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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.
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
It's sugar, just absorbed faster because it's already fructose and glucose. Table sugar (sucrose) has to be digested to break it down into fructose and glucose.
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.
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.
It's still very popular here. Though, I live in hippy central. I know a lot of people that refuse to eat fake sweeteners and corn sugars. They're switching to these "throwbacks" and, for example, Hunts Ketchup because it has regular sugar. Anecdotaly, none of them have lost weight as a result that I know of. But they certainly have gotten more annoying.
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.
That is largely a myth. The difference isn't measurable in most practical cases.
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?
The main difference is it is cheaper because it can be produced from corn.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
That's something I wondered as well. I find this intriguing:
"Sucrazit (5% saccharin, 95% glucose), Sucralite (5% Sucralose), Sweet’n Low Gold (4% Aspartame)."
So what are the other ingredients in Sucralite and Sweet' n Low Gold?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
sugar: 50% fructose, 50% glucose
HFCS: 55% fructose, 45% glucose
zomg, clearly hfcs is the reason people are getting so much fatter.
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.
Actually...that might well be the case! I've seen stories trying to debunk this study but it sure looks solid from my perspective.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Eating artificial food isn't good for you.
So you're saying you homebrew cereal malt beverages? Why not make beer?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
sugar: 50% fructose, 50% glucose HFCS: 55% fructose, 45% glucose
zomg, clearly hfcs is the reason people are getting so much fatter.
Most of the glucose one ingests goes directly to "blood sugar", where insulin (if you still have sufficient of the latter **) mops up any unused glucose, converts it to a storable molecule, and stores it in muscle or fatty tissues until needed. Fructose, on the other hand, mostly gets converted to fats in the liver, which are then stored until needed.
OK, "needed" does not only refer to exercise ONLY, but also to metabolic processes (e.g. breaking up more complex sugars/starches for digestion), thinking, etc. - it's a general cell fuel. So glucose is more readily available in the blood and thus gets used more and stored less. Fructose in the presence of glucose gets stored more than fructose alone.
Sorry, no citations, as I was hard pressed to find sufficient details (in layman's terms) on the internet to confirm this when I read it in an article. I had to track down a dietitian to confirm it - apparently it's common knowledge in that field.
** = Diabetics usually do not produce sufficient insulin, as you may know. The excess glucose in the blood damages proteins in a process called Glycosylation (layman's description, it's not that simple in reality) - including a lot of important tissues like coronary veins. HbA1c is glycosylated hemoglobin which can be easily tested via blood tests - a blood percentage HbA1c against "normal" hemoglobin above about 6.4% represents a sudden increase in risk of cardiovascular disease.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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 : )
Hunts ketchup used to use sugar instead of HFCS. It no longer does. They still have a Hunts "Natural" ketchup that uses sugar, but I believe all of the other Hunts ketchup has reverted to once again using HFCS. Tell your hippie friends to read the label before simply assuming their Hunts is HFCS-free.
There's other reasons for avoiding HFCS besides wanting to lose weight or trying to be healthy. I avoid it because I hate corn farmers and wish the Cuban embargo would be lifted to dramatically decrease the cost of cane sugar.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
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.
Not Hawaii. Florida and Louisiana.
Bulking agents generally maltodextrin because it is cheap, colourless and tasteless. Even looks a bit like sugar. If you did not bulk them out you would have to add them in impractically small quantities that they would be useless for end users. A big soft drinks manufacturer on the other hand can add them neat to their products.
Most artificial sweeteners sold in powder form contain a simple sugar or starch to add bulk and give the product free-flowing granules more similar to sugar. Since saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame all taste hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, they are used in much lower amounts, with bulk added for the consumer-serving preparations so that you don't have to add micrograms of sweetener to your coffee to get the equivalent sweetness of sugar. Either glucose (usually listed as dextrose) or maltodextrin are generally used, which is interesting since it means that sugar substitutes generally contain a small amount of carbohydrates. The little single-serving packets tend to have about 3 (kilo)calories each; in the US, the FDA allows foods with less than 5 calories to be labeled as "zero calorie," so they generally are.
I note that this study did happen to use all powder-form sweeteners (dissolved in water) which means that there would some small amount carbohydrate in the solution. That's a perfectly reasonable way to run this study, since these are widely used preparations of these sweeteners, but I do wonder if there might be a difference with a genuinely digestible-carbohydrate-free preparation.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Evolutionarily, there are quite good reasons for that. Fruits are seasonal.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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.
Parent post is a good example of quibbling over words.
The stuff is called "high fructose" because sucrose, or normal table sugar, is one fructose molecule bonded to one glucose molecule but HFCS contains 5% of fructose that is not bound to a glucose molecule. This is significant. Hydrogen peroxide used in wound treatments is only 3% H2O2 and 97% H2O, but has very different physiologic effects than plain H2O.
While HFCS could be used in lower quantities for the same level of sweetness as sucrose, it is often used to make the product sweeter than could be done with sucrose alone. As is the case in many soft drinks sold in the USA. But the more significant concern is that HFCS laden foods and drinks cause one to crave more since the HFCS interferes with the "I've had enough" mechanisms that normally govern food/drink intake. And another concern that bears repeating is that HFCS puts an increased burden on the liver and the blood glucose homeostatic mechanisms that are adapted to handling normal table sugars.
Again, my personal concern is that HFCS on the label is a marker I can use to avoid foods and drinks that predispose me to exercise induced asthma problems. And I don't care whether it is the HFCS or some other crap that is often used when HFCS is adulterating the food.
Will
7.
Nothing to see here at this time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That study has be taken apart many, many times.
Rats genetically engineered for something, show the thing they were genetically engineered to show. Must be the test.
Bad controls, be methodology, bad samples. Perhaps you should get a more scientific perspective?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
HFCS is a ~50/50 mix of glucose and fructose. Both of those occur naturally.
That's like saying salted almonds occur naturally.
High Fructose corn syrup is called HIGH fructose because it contains a higher concentration of fructose, not because someone thought it would be cute to be friendly to it. :)"
"Hi Fructose!
It's a 55 to 42 mix for HFCS55 and 42 to 53 mix for HFCS42.
Guess which one is used in sodas? One that has 30% more fructose than glucose.
I.e. 30% more sugar that goes to fat to be used later than the sugar that goes to immediate use and into glycogen for inter-mediate use.
On top of that, fructose which occurs naturally tends to be bound to fiber, i.e. indigestible cellulose.
Which fills up your tummy sending the "I'm full" signal to the brain.
Meanwhile, fructose in sucrose is bound to glucose at 50 to 50 mix which must be broken in the body through the use of a(n) enzyme(s).
I.e. A catalyst produced by the body as a tool for speeding up and controlling the chemical reaction.
By feeding the body a blend of already hydrolyzed sugars, we are letting the chemical process in a factory somewhere predigest our food for us.
Sorta like the difference between eating baked bread and eating raw wheat.
So, we end up taking 4 molecules of "sugar for later" with every 3 molecules of "sugar now", instead of 1 molecule of "sugar for later" with every molecule of sugar for immediate use.
On top of that, 55-42 mix provides almost a fifth of "sugar now" LESS than sucrose - so to get the same glucose boost, body will take up 19% more of the the 30% enriched mix of "sugar for later".
So it ends up being not even 4 to 3 fructose to glucose mix, but a 2 to 1.
I.e. 200% to 100%, with control of absorption of sugars relegated to a factory somewhere (HFCS), instead of a 50% to 50% mix with control being done by the body (sucrose).
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
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
sugar: 50% fructose, 50% glucose
HFCS: 55% fructose, 45% glucose
zomg, clearly hfcs is the reason people are getting so much fatter.
You expect a 50/50 mix, and you're getting 45/55 mix.
You key off of the 45 (glucose), so you're expecting 45 fructose.
You're getting 55/45 the fructose you expect.
Bottom line: 22.2% of the fructose in HFCS isn't handled properly. Fructose isn't a problem unless you have tons of it. Fruit has fiber so it generally isn't a problem - you'll be full or bored of fruit before you consume too much fructose by eating fruit. Fruit juice is bad. HFCS is bad. HFCS being used in some many things can make it hard to avoid.
Well the other wrinkle is the effect that insulin has on the body storing or burning fat. When insulin levels spike, the fat cells are unable to release fatty acids back into the blood stream for consumption.
So, if a person eats fruit, sure the fructose is converted into 'fat' by the liver, but the body is able to use it for fuel immediately. When glucose (and insulin) levels spike, the fat cells in effect take up the nutrients, but don't release anything back into the blood stream to meet the body's energy needs. If a person is gorging themselves on high carb food; it's completely understandable why they'd continually feel hungry, despite putting on fat. =/
Personally I think this explains why fat people are always hungry, and why high carbohydrate meals lead to hunger so quickly after eating. The difference between individuals isn't in willpower, or that trope 'calories in vs calories out', but in how sensitive different tissues are to insulin.
(Also why exercise leads to weight loss, since training makes muscle tissue more sensitive to insulin, and fat cells less so. Seriously the amount of calories burned through exercise is laughable.)
From your reply I can only assume that you are deliberately being dense.
I.e. You are trolling.
Or, you would not have acted like you haven't realized that when I'm talking about there being 30% more fructose, and then saying that there is 4:3 mix in favor of "sugar for later" - that I'm not talking about sucrose but of fructose as "sugar for later", i.e. FAT.
In fact, if you weren't trolling you could NEVER EVEN THINK that I was talking about sucrose, because you apparently acknowledge that you know that sucrose needs to be hydrolyzed into glucose and fructose to be used for energy by the body.
I.e. You know what I'm talking about but you still choose to be obtuse.
Nor would you spout the 1 : 1 nonsense.
HFCS 55 is a 55 : 42 fructose-glucose mix.
Which, as I've explained above, comes out to 2 : 1 ratio in consumption of fructose and glucose through HFCS, compared to 1 : 1 ratio when consuming sucrose.
Because the human body ends up eating twice as much of fructose when ingesting HFCS than when ingesting sucrose, while trying to raise the glucose in the blood to the same level.
I.e. Your brain is hungrier for glucose longer.
It wants two spoons of HFCS where a single spoon of sucrose would suffice.
But then again... you are trolling.
Or you would not equate cheap HFCS used in Coke and Pepsi with VERY EXPENSIVE insect juice used in practically NOTHING commercially - because it is expensive and not "roundup ready".
And it is also not a 55 : 43 mix, nor is it a 50 : 50 mix, but a whole other ball game which includes various antibacterial properties, a different mixture of mono- and polysaccharides and various other stuff which bees dump into their insect juice.
Which can be gleaned from the link above.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens