Common Low-Calorie Sweetener May Be Riskier For the Heart Than Sugar, Study Suggests (nbcnews.com) 85
Another study is raising concern about the safety of the widely used sugar alcohol sweetener erythritol, a low-calorie sugar substitute found in "keto-friendly" foods, baked goods and candies. From a report: Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic compared erythritol to typical sugar and found only erythritol caused worrisome cardiovascular effects. Although the study was small, it's the first head-to-head look at people's blood levels after they consume products with erythritol or sugar (glucose). "We compared the results, and glucose caused none of the problems," said Dr. Stanley Hazen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and the lead author of the study, published Thursday morning in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.
Erythritol is one ingredient on a growing list of nonsugar sweeteners found in low-calorie and sugar-free foods. Erythritol and xylitol are sugar alcohols that are sweet like sugar but with far fewer calories. Erythritol is often mixed with another sweetener, stevia, and xylitol is often found in gum, mouthwash and toothpaste. Earlier studies from Hazen's lab -- one published last year and the other in June -- found potential links between the sugar alcohols and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. The research suggested both sugar alcohols might make blood platelets stickier and therefore more susceptible to clotting and blocking veins or arteries, in turn contributing to heart attacks and strokes. For the new research, Hazen's team analyzed the heart effects of erythritol and regular sugar -- in this case, simple glucose -- by enrolling two groups of healthy middle-aged male and female volunteers: 10 who consumed the erythritol and 10 who consumed sugar.
Erythritol is one ingredient on a growing list of nonsugar sweeteners found in low-calorie and sugar-free foods. Erythritol and xylitol are sugar alcohols that are sweet like sugar but with far fewer calories. Erythritol is often mixed with another sweetener, stevia, and xylitol is often found in gum, mouthwash and toothpaste. Earlier studies from Hazen's lab -- one published last year and the other in June -- found potential links between the sugar alcohols and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. The research suggested both sugar alcohols might make blood platelets stickier and therefore more susceptible to clotting and blocking veins or arteries, in turn contributing to heart attacks and strokes. For the new research, Hazen's team analyzed the heart effects of erythritol and regular sugar -- in this case, simple glucose -- by enrolling two groups of healthy middle-aged male and female volunteers: 10 who consumed the erythritol and 10 who consumed sugar.
xylitol (Score:3)
xylitol is good for your teeth. I find it hard on my stomach (at least via TicTac X-Freeze). xylitol is toxic to dogs.
stevia tastes like some kind of shitty mint, really stands out in anything to me.
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And sucralose tastes like chlorine.
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I use xylitol toothpaste. It is an effective mouth anti-bacterial/anti-plaque/anti-cavity agent:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... [amazon.com]
And I also chew xylitol gum both for dry mouth and for cleaning teeth/mouth after eating. It is good stuff. I don't think using toothpatse and gum/mints will contribute much in actual consumption. Also don't have any GI problems from it.
Sorbitol, on the other hand (and I think maltitol as well), tears my GI up in a major way. Just a handful of sorbitol-sweetened candies or so
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Love the taste of sucralose- it tastes almost exactly like sugar, although it is not sticky.
Sucralose is one of the low calorie sweeteners I actually don't mind but I do believe it is technically "a sugar" and has about 2/3 the calories of sucrose by volume.
Re:xylitol (Score:4, Informative)
>"Sucralose is one of the low calorie sweeteners I actually don't mind but I do believe it is technically "a sugar" and has about 2/3 the calories of sucrose by volume."
Good point.
Typical formulations of sucralose, like Splenda, is 31% the calories of sugar (not 2/3 that of sugar as you stated, more like less than 1/3 that of sugar). But most of those calories is from the dextrose added (which is the bulk filler)
The confusing part is that sucralose doesn't raise blood sugar and doesn't promote tooth decay, but dextrose does. So it depends very much on the fillers used. Sucralose is about 600 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), so sold ALONE, it almost always has a ton of fillers.
So if you go for a flavored drink powder or soda that is sweetened with sucralose, it will likely have no fillers. But if you go for "packets" of sweetener for coffee/tea/milk/etc it will have those fillers (typically dextrose).
You *can* buy dextrose-free, no-calorie sucralose, but not in single-use packets (since it would be a microscopic amount of product). With these pure sucralose products, you have to carefully use very little of it! For example, for powder:
https://www.amazon.com/BulkSup... [amazon.com] where you would use only 30mg per "serving"
Or the easier-to-use liquid:
ttps://www.amazon.com/SucraDrops-Bottles-Sucralose-Sweetener-Servings/dp/B06XZLDXN3
Where you would use a single drop to emulate a teaspoon full of sugar.
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Sucralose is about 600 times sweeter than sucrose
That's exactly why it works, very true. I have some sucralose based sweetener that a tiny (about 1 oz) bottle will sweeten my coffee for over a year. The brand I have here is "EZ-Sweetz" 1.05oz liquid but I've seen other similar products. For this product 1 drop is enough for a cup of coffee or tea, for me.
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Ugh
I bought some Lidl fruit tea of some sort. First sip I almost spat it out, it tastes strongly of sweetener. stevia IIRC. It was an instant visceral reaction to me, but not my SO, who just found out a bit too sweet. Maybe there is some "stevia tastes like ass" gene. Shame really, would have been good without that shit.
Funnily enough I like diet Coke more than the normal stuff and certainly coke zero. Maybe due to having it at a formative point in my life. Dunno brains are weird.
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> "stevia tastes like ass" gene
*checks 23 and me*
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stevia tastes like some kind of shitty mint, really stands out in anything to me
Erythritol alone tastes weird and not very sweet, stevia alone is kind of nasty but also super sweet. Together they are surprisingly good, and also produce basically no glycemic response. That's why I'm sad to see erythritol fingered like this. I wonder if it might not actually be good for people with some blood conditions that make them bleed or bruise easily, but now I'm wondering what xylitol tastes like when mixed with stevia.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
I know too much, or maybe just on an empty stomach, does uncomfortable things to my stomach. Xylitol a self-limiting product in that way for me.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Re: EVERYTHING is "bad for you". (Score:3)
Key to making my own [informed] choices is to have reliable information on safety and accurate content information on food packaging.
Re: EVERYTHING is "bad for you". (Score:2)
Even better is to buy products not in a box, so you can see, feel and touch what you will be eating[1] Too bad these mostly requires an ancient skill, one that is lost in many regions around the globe, which I recall was called cooking. Like, not adding water, milk or an egg to what is ready on a pre-packaged container, but actually getting the raw ingredients ready together.
[1] while this alternative will not encompass chemicals such as cultivar toxic products used to kill insects and fungus, you are still
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Well I can't tell if my milk is cut with Melamine unless there is someone tasked with testing it. Because I can't tell by the taste or smell.
Also, you can have Bacillus cereus in your rice or grain, and no amount of cooking is going to keep you from going into kidney failure for eating it. Which is why it's rather important that the supply chain properly stores grain.
And of course, not everyone can cook. The disabled and elderly may not be capable of buying perishable raw ingredients multiple times a week a
Re: EVERYTHING is "bad for you". (Score:2)
You can always change away from shady suppliers. And you can always get help from someone else, if you are not capable to do stuff. After all, if your mother or grandmother has nobody to look after them, and yet they grew you up and made you what you are, what a nice person you have become, and a prime example for your own kin.
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You can always change away from shady suppliers. And you can always get help from someone else, if you are not capable to do stuff.
Reminds me of the co-worker that told me that there was no point in keeping away from toxic substances - and he meant all of them - because as he said, "It's simple - we'll adapt to them!"
Yes, but he didn't understand that adapting means almost everyone would quickly die, and the survivors might survive in a very weakened state.
So after 20 thousand people die from botulism, we'll scratch our heads and say "Maybe we should buy from a different company." And someone will then chime in that "we all die
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You can always change away from shady suppliers. And you can always get help from someone else,
I can't tell which ones are shady and which are not. I'm not operating with perfect information.
After all, if your mother or grandmother has nobody to look after them, and yet they grew you up and made you what you are, what a nice person you have become, and a prime example for your own kin.
Passive-aggressive comments like that are not a good look for you.
I never said my mother has no one to look after her. I said she cooks for herself. She lives in assisted living and they don't always cook for her. She pays for it with the retirement and pension and life insurance my father left behind.
I don't do it because the meals would be cold after I sent them 1500 miles.
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Do your own research? How many test subjects will you be enrolling in your research program? What controls will you use? Don't rely on others, do it yourself!!
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'You're going to die of SOMETHING.'
Exactly!
I'll take a lethal heart-attack any day to having cut my legs off.
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I tossed it awhile back... (Score:2)
When I heard the heart problem studies, I pushed it to the side.
I've heard Splenda, can damage your gut biome.
So far, the only non-sugar sweetener I've heard that isn't harmful (yet)...is allulose.
I've never been a huge sweet eater (although as I age I get a bit more of a sweet tooth)....I do like to use sugar in brewing and the rare des
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The propaganda is working on you then. Don't worry, allulose will come soon enough. Attack the biggest threat first.
"But geez, why can't we get a sweetener that isn't poison to humans?"
We can, it's sugar that the poison. That and the toxic sugar lobby.
Try BochaSweet, it is by far the best alternative. Better than allulose and, like allulose, it is a naturally occurring sugar.
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Meanwhile back in Covidian land they're all certain the Safe & Effective products are OK because they've been injected into billions for $BILLIONS. And sugar is totally harmless, especially HFCS.
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So far, the only non-sugar sweetener I've heard that isn't harmful (yet)...is allulose.
What about Stevia (yuck!) or Monk Fruit (YUM!)? The issue with Monk Fruit is that you usually find it blended with erythritol.
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Well, you summed it up on those two.
I would like to try Monkfruit, but I have yet to find a bag/box of 100% Monkfruit, is always mixed with erythritol.
And Stevia...I have a friend that loves the stuff, but to me is VERY bitter.
Maybe that's kind of how cilantro tastes like soap to some people...I just can't get by the last of powered Stevia.
I was told the liquid stuff would work.
old news (Score:2)
We have discussed this before on Slashdot.
The short version is that this stuff can be BAD for you if you are sensitive to it, but for the vast majority of people to suffer ill-effects you would have to consume A LOT of it. It is super sweet compared to sugar, so it is blended as a tiny percentage by volume in the artificial sweeteners you find available in stores. The person who puts a spoonful in their morning coffee or who uses a cup in a batch of baked goods will not come close to the required hazard l
Re:old news (Score:4, Informative)
Did you RTFA?
From TFA:
"For the new research, Hazen's team analyzed the heart effects of erythritol and regular sugar -- in this case, simple glucose -- by enrolling two groups of healthy middle-aged male and female volunteers: 10 who consumed the erythritol and 10 who consumed sugar.
Both groups fasted overnight. In the morning, their blood was drawn to measure platelet activity. Then, half the volunteers drank glasses of water with 30 grams of glucose mixed in, and half drank glasses of water with 30 grams of erythritol. Hazen said 30 grams of erythritol is an amount typical of erythritol-sweetened foods. "
So, no, they were not comparing normal amounts of sugar to an excessive amount of the artificial sweetener.
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You are correct. I am misremembering...
Erythritol is the bulk material in the artificial sweeteners. It is ~70% as sweet as sugar.
It is the (xylitol, monk fruit, etc.) that it is mixed with that is usually 1000+% sweeter than sugar thus being only a small % of the volume consumed.
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Seriously? 30g of either glucose or erythritol seems like a lot to me. The WHO recommends limited daily intake of free sugars (which glucose certainly qualifies as) to 25g, and the EU recommends limiting daily intake of erythritol to 35g because larger quantities can have undesirable effects on the digestive system.
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The WHO recommends limited daily intake of free sugars (which glucose certainly qualifies as) to 25g
According to this web page, it's more like 50g per day:
https://www.ages.at/en/human/n... [www.ages.at]
And that's "free sugars", so sugar in things like fruit apparently don't count (which sounds a bit bogus to me).
The 25g figure you quote isn't an official recommendation:
https://www.who.int/news/item/... [who.int]
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There are a good percentage of people who are extremely sensitive to various artificial sweeteners, and can very much tell the difference in taste.
This wasn't a problem when you had a choice of products and could pick the one with real sugar, but now in several countries you don't really get a choice and pretty much all mainstream products have been replaced with artificial sweeteners.
It's better to cut back on "sweet" (Score:4, Informative)
I started using Splenda (sucralose) instead of sugar in my coffee a while back. I tend to nurse 1-2 cups of coffee through the workday, so I figured with my dental problems it's probably not a good idea to keep my teeth coated in sugar for multiple hours each day.
However - and I say this as someone who is trying (and sometimes struggling) to do this myself. - rather than just replace one sweet thing with another equally sweet thing, the better approach is probably to try and retrain yourself to not require so much "sweet" in everything (fat too, but that's not on-topic here). As much as possible, find a snack that's at least somewhat healthier than the candy or ice cream you think you want - low-fat yogurt with berries instead of ice cream, for instance; or a good quality protein bar instead of a candy bar (RXbar makes some tasty ones).
And work on cutting back on the sweetener you put in coffee.
