyone who successfully keeps off weight, including myself: keeping track of both your intake and your actual weight, not lying to yourself.
The American Heart Association suggests caution in following low-carb diets. https://www.heart.org/en/news/... [heart.org]
Re:Pour Some Splenda On Me (Score:5, Informative)
Most obese people I know (and my family has several of them) are in denial. They eat a LOT of food. If you ask them, they'll tell you they are cutting back. But there's always an excuse to get a snack, and it's not carrots they grab.
There is likely a lot of truth to this, I agree. I've never been much of a snacker (my One Weird Trick there is to simply not keep junk food in the house in the first place)
Your keto-like died likely works not because it's keto or low-carb, but because you keep track of what you eat.
No, not really. I don't track what I eat on the daily. I suppose I do measure out the odd meal so I can get that mental picture of "huh... that's what a thousand calories looks like on a dinner plate". My statement of "no reduction in caloric intake" is in the ballpark, but by no means accurately measured. (I'd edit that post for clarity actually, but Slashdot)
The American Heart Association suggests caution in following low-carb diets.
My family doctor advised me otherwise. I'll take that individually tailored advice over the scattershot one-size-fits-all approach of the AHA (although I do not doubt their competence or intentions).
Re:Pour Some Splenda On Me (Score:5, Insightful)
When I said you "keep track" of what you eat, I didn't mean literally measuring your food intake. It's more that you *pay attention* to what you eat, and what quantities you eat.
I personally don't follow any special diet. I just *stop eating* when I'm no longer hungry (which is different from stopping when you're full). Sometimes that's hard when I'm sitting in a restaurant and leave half my plate uneaten. It requires--paying attention--to what I eat. It works. At 6'1", I'm at 190 lbs and have a 33 inch waist. It's not automatic, if I stop paying attention, my weight goes up.
If your keto diet works for you, and you remain healthy, great. But I'd suggest it's not really about carbs specifically, and more about controlling the quantity and quality of the food we eat.
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Where are you keeping all that weight? I'm about the same height (was 6'2" but not any more), 165lb, and 37' waist.
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Every study I've seen where people did a low carbohydrate diet, they did indeed consume fewer calories due to feeling fuller quicker, even if they didn't realise it. You only need a small calorie deficit beyond your basal metabolic rate to lose weight (at least until your BMR adjusts). Doesn't work for everyone, but where it does it's quite effective. Try something for a while, take notes, and if it doesn't work for you try something else is an effective strategy.
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Most obese people I know (and my family has several of them) are in denial.
Give them a bottle of omega 3 pills. If they're needing a snack, tell them to eat up to 8000mg of that a day. It gives you the feeling of satisfaction without the bad health effects.
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There is no "one easy trick" when it comes to weight loss. It's hard, and taking a nutritional supplement isn't a cure-all.
If it were as easy as taking Omega 3, this would have surfaced in actual research (not the kind sponsored by supplement companies).
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Your keto-like died likely works not because it's keto or low-carb, but because you keep track of what you eat. This is the key I've seen in everyone who successfully keeps off weight, including myself: keeping track of both your intake and your actual weight, not lying to yourself.
Eh. I'm not the guy you are replying to, but I don't keep track, I just started substituting stuff that is filling (mostly "keto like" stuff) for stuff that isn't. And I lost 35 pounds and am now at the high end of "normal". I only check my weight every month or so too, just to do an occasional check.
Some people do have to keep rigid track though. My wife lost 90+ pounds (and is fully in "normal" range now) through both rigid calorie tracking and food substitutions.
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I didn't say it's necessary to keep "rigid" track. Just pay attention.
We'll see if your keto-like diet is still working for you in a year or two. That's the problem with all these diet fads. They all work in the short run, but eventually they aren't sustainable. And Keto specifically comes with some serious health risks of its own.
https://www.uchicagomedicine.o... [uchicagomedicine.org].
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I lost 5 pounds a week cutting out carbohydrates. I still ate like normal, just no carbs. The first week was miserable. I felt exhausted and mentally clouded. After that week was over, every week after that, 5 pounds lost.
I am eating carbohydrates again. I stopped losing weight. I did not go back to my previous weight.
You believe it is about putting the fork down. For many people, that may be true. For a majority, it is more about the fillers and such that are added to real food. If a person has a big belly
Re:Pour Some Splenda On Me (Score:5, Informative)
Your story is typical. Many people can lose 5 pounds, then gain it back, or stop losing weight. To be effective, a diet has to be sustainable. This is a major flaw in both low-carb diets and low-calorie diets.
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You have an interesting idea of what science is, if you believe the so-called research sponsored by nutritional supplement companies, or diet product companies.
Actual research paints a much muddier picture of Keto and its cousins.
https://www.health.harvard.edu... [harvard.edu]
https://www.uchicagomedicine.o... [uchicagomedicine.org]
https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/... [nm.org]
Your criticism of religion is off-topic and flamebait.
