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Study Finds Link Between Artificial Sweeteners and Glucose Intolerance
onproton (3434437) writes The journal Nature released a study today that reveals a link between the consumption of artificial sweeteners and the development of glucose intolerance [note: abstract online; paper itself is paywalled], a leading risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes, citing a critical alteration of intestinal bacteria. Paradoxically, these non-caloric sweeteners, which can be up to 20,000 times sweeter than natural sugars, are often recommended to diabetes patients to control blood glucose levels. Sugar substitutes have come under additional fire lately from studies showing that eating artificially sweetened foods can lead to greater overall calorie consumption and even weight gain. While some, especially food industry officials, remain highly skeptical of such studies, more research still needs to be done to determine the actual risks these substances may pose to health.
Does HFCS count as a sugar substitute, or real sugar ?
A while back Mt Dew had a 'Throwback' drink that had 'real sugar'. Haven't seen it lately.
Saccharin isnt used in diet drinks anymore for the most part
and who consumes pure gluecose in any quantity?
They should have tested sugar vs hfcs vs Aspartame vs Sucralose
That weight gain claim stems from a study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health back in 2008. It was refuted the very next year in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, who found all sorts of problems with the study and the conclusions drawn by it. The glucose intolerance angle could be interesting, and have ramifications, but it was one study. After some more review, and more studies, we might be able to draw some real conclusions, but not right now.
Biology systems are a bunch of signal processings and feedbacks. Someone just had to read the proper math books.
I read up on this yesterday when it was posted to ArsTechnica. I'm a type 1 diabetic so studies like this catch my interest. The interesting part is that the mice that were given artificial sweetners had higher glucose levels than those with regular sucrose diets. The theory is that the artificial sweetners are affecting the bacteria in the gut of the mice, which is affecting how glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream.
One should not though that the human trial only included 7 volunteers, which is hardly enough for a good sample. I'm interested to see the findings of a test conducted on a larger sample group.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
I had a steady weight for about 2-3 years and started drinking a lot of diet soda and gained 10 pounds. I have cut it out almost entirely (before I saw this study, in fact) and I'll see what happens. I still do like carbonated beverages, so I've switched to an unsweetened, naturally flavoured carbonated drink in a can ("Pure Life" by Nestle. Water, CO2, flavour). I was drinking soda water for awhile but the lack of taste eventually made me lose interest, plus there's salt in it.
Ultimately if you want to solve this problem, don't eat sugar OR artificial sweeteners. Don't put anything that could be found in a vending machine in your body. Good dietary tip right there. If everyone in the world just stopped drinking soft drinks, that'd be an enormous win for humanity's overall health. Sure, it would destroy a few of the most powerful companies on the planet in the process, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have lost 75lbs. Part of it was exercise, and the other part is cutting out Diet food from my Diet.
If I want something sweet, I eat something with Real Sugar.
If I want something fattening then I will eat something fattening, like with real butter.
I am not about organic and all natural. But you should focus more on foods that you know of. They will tend to fill you up and stop the craving.
Diet food, doesn't fill you up or solve your craving. So you eat more of it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sucrazit (5% saccharin, 95% glucose), Sucralite (5% Sucralose), Sweet’n Low Gold (4% Aspartame).
and:
As saccharin exerted the most pronounced effect, we further studied its role as a prototypical artificial sweetener.
I wonder how stevia or erythritol compare.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but instead of drinking diet soda or regular sugar sweetened soda, why not drink water?
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Eating artificial food isn't good for you.
I think getting an interesting result from a sample of seven people is enough to say a larger study should try to reproduce the experiment. It's not really big enough to stand on its own for anything more than that.
The issue here seems to be an alteration of the gut-flora caused by artificial sweeteners (assumably by reducing sugars in the gut).
But might not this problem be addressed with pro-biotics? Gut flora seems an easy enough issue to address, no?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I trained with an exercise physiologist for 2 years and learned quite a bit about diet and exercise from him. While I wish I had the time to dig up all of the relevant papers, he summarized it this way (paraphrasing, of course):
"Your body gets into a routine and 'learns' how to function with your caloric intake and activity level. If you eat less but stay at the same activity level or become more active while eating the same, your body will go into starvation mode. It will make more efficient use of the calories you do take in and make more of an effort to store them as fat. It sees the change as a temporary thing, much like hibernation in the winter. If you change both your diet and exercise, your body will initially go into starvation, but will learn that it's a lifestyle change and will adjust accordingly. Usually that means losing weight."
It's actually a very simple concept. We as Americans tend to drink our calories (Grande Caramel Macchiato - 900 calories, mostly sweeteners) instead of just eating normal food. Our bodies have a natural response to "sweet", it was rare not that long ago, so it releases those endorphins as we eat processed or fake sugars. We also have a tendency not to pay attention to fast foods. A Carl's Jr (Hardee's) double westen cheeseburger is over 1000 calories and has over 50% of the typical persons daily requirements of sodium. Where we should be eating ~2k calories for a "normal" person (e.g. ~160 pounds, exercise about an hour a week), many of us are eating much more than that without realizing it.
Read food labels, don't eat processed/fast/crap food, don't drink your calories, leave a little bit on the plate, and get out for a walk for 20-30 minutes a few times a week. It'll make a difference.
So in other words, artificial sweeteners have no bearing on weight gain at all and eating high calorie foods does! I never would have thought!
Unless you output 0-calorie turds, your body isn't absorbing every calorie you put into it. Your body absorbs until it has what it needs; if your diet isn't balanced, that means it's absorbing a lot more of whatever you have an excess of in your diet before it gets enough of whatever's deficient. Balance has a much higher impact than caloric intake.
If only someone would do a study to prove that (or fund me, I'll put together a team since I know I'm, personally, not qualified).
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
that any of the critters they are talking about are available in your average pro-biotic. Most of them have 3-12 different strains of bacteria. I haven't seen a definitive count of the number in the average gut, but it is a lot higher. Many of them can't be easily placed in a pill, and we don't know what they do or do not do anyway.
would do anything to lower the profits of the sugar companies and corn growing agribusinesses.
7.
Nothing to see here at this time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Then why drink 7UP, Sprite, Sierra Mist, or any other caffeine-free carbonated soft drink?
It is great to see some serious research on the aspartame/splendas type of artifical sweeteners based on amino acids. But you can do your own research. Go down to your local supermarket and look at all of the people who are 100+ lbs overweight who have a case or more of diet soda in their shopping cart. These people are severely disabled. Their quality of life is poor, their mobility is restricited, their life expectancy is greatly shortened, and the high blood sugar levels have severely affected their neurological function and cognitive processes. Worse, it is not their fault, even though their friends and families probably have castigated them about it from time to time. If there is one single person to blame, it would be Donald Rumsfeld, who as the new head of GD Searle, was instrumental in getting the federal government to approve aspartame back in the 1980s. That opened the floodgate of these sweeteners and, the rest, is history.
Plus, corn is used extensively as feed for cattle. But since they really can't digest it for long without getting sick, Big Beef lays on the antibiotics.
Subsidized Corn: making people fat, draining aquifers, and creating superbugs - what can't it do?
The other part is satiation, and insulin response. Higher levels of fructose do not trigger a normal insulin response, and while food sweetened with sugar vs HFCS will have a similar caloric value --- you wont "feel" satiated due to the unbalance and irregular insulin response. Thus you are more inclined to continue to consume more.
Coca-cola for example, anywhere else in the world, except the U.S. is made with sugar. You will (should) feel satiated after consuming a bottle of a sugary beverage. Whereas with HFCS you will be more inclined to have another.
This information has been known for more than a decade. This article Consumption of sugars and the regulation of short-term satiety and food intake, is from 2003.
I imagine the Corn Industry lobby has done their best to suppress this information. The corn industry is heavily subsidized in the US, along with Sugar having import tariffs.
Hell, a few years back know their was a campaign to rename HFCS to Corn Sugar --- as HFCS has gotten too much bad press. I think it didn't get past the FDA
Your stated relationship is true, but there are indeed other factors involved. The ‘kcal out’ term is influenced by the makeup of the ‘kcal in’ term, so it’s not quite that simple. Your BMR will change based on what you eat, not just how much you eat.
Keep carb intake low enough to stay in ketosis, and your BMR increases 700-ish kcal/day. Drop protein intake too low, and your body starts shutting down non-essential processes to conserve protein & energy causing BMR to decrease.
Both of those effects can result in the inequality between ‘kcal in’ & ‘kcal out' shifting, even as 'kcal in' and activity are constant.
You’d be surprised how low-cal turds are... Mostly indigestible (at least to us) fiber, metabolic wastes, and deceased intestinal fauna.