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I literally got the shakes when I quit sugar.
Substitutes can help adjust people as they taper the sweets.
One thing is for sure: obesity is caused by sugar and that has an outsized effect on heart disease.
Sugar is also needed for cancer growth.
This research might be interesting in isolation but it's narrow.
A person on a keto diet having an occasional erythritol sweet is going to do way better than 2XL fatties eating Twinkies.
Check out cardiologist Ford Brewer on YouTube for how he reversed his heart disease.
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Also it's not only unrealistic, but essentially impossible to avoid sugar(s) that occur naturally in foods. Note that I am not talking about ADDED sugar(s), I am talking about naturally-occurring sugar(s) in foods.
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It is absolutely a medical issue for some. Given that the obese population in the US has tripled in the last 60 years though https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org] clearly there's something wrong at the individual levels as well.
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It is absolutely a medical issue for some. Given that the obese population in the US has tripled in the last 60 years though https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org] clearly there's something wrong at the individual levels as well.
We need to understand that while it is very popular to make fun of those stoopid fat 'Murricans, Obesity is also a problem in Europe as well https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu]
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Obesity is actually a growing problem globally, including in third world countries https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]. .
I have no idea how your comment relates to mine you're responding to though as nothing I said changes with scope.
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Obesity is actually a growing problem globally, including in third world countries https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]. .
I have no idea how your comment relates to mine you're responding to though as nothing I said changes with scope.
Remind me not to reply yo you, as you get offended even when I agree with you.
However, since you think that I was making some random comment - allow me to make it a bit clearer.
You wrote: "Given that the obese population in the US has tripled in the last 60 years."
So in reply to your comment, I wrote "We need to understand that while it is very popular to make fun of those stoopid fat 'Murricans, Obesity is also a problem in Europe as well https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ [europa.eu]... [europa.eu] "
Understa
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Remind me not to reply yo you, as you get offended even when I agree with you.
Wait, wait, wait. Now just who's getting offended here? It was certainly never me. I just didn't see how your post contributed to the conversation and being perfectly honest your post read like you thought I was a European engaging in America bashing (which would be completely wrong) and I chose to ask you what you were getting at rather than jump to conclusions and get upset as you are doing here.
Understand now? You wrote about fat Americans, and I expanded the scope to Europe as well. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I referenced your fat American comment and added to it, lest people think that Europe is the land of fit, strong and slender ubermenschen.
Yes, as an American I was talking about my own country on this American website. One again though I'm at a los
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"messaging" = massaging.
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Given that the obese population in the US has tripled in the last 60 years though https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org] clearly there's something wrong at the individual levels as well.
I'm sorry, but that's a complete non sequitir. Look at housing prices, inflation or anything else that's gone up in the last 60 years. The amount of change is completely orthogonal to personal choices.
The obesity crisis is the flip side of smoking cessation. People didn't just decide to stop smoking: doctors/government agencies/NGOs ran a decades-long pressure campaign designed to highlight the risks.
Starting in the 70's, many of the same well-meaning people started demonizing fat and protein. The USDA, doc
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Just because I'm not a Trump-supporting fascist pig doesn't mean I believe in accepting obesity as 'normal' and 'healthy', and FUCK YOU for accusing me of that, asshole.
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You were accused of blaming something that afflicts a large and increasing percentage of the population on individual failure. Outrage and blaming the victims, with no hope of fixing the problem because you don't identify or attack the common cause, as there is an industrial interest in the status quo, is a typical Republican strategy.
You are right that it doesn't matter what you eat too much of for weight gain. You are wrong that obesity, the epidemic, not the individual medical problem, isn't caused by su
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You were accused of blaming something that afflicts a large and increasing percentage of the population on individual failure. Outrage and blaming the victims, with no hope of fixing the problem because you don't identify or attack the common cause, as there is an industrial interest in the status quo, is a typical Republican strategy.
You should have taken a look at Rick's sig. He doesn't like Republicans at all.
If obesity were only a problem in the US, your claim that only Republicans blame the individual might be true for some Republicans, but last time I checked, a lot of the MAGAs are carrying around excess baggage, including the man they believe is the son of God. And obesity isn't just an American problem. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu]
You are right that it doesn't matter what you eat too much of for weight gain. You are wrong that obesity, the epidemic, not the individual medical problem, isn't caused by sugar.
You are using a monovariant analysis to claim that there is only one cause of obesity. Suga
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Smoking isn't the cause of cancer either. I had relatives who haven't smoked a cigarette ever but died of cancer. QED?
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Smoking isn't the cause of cancer either. I had relatives who haven't smoked a cigarette ever but died of cancer. QED?
If you are referencing all forms of cancer, then you just made a non-sequitur.
But your reply is seriously offtopic regardless, lat time I checked, it was specifically obesity, not carcinoma.
Unless you are saying that what I posted had nothing to do with obesity - in that case, you are not even wrong. Take it up with the researchers that say otherwise, Do you want the contact information to let the National Institute of Health so you can tell them they are way off base, because you had non smoking rela
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A person on a keto diet having an occasional erythritol sweet is going to do way better than 2XL fatties eating Twinkies.
I agree but I think a LOT of people dont use fake sweeteners like that and really if you've got your sweets intake down to such a low level refined sugar would be perfectly fine for most folks (although it would disrupt the keto diet in your example). Most folks that I've seen who do artificial sweeteners just use them as a 1 for 1 substitute for the sugary stuff they were eating before and so are eating a lot more of this stuff than the occasional sweet as you describe.
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I assume you are American.
In Australia, nobody puts sugar in their coffee because they use fresh ground beans in an expresso machine.
Go buy yourself A breville BES870 and fresh roasted beans!
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Americans are known have having the worst coffee in the world.
It's either stale drip fed water or over coffee (that needs sugar to make it palatable) flavoured sugar syrup from starbucks.
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the better approach is probably to try and retrain yourself to not require so much "sweet" in everything (fat too, but that's not on-topic here). As much as possible, find a snack that's at least somewhat healthier than the candy or ice cream you think you want - low-fat yogurt with berries instead of ice cream, for instance; or a good quality protein bar instead of a candy bar (RXbar makes some tasty ones).
recommend better quality items.
good coffee (drip/americano) is best black.
plain whole-milk french-style yogurt is better than crap yogurt with toppings.
and these are not expensive things.
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I love RXbars for the same reasons as well as for their super simple ingredients. My local Costco sells them on the cheap too.
Stuff does not need to be sweet like candy (Score:2)
Use less sugar, do not use substitutes.
Re:Stuff does not need to be sweet like candy (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a lot to say about such things, but I've decided to latch on to your comment because it's an important aspect of all this. People are way too conditioned to think that sweet is the best taste. I've tried my best to get the extra sugar out of my diet, and I never used artificial sweeteners *consciously*. It took a while, but I got to a point where I started to recognize when things are over-sweetened. Even things we think of as having a lot of sugar are still too sweet. One big example of this is chocolate chip cookies. It's not like I'm living some kind of ascetic lifestyle. I still enjoy them--but they have to be made right. When they're made properly, you taste CHOCOLATE and maybe a bit of caramelized batter. It's a real treat; but I'm very disappointed now when I try one and the only real taste is SWEET. What I'll tell people when asked about the quality of such things is, "Anybody can dump in a bag of sugar, but making a truly tasty cookie takes skill". That's just it. Training the public to think sweet=good has made it easy for low skill "bakers" to hack their way on to our plates with nothing but sugar, or worse the aforementioned substitutes and there is no shortage of future diabetics who think what they're eating is good.
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There's a lot to say about such things, but I've decided to latch on to your comment because it's an important aspect of all this. People are way too conditioned to think that sweet is the best taste. I've tried my best to get the extra sugar out of my diet, and I never used artificial sweeteners *consciously*. It took a while, but I got to a point where I started to recognize when things are over-sweetened. Even things we think of as having a lot of sugar are still too sweet.
I think this is an important point, not necessarily that sweet is a good taste (it is), but that you need to add sugar/sweeteners.
Like many things, our bodies acclimate to the amount of sugar/sweetness we ingest. Start reducing your sugar content and you become more sensitive to the sugar you taste.
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Good post. Stay away from sugar and seed oils.
If we bake a cake at home, we typically use 1/3 the sugar in the recipe.
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Ooh seed oils, the new dietary bogeyman. Beware!
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People are way too conditioned to think that sweet is the best taste.
You are only partially right here. Sweet *is* the best taste. The problem is that you are able to get desensitized to it, and that's the issue with a lot of people. Your taste is a mixed palate of sensations and you notice the absence of one of them as a bad taste. In that regard you *need* to compensate for it. However your tongue tends to normalise if something is consumed in excess.
I used to live in Australia, now I live in Europe. When I moved to Europe I was disgusted at how salty everything tasted. No
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But if you want to consume some sweetener, aspartame should be OK for most people, when limited to normal consumption amounts. It’s two simple amino acids (found in proteins) that is 200 times sweeter than sugar, and found in many packaged products like diet soda. It has been studied and approved by many organizations.
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Kill me now, or kill me later (Score:2)
I've known for a while now that erythritol and xylitol are dangerous. As I understand it they represent an immediate risk, as in risk of a heart attack increases during the time they're in your system and decreases when they're gone.
As for even moderate-but-frequent consumption of regular sugar and simple carbs, they're likely to induce at least some coronary artery disease in the longer term.
Except for rather sparing amounts of whole fruit - with some fruits being quite good and others being almost as bad
A result of the sweetener or the bodies reaction? (Score:2)
Sugars are by far the most common natural source of sweetness, it makes sense that our bodies have somewhat adapted to them in the weird complex ways that evolution works.
I wonder if this particular side effect is due to the particular chemical nature of erythritol, or it's because the sweetness of erythritol triggers one set of reactions in our body, but the fact it isn't sugar means a second set of reactions is missing and sticky platelets is one of the side effects.
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Classic cane sugar is a known quantity, if something that claims to replace it is actually worse for you that would be significant, would it not?
I like natural cane sugar, I admit I consume more than I should; but I actively avoid substitutes since history has shown they are never better for you and every one eventually proves worse than the natural sugar it replaces.
Maybe we are back to tha
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I like natural cane sugar, I admit I consume more than I should; but I actively avoid substitutes since history has shown they are never better for you and every one eventually proves worse than the natural sugar it replaces.
Not to blindly defend erthyritol, we should definitely look at it closer. But "less bad" doesn't mean good. Sugar is still very unhealthy.
As far as history: let me give you an extremely quick rundown. Diabetes was known to the ancients, but was extremely rare until the 18th century, when British sugar plantations made it affordable. (The slave labor involved wasn't very healthy, either). That's when diabetes, obesity, and extreme amounts of tooth decay reached the British working class.
Sugar was a very popu
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In nature we would have to hunt and scavenge for food, this both decreases the amount of food available and increases energy usage of acquiring it, so people stay relatively healthy. In the very rare occasion that food is plentiful people would gorge themselves because they might not get another chance.
Now you have food which is commercially produced, so the producers are incentivized to do everything they can to increase consumption. More consumption means more sales and thus more profit. Obesity and other
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Well (Score:2)
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OTOH, does it prevent obesity? I rather suspect that it doesn't. The various studies that I've previously seen about artificial sweeteners didn't indicate that they prevented obesity, merely that they didn't supply calories...but most people, at least in the US, have no difficulty in acquiring a surplus of calories.
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OTOH, does it prevent obesity? I rather suspect that it doesn't. The various studies that I've previously seen about artificial sweeteners didn't indicate that they prevented obesity, merely that they didn't supply calories...but most people, at least in the US, have no difficulty in acquiring a surplus of calories.
A diet high in fiber and protein, and also making liberal use of artificial sweeteners has brought me out of obesity and to normal healthy weight. And kept me there.
Anecdote, sure, but it works for me. Again, they'd have to be mighty dangerous indeed to be more dangerous than obesity. So I hope they remain available.
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From my point of view, the artificial sweeteners in the diet you mention are an unwanted extra. And possibly a dangerous one. (But I'll grant that if you need sweeteners to stick to the diet, they may be beneficial enough to counter their dangers.)
Yet again... (Score:2)
...focus on minimally processed foods, avoid all the weird science experiments. This isn't hard.
Do that and exercise 5 days a week, you'll be golden.
20 participants (Score:3)
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If I dunk 20 people underwater for 5 minutes and they all drown, do I need to test another 1,000 to make a firm determination that being submerged in water causes drowning?
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-1, innumerate
You can't evaluate the sample size without considering the effect size.
20 participants evenly split is a good and cheap screening test to see if it is even worth doing a bigger study. If the effect size is comparable to the standard deviation, you've got about an 80% chance of being right.
Dodged a bullet there (Score:1)
I'll just stick with Saccharin, which will only give me cancer.
Messing with food.. (Score:2)
The problem comes from replacing tried and tested ingredients that we've been eating for thousands of years (eg fat, sugar, salt) with new untested things which we have never previously consumed. The long term effects on our bodies and on the environment are simply unknown, and by the time we find out it's likely that a lot of damage will have been done.
Trying to find replacement chemicals is just a bad idea. Sugar, fat and salt are not inherently harmful - they are only harmful when excessively consumed, a