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I would like to introduce fat people to the concept of moderation.
For many people though, eating little enough to lose - or even maintain - a target weight means being hungry, all the time.
What a cruel trick of evolution that eating the appropriate amount of food makes you feel miserable all the time. And if you do indulge in a satisfying amount of food, your health suffers. Reminds me of that line from The Matrix:
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one wou
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Botched the hell out of the quote tags. My bad.
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Botched the hell out of your quote tags. Your bad.
But you're right, and it's a very apt way to put it.
For millennia, the default state of the human condition has been hunger. For millennia, those sweet sweet carbs have been in short supply. We couldn't mill wheat nor refine sugar nor grow rice on agricultural scales for all but a minuscule portion of our existence as a species. This is something that has only changed in the last century. We have a biological system designed to exist in a perpetual state of
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I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Statistically, throwing less calories at the population will result in fewer obese people.
On an individual level, some people just need to get off their ass, and others are trapped.
Those who are trapped have probably gotten in to some kind of feedback cycle: gain weight, get sore joints, can't exercise without extreme pain, gain more weight, etc.
The worst of those feedback cycles are the ones where you see people that can't get out the door. A lot of the weig
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If you want to turn everybody in to a North Korean peasant, then yes, obesity won't exist.
Being underweight is worse than being overweight.
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Obesity is by definition caused by over consumption.
If you don't consume, you don't become obese. Countries facing famine don't have obese populations because they are not able to over-consume.
Just because food is available, doesn't mean you're forced to consume it. You are free to say no.
And yes feeling hungry is unpleasant, wether by your choice or forced by circumstance.
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by definition
I do not think that means what you think it means.
By definition, being obese is a simple state of being, and has no defined cause. It can be caused by thyroid problems and diabetes, among others, beyond simply overeating.
Have you ever known anyone with a malfunctioning thyroid (for lack of a better description)? Their weight yo-yos like you wouldn't believe, despite no changes in diet or lifestyle. If the only factor was the remainder of (calories in - calories out), then thyroid problems would not affect w
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So the "malfunctioning" thyroid defeats the laws of physics by absorbing nutrients from the space-time continuum? THAT'S AWESOME!
Basically, that's what it looks like to a layman (including myself), yes.
I'm glad you can solve at least the weight issues caused by bad thyroids tomorrow though. You should call up every doctor who's spent their life studying and treating it, and tell them they're all wrong.
Or yanno, read something about it.
https://www.thyroid.org/thyroi... [thyroid.org]
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The thyroid affects how their body makes use of the food they consume, it's affecting their efficiency causing fluctuations in weight based on the same input of energy.
But the fact remains, if you adjust your food intake you will still lose weight, an overactive thyroid just makes the rate of energy consumption unpredictable.
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Most people that are fat are so because of bad food habits, being the USA the perfect example of that. Much junk food, sweat drinks, not balanced foods. Certain of those people also do the quantity mistake, as everything MUST be big, oversized (T-bone, huge drinks, huge quantities), as that gives a special status quo, "saying" they are important, big and strong
So as everything, moderation in junk food and learn how to eat better is the more important... later the fine tune the amount of food that they may b
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BMI shouldn't be applied to individuals. Dr. Quetelet was well aware that there were too many variables from individual to individual for such a simplistic number to have any relevance.
However, on studies across populations, most of those variables cancel out-- so saying the BMI among a group of patients consuming NSS has risen, is valid. Saying your BMI designates you as mildly overweight is nonsensical.
A long time ago, I looked up (and read) a number of studies on aspertame and it's effects on leptin, r
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Saying your BMI designates you as mildly overweight is nonsensical
Granted. I just threw it in there because it's easily understood. at 6'0 I went from 230 to 200 by cutting back on carbs.
Re:Pour Some Splenda On Me (Score:4, Informative)
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For many people though, eating little enough to lose - or even maintain - a target weight means being hungry, all the time. It's called dieting. It has never worked, and it will never work.
I've never struggled with weight, but one of the weird things I started to realise as I got older is that I don't really get hungry. I mean, I get hungry but it's more like a suggestion, and if I'm busy and ignore it, it goes away and eventually I just get tired instead. When I was doing lots of fitness stuff, I'd have to proactively eat enough for lunch to ensure I didn't run out of energy by dinner.
I sometimes wonder if other thin people have the same experience. As I basically have to put in zero effort
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a target weight means being hungry, all the time. It's called dieting. It has never worked, and it will never work.
The only reason dieting doesn't work is that people go mental after their diet and put the weight back on. It absolutely does work and you're not hungry all the time, not even close. The initial issues of your body realising you're not going to drown it in calories every waking minute until you hate yourself disappears after only a few days. The body reacts to a deviation from a norm, it does not simply assume that fuck it, it's 2023 and anything less than stuffing our faces until our stomach hurts = hunger
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By "dieting" I was referring to the classic, perhaps legacy, definition of "dieting" to mean "reduced calorie diet". By the definition I use at least, that is different than "changing your diet".
It should have been more clearly stated, sorry about that.
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You are correct in that eating a caloric deficit will always result in weight loss, and also in that it's more difficult for some than others. I think you gloss over just *how* much more difficult it is for some.
You're wrong though, where you assume it's the only factor, and you are wrong where you assume a caloric surplus will always result in weight gain (otherwise people who consistently overeat would never plateau). You have an overly simplistic view of the human digestive system and you are assuming th
Re: (Score:2)
Show me pictures of fat concentration camp survivors? Or are you a holocaust denier in addition to a gluttony denier?
Ah, so you believe the solution is poor nutrition, starvation diets, and "work 'em 'til they drop" philosophy. Why not throw in some mental and physical torture?
That will lead to weight loss, yes. But it creates all sorts of other health issues, including death.
I suppose you also open dinner conversations with "When did you stop beating your wife?".
Wise of you to post as AC, rather than reveal just how phenomenally inhumane you're willing to be to score points on the internet, and that you lack any empath
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Show me pictures of fat concentration camp survivors? Or are you a holocaust denier in addition to a gluttony denier?
I think you misunderstood the logical link. The post you are responding to claims we should not believe that all obesity is due to over-consumption. The logical equivalent of "not (all x, P)" (not all elements x validate proposal P) is "there exists x, not (P)" (at least one element x validates not P). This is not playing on words and abstract concepts, this is how to understand the sentence you were replying to. OP means that at least some obesity has other causes than over-eating taken as a shameful sin (
Go read The Space Merchants (Score:2)
And I get it, with your inflammatory language you're trolling. And I don't normally feed the trolls, but you've already gotten your replies so your post isn't going to just disappear (a good troll knows how to get replies, because those replies get modded up and keep their post v
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That is a nice concept of making a cushion around you so you don't have to accept the fact that all the merchandising and folks on the side of the road etc. is somehow responsible for making you fat. Wahhh, the devil made me do it!
I stand by my statement as what I believe and had no thought of 'trolling'. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it isn't any good.
Let me also introduce another novel concept... Personal responsibility.
Re: (Score:2)
In it there's something called "The Circle Of Consumption". Popsi makes you want cigarettes that make you want the snake chips that make you want Popsi that makes you want....
And that's firmly in the realm of psychology, which is an entirely different discipline than the science of how calories make one's ass wider.
Thing with psychology though, is we're all a little bit different. Some of us are wired to just say "fuck it, the idea of stuffing my face with moon pies still seems gross, even after having this Coke Zero."
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And yet, during a period when I was attempting to lose weight by caloric reduction, all it did was make me crave more food. After two or three weeks of no weight loss, in spite of nearly 1000 fewer calories a day, I went nuts and ate an entire medium pizza with pepperoni, sausage and extra cheese, and washed it down with half a liter of soda.
Obesity is not well understood. It isn't simply a matter of how much you consume, but how your body processes food, and there can be dozens of factors.
In my case, it
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Is that also your solution for drugs? Just simply don't push that needle into your vein and presto, no heroin problem in our world anymore?
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Yep.
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Medical studies have recommended against artificial sweeteners for at least a decade (that I know of)
Not good studies. The evidence says some sweeteners are safe, some are not great. Which is to be expected.
It seems to be the entire "this is sending the body improper signalling messages, so it responds inappropriately, and then learns inappropriate responses" thing that's going on.
Your body learns to distinguish between sugar and artificial sweeteners. People who drink a lot of coke learn to recognize and distinguish the diet from the sugared.
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Indeed. The suspicion that these are dangerous or worse than useless in the context of weight control are very old, but I think most research proving that is from the last 10 or 15 years. It seems the dangers come directly from simulating "sweet" without sugar being present in the amount your body expects, so all artificial and natural sugar replacements will be affected. The solution is rather simple: Do without "sweet" or make it an occasional treat only. First step: Take your caffeine without sugar. It a
well.. (Score:2)
I'm not on board with the dumber things people are saying here like the dude above who thinks he understands how to cure obesity, but one thing I do know is that artificial sweeteners cause a blood sugar increase in diabetics. I know this because I can watch it. 32 years of diabetes shows me this is true.
As to the why - i suspect the body reacts to artificial sweeteners in some of the same ways it reacts to actual sugars. Obviously there are no calories, but it's not helpful to me in terms of blood sugar
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Foods generally have lots of "hidden sugars" in addition to artificial sweeteners. Even a spoon full of Splenda from the packets contains dextrose, which can cause an insulin reaction. There have been plenty of proper glycemic studies done on artificial sweeteners, and by themselves they do not provoke an insulin reaction. Again though, all bets are off once they're added to a food that contains other forms of sugars.
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In every diabetic? Type I or Type II? Are there other factors involved?
I believe you. It happens to you. I know you monitor your blood sugar. But the observation alone is non-scientific to me. The hypothesis you introduce is interesting. Maybe sweetness alone initiates a metabolic process of some kind? You're measuring glucose, right?
I have chronic fatigue problems. I instructively tend to crave and eat more sugars (any kind) when the fatigue is worse. The sweeter the better. Maybe I'm doing that to push th
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plenty of people also order a Diet Coke with their supersized Big Mac meal. That's not the fault of the Diet Coke.
It also makes a huge difference in the calorie content of the meal, it's difficult to argue that it's not a better idea than drinking the normal coke.
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I don't think it's "bullshit science," but I think the conclusion (and therefore the guidance) is useless.
The "bullshit science" is every causation implied by correlation-based study where they come to the conclusion that it must be the artificial sweeteners when people fail to stick to their diets.
Personally, I don't notice my hunger patterns changing at all regardless of whether I drink unsweetened seltzer water (stuff like this [bubly.com]), diet cola, or artificially sweetened fruit flavored beverages. Funny thing too, I also never notice any extra money in my bank account when I wake up early and go to bed early [wiktionary.org], eit
Re:Not a new piece of info (Score:5, Informative)
I skimmed through the actual publication (not the summary that the link leads to), which is a 90 page PDF. Important takeaways:
The recommendation is VERY specific: do not use artificial sweeteners as a means of weight control. Their evidence is that their use produces short term weight loss, but not long-term weight loss. People don't keep the weight off, even if they keep using artificial sweeteners. That is the primary thrust of their evidence and of their recommendation: it doesn't work for weight loss, specifically, so don't use it for weight loss.
They also say that it should not be used to avoid noncommunicable diseases for the same reason: it doesn't work to prevent noncommunicable diseases (they list a few as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer). So, using artificial sweeteners doesn't prevent these things, therefore they recommend that such sweeteners not be used to prevent these things.
They do mention the potential for adverse health effects given long term use, but they do not go into detail. They do not present any new evidence that this stuff is any more dangerous then we previously thought it was. And this is something everybody already knows: using a lot of artificial sweeteners is bad for you.
They also state right upfront "The recommendation is based on evidence of low certainty overall..." They don't have strong evidence or proof and they don't claim to. They have seen just enough in the numbers to make a "recommendation," and that's it.
So I don't think this is anything to get worked-up over. The evidence here is of low certainty and the only new thing it says is "this doesn't work as a method of weight control, and it doesn't prevent diseases, so don't use these for those purposes."
Ok. This would, I think, be of interest to people who are basing their weight loss strategy on the use of artificial sweeteners (it won't work, use a better strategy). For casual, moderate, use, they make no recommendations neither for nor against.
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Please mod up the parent post!!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with these sort of recommendations is that they ignore harm reduction in favor of some idealistic goal. The same thing is happening with vaping - there's all sorts of studies and experts attacking it, under the delusion that vapers will simply kick the habit completely rather than just go back to smoking old school tobacco.
A can of regular Coke has 140 empty calories in it. If you're going to down a few of them no matter what, it absolutely is more healthy to avoid ingesting all that high fruc
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I see your point, but harm is not necessarily being reduced. If you have switched to diet drinks to avoid diabetes this may not be effective, and might lead to you dismissing early diabetes symptoms because you feel safe from it. This advice is saying that you might be better off staying with regular drinks and limiting intake rather than drinking lots of diet. Or using nicotine patches during the day and treating yourself to one cigar in the evening.
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If there was a hard evidence, this would not be a recommendation, but a total ban.
You seem to believe that the WHO has the ability to ban things.
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If there was a hard evidence, this would not be a recommendation, but a total ban. There is no ban.
True or false? Tobacco is bad for you. Whether you're setting it on fire and inhaling the fumes, or sticking it in your gums and letting the nicotine seep into your jaw, it's not healthy. It KILLS PEOPLE. Not everyone who smokes, of course, not everyone who likes a good chew now and then, but by and large, it is established that tobacco increases your risk of becoming a corpse.
So why hasn't it been banned?
There are a number of very powerful corporations that make money off of selling artificial sweetene
Re: Not a new piece of info (Score:2)
If only there was some hard evidence against tobacco, right.
Oh wait.
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. There is hard evidence that sugar is really bad and not only regarding weight control. Is there a ban on sugar? No, there is not. Same here.
The recommendation here is just to not use low-cal sweeteners for controlling body weight, because there is sound scientific evidence that does not work. So want to lose weight? Do not think sweeteners will do anything for that and may be counter-productive. So do without them. Simple, really. And not unexpected. This has been credibly speculated on for a few