The human body is shockingly good at absorbing every possible calorie it can from food. I’ve seen 90% efficiency thrown around online, but alas I can’t find any sources worth citing.
Your body absorbs and uses what it has until it has what it needs, and it converts the rest to glycogen and/or fat to use when it needs it later. Problem is “later” never comes when you have a constant supply of food and eat more than your immediate needs on a regular basis.
One of the world’s greater mysteries, as far as I’m concerned. Also, what’s up with caffeine-free diet Mountain Dew? Might as well just drink antifreeze. The color’s right, and it probably tastes better...
Except that it's quite difficult to measure either side of that equation.
They had observational data from 381 people. The seven are a preliminary study to find the causal direction of the correlation observed in the bigger group. Seven isn't a lot, but it's decent for a preliminary look supporting something seen in a larger group.
Your body stores what it thinks it will need. If you have a deficiency of one or more nutrients, it thinks it needs more than it actually does. I eat. A lot. I'm not fat. A bit overweight, but not getting bigger; I was at 132 for 12 years, then I changed my diet and started gaining due to dietary imbalance (I was dating a vegetarian and she convinced me to try it). After gaining 50lb during a year of that, I changed back and the weight gain stopped. I'll eat anywhere from 500-20,000 calories in a given day and the only time I have weight issues is when I throw my diet out of balance. Hell, I've even been slowly losing some of that excess weight now that I've started walking more... eating the same "way too much" I've been eating for the past 20 years.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If you look at the charts on nature's site, they only mention ONE sugar substitute - SACCHARINE! Good grief, we've known for decades that stuff is not too great. No mention of the more modern sugar substitutes. Basically a junk article, but it's being quoted all over the internet as if it were fact.
Also, what’s up with caffeine-free diet Mountain Dew?
No sugar, no caffeine, might as well call it Mountain Don't. But seriously, some countries ban caffeinated beverages that are light in color. All Mountain Dew citrus soda sold in Canada, for instance, was caffeine-free until early 2012.
This isn't the first study to suggest that taking artificial sweeteners in drinks is bad and correlated to obesity (though they didn't actually test a direct connection to obesity in this study). Previously the theory was that the artificial sweeteners caused greater hunger later on by priming the body to expect a rush of sugar calories and getting nothing instead. One implication of that theory was that artificial sweeteners in conjunction with a real meal might still cause less weight gain than real sugar.
This study might change that if the negative effects on the gut bacteria happen even in the presence of other food.
Does anyone know if there's artificial sweetener studies that tackle the question of whether taking them in conjunction with real food makes a difference?
I stole this Sig
" Your body absorbs until it has what it needs"
yes.. but what it has evolved to need, and what it actually needs in a modern society are no longer the same thing.
Not a lot of famine in the US, for example.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No argument here. In fact, I'll further your remark by adding that what your body needs in a modern society and what it's likely to get haven't been the same thing since the advent of modern society, unless you can afford to shop at a farmers market, get proper cuts of meat from a proper butcher, and find the time to prepare every meal from scratch. The moment you substitute out a whole ingredient in favor of something prepackaged, either because it's what you can afford or it's what you have time for, most likely all hope is lost. If you like eating out, you're more or less screwed in that respect, as well.
Of course, that really only applies if you're counting calories. If you remove that restriction, you find that you can balance the crap that everyday life throws at you with non-crap, and the end result is that your body gets what it needs and you poop a bit more.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
in 2000 years or so
At 25 years per generation that's only 80 generations or so.
In comparison, rats reach sexual maturity after 5 weeks, gestate for 21 days, and have about 5 litters with 7-14 baby rats per litter.
That's about 6 generations of rats per year. Conservatively.
We will "evolve" in 2000 years about as much as rats "evolve" every 13-14 years.
Not squeaking much.
On the other hand, it is also optimistic considering how pessimistic people tend to be regarding our survival on this planet at all.
Which IMHO has become a ridiculous notion for quite some time now.
There's too many of us at too many places at the same time for most things to wipe us out as a species.
Many things could fuck us up significantly... say a nuclear war... but we are too dispersed to be completely wiped out by anything that would not wipe out all life on Earth almost instantly.
But people love their antiquated 19th century ideas... After all that's only about 5 generations ago.
My parents' grandparents' time. Well... except on my mom's side.
She had a grandmother who lived to be 102.
Not much room for evolution there. Of genes OR ideas.
But in 2000 years... we'll get some shit done on the ideas front. That we've shown that we are capable of.
Unlike rats.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"your body isn't absorbing every calorie you put into it. Your body absorbs until it has what it needs"
Consider what happens if a lactose-intolerant person drinks a glass or two of milk: about 25 g of carbohydrates that their body can't absorb. It will lead to flatulence and diarrhea as a result of gut bacteria feasting on those unused calories and the inability of the body to extract water effectively from a sugar solution.
The fact that this is an abnormal response shows that the normal thing is to absorb every calorie.
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The fact that this is an abnormal response shows that the normal thing is to absorb every calorie.
Uhm... no. That is the result of one specific group of bacteria having mutated in one specific way. Absent that mutation, the bacteria either process the lactose properly, or let it pass by; absent that specific group of bacteria, the lactose simply passes through the upper intestine, where it is processed in a different manner (e.g. as waste rather than nutrients) by the flora in the lower intestine. Failure to process one source of calories altogether being an abnormal condition does not make, or even imply that, absorbing all calories is the normal condition.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
When it comes to one's own habits it's better to be safe than sorry. After all it's pretty well known you won't be harmed from a lack of these sweeteners. I sure won't go spreading fear about it with this level of evidence, though.
Unless you’ve counted every single calorie & macronutrient in and compared them to times you’ve been balanced versus imbalanced, I frankly don’t believe you that you’ve seen large swings in weight while eating the same number and makeup of calories.
I definitely agree with the imbalance aspect. There are days when I’m low on protein or for whatever reason really craving some carbs at the time or needing potassium or something. I’ll eat everything in sight and still not be satisfied until I find the one thing that I needed, then I’m good. I’ve been getting better at consciously recognizing that “EAT ALL THE THINGS!” mode and either recognizing that a particular “off” feeling equates to a particular nutritional need or else just nibbling a little of the common triggers to see what makes me start to feel better.
Bottom line though is that when you’re not eating the nutrients your body needs, you just feel starved and eat waaaay more calories until you satisfy whatever the nutrient need was. It’s really easy to not notice that you’re eating way more calories since they tend to be snacks rather than meals, but it adds up in a hurry.
I’d be willing to bet that’s what caused you to gain weight when doing the veg thing. You were eating more calories than you realized trying to meet (or is that meat?...) whatever deficiency your body was feeling. And ESPECIALLY going veg, you’re inevitably going to fill up on sugars and starches. Compared to eating more of your same-number of calories from proteins and fats, just about everyone would gain weight eating the same number of calories in mostly carbs.
I was told several years ago that I had Type II Diabetes and never believed it. I was put on medications, Glimepiride (Maximum Dosage Daily) and Januvia. My A1C was 5.0 one month, then went to 7.5 which is when they diagnosed me with Diabetes. I took those medications for years and my A1C stayed at 5.5 every 3 months. I gained weight like crazy that I still can not shed.
I decided to test my own theory that I was not diabetic by eating nothing but sugar loaded junk. Candy, Cake, Ice Cream, all the drinks were regular and not diet or sugar free, I ate junk food galore day in and day out. At my next visit which was 6 months and my A1C was still 5.5 I told the nurse practitioner and she of course yelled at me but she couldn't deny the results so she stopped the Glimepiride and continued the Januvia.
I continued the very same course of eating nothing but junk and sugar loaded sugar coated food and drinks. My next visit 6 months later my A1C was still only 5.5 I was then taken off the Januvia.
Once again I ate nothing but junk and sugar loaded foods and drinks as well as candy, cookies, chips, you name it and I ate it. Understand prior to being diagnosed with diabetes I never ate much junk at all. I was a picky eater and ate a lot of baked potatoes plain, baked hamburger with grilled onions and green peppers, and a veggie. Never was a snack eater and never ate between meals. I was always small. Eating the very same way on the medications I gained weight.
My next visit six months later my A1C was yet again 5.5 so I had been given medication, I did not need, for years that made me ill, gain weight and had a lot of side effects all based on one A1C of 7.5. While on the medications my A1C was always at least 6.0 or higher and I was eating like I was told to eat. When I decided to take matters into my own hands and eat what I wanted my A1C dropped even after dropping the medications I continued to eat the same way and my A1C stayed constant at 5.5 and one or two times it was 5.3
Personally based on my own test I have to believe that the medications along with the diet diabetics are told to eat causes the A1C to go up.
Now my little experiment has left me with extra weight that is difficult to get off but at least I am not putting medications I do not need into my body nor do I count carbs or do sugar free anything.
Is my experiment a fluke? Possibly, however as I sit here eating a bowl of Doritos I am very happy I do not have to take any medications that was making me ill from the side effects that are not reversible.
Yes I do know that an A1C of 5.5 or anything over 5.0 is considered pre diabetic. Given I am 52 years old and my sugar levels have been all over the place since I was a kid, mainly on the low end and considered a borderline diabetic I was able to control it with eating habits. Doctors are far too quick to hand out medications that do more harm than good especially if the medications are not necessary.
The Faint had it spot on with their song Symptom Finger
My goal is to learn at least one new thing before going to sleep and to wake up after each sleep cycle.
I think we have different viewpoint of the same end result, and I certainly value yours. As I said, I'm not a doctor or a dietician, and there are a lot of things that I simply do not know, so any time someone can shed some light on that area, or maybe approach the subject from a different angle that also makes sense to me, that's just more useful data. I'll admit I simply don't have the mental capacity, after a day of working with... well, what I work with all day, to sit down and figure out every little detail of what I've eaten for the day; so I won't deny that your assessment is probably correct.
That being said, my wife *does* do that for her diet, and with very minimal success. I just can't seem to get her on board with the whole balance thing. She ends up limiting her caloric intake, nutrition be damned, and the end result is her body entering "starvation mode" due to deficiencies in her diet, due to imbalance, impeding her weight loss efforts. She actually sees a nutritionist, who has given the same assessment; her minimal success at weight loss is more a factor of dietary imbalance than caloric intake.
Of course, you can't take in as many calories as I do (she doesn't, by far), balance or not, and expect to lose weight, either; which is why I'm not surprised I haven't lost much of that extra 50.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Drink hot water whenever/wherever possible.
Casteism
What I was trying to say: if the intestine does not absorb nearly all the carbohydrates that are in the food, you will get sick. Since people don't get sick (bloating, flatulence, etc.) all the time from their normal diet, it must mean that the intestine absorbs nearly everything in their diet.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
And what I was doing was refuting your first claim. Do you have a source that confirms it?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It seems that I don't have a clue what you're trying to say. In lactose-tolerant people, lactose is broken down by enzymes produced by the human body, and the reaction product is absorbed. Lactose-intolerant people don't produce that enzyme. What specifically mutated bacteria that take care of the lactose in a benign or less pleasant way are you referring to? And what statement exactly do you wish to have a reference for?
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Well, if you read the comment I was addressing...........
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I fear that it is the other way round.
Which can be noted from your conflation of several unrelated issues into a single one, without actual definition of a concrete question or an argument, because conflation is not based on logical reasoning but on a personal foregone conclusion you are working from.
Ergo, paragraphs like this, littered with stacked, incomplete, shotgun questions, extended into other questions:
Using the math you just listed, you honestly believe that people maintain this rate of weight gain purely through the difference in consumption vs output? Do Zucker rats become monstrously obese (at the expense of organs and muscle) on a calorie restricted diet because of ??? (Do they lack the willpower to resist food like other rats? and if not, why wouldn't their genetic make up have some corollary to human obesity?)
As you are not setting up theses with those questions (no argumentation following to prove or disprove) those are clearly just inquiries.
But, there is no single answer to all these questions, nor is there a way to provide argumentation which would answer them as a whole, as they are unrelated and even incomplete.
Seems to me that you have some personal belief about those rats and the issues regarding calories and obesity in general, which do not correspond to reality.
Which is clouding your reasoning regarding those subjects, by providing some kind of a reasoning shortcut known only to you, which allows you to treat those issues as a single, generalized one, while allowing you to ignore the obvious issues of such reasoning.
Like the fact that the Zucker rat argument carries no weight whatsoever as it is both an exception and an ENGINEERED exception to boot.
Those rats are tailored by the researchers through gene manipulation TO BE FAT and to be hungry, along with their brothers who are genetically tailored TO BE THIN.
On top of that, humans not being genetically manipulable laboratory animals... Zucker rats can't be used even as an analogy.
Which is why all your argumentation boils down to a single "Aaah, you don't get it" line.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens