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Pepsi To Stop Using Aspartame
An anonymous reader writes: Pepsi believes sales of diet soda are falling because of aspartame and how the general public thinks it's a dangerous substance to consume. Even though the FDA describes aspartame as “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved,” Pepsi has decided to stop using it. Aspartame removal is being turned into a marketing campaign of sorts, with "Now Aspartame Free" printed on cans.
Dangerous smangerous. I don't drink diet because it tastes terrible.
Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?
I come here for the love
Aspartame *is* extremely safe. Heck, we even have very long term human proof (ask a type-1 Diabetic that still enjoys soft drinks). And, as a diet soda drinker for a long time, I've not only become accustomed to the taste, but I prefer it.
The only study that seems to have any validity at all is that diet soft drinks won't make you lose weight any easier than just not eating, because your body appears to crave the calories that were not given to it from the diet soda. That's not dangerous, it's just disappointing if you're using it for weight loss. They do still keep the ridiculous amount of sugar in a "regular" pop out of your diet, which is not a bad thing.
Oh well, Diet Coke is still better anyways.
Great. Now we get a dozen unknown chemicals to replace it.
1. New stuff is 3x sweeter - 2. You use 1/3 less - 3. ???? - 4. Profit
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
When my wife tries something that touts "low in calories" or some such nonsense if she gets a headache she'll state it probably has aspartame in it and it always does. She says she is not alone as far as getting headaches from this additive. If it is safe why does it cause headaches, even in tiny amounts? (for some people that is, I've never gotten them from this myself)
Tab
I think sales are dropping for sodas with artificial sweeteners isn't so much the safety issue, but the fact that they taste like sh!t...
The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.
The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).
This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.
Now for the popular reason they're getting rid of it:
Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.
This seems like a relatively minor reason to stop using aspartame unless you're consuming vast quantities. Regardless, people think it's a neurotoxin and can't have that. (Forget about all the other benzene additives, colorants... even caffeine itself is a toxin).
Anyway, glad to see they are doing away with it. Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame at producing a phantom insulin spike. (And people get upset at the chlorine... but say nothing about drinking chlorinated water or soaking in hot tubs).
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
So, yes, aspartame is extremely harmful for a small minority of people.
There are many substances that are extremely harmful to a small number of people either through allergies or sensitivities.
There are two major reasons why people incorrectly think aspartame causes cancer:
Due to the 1975 study, studies were launched and FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut" (http://web.archive.org/web/20071214170430/www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_sugar.html)
There are many more scientific studies on it by national governments showing it’s safe as well:
Alcohol and cigarettes have health warnings on them and people still buy these products. To think that most people know the differences between artificial sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame, and to believe that most people will not buy a product due to a belief that a particular sweetener is more harmful than another, is absolutely ludicrous.
...I just think it taste bad. I rather have a cola with _no_ sweeteners.
Then again, the point of cola for me is sugar + caffeine. If I don't want that, I drink something else.
safety first
Nice idea. Now instead of putting in teeth-rotting sugar or another weird tasting artificial sweetener, try Xylitol. Not only is it good for the teeth and health (less than 50% calories of sugar), but unlike most or all of the alternative sweeteners, it also TASTES like real sugar. I bought some for myself to put on cereal, and also unlike other sweeteners, it doesn't have that bitter aftertaste.
I bought this one from the UK, but for the US, this one looks good.
Only a small percentage of people find trouble with it (it can have a laxative affect if you take too much for the first few days). Still 4.8/5 from 106 reviews (no 1 or 2 star) is mightily impressive if you ask me.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
PEPSI IS BETTER THAN COKE.
Somebody call the FDA, an AC is having a bad reaction to aspartame!
Aspartame gives me severe, crippling migraines.
Are you using caffeine-free soda to test this? Just making sure; headaches are also a symptom of caffeine withdrawl.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
You likely suffer from phenylketonuria. It says right on the can for people like you to avoid aspartame. PKU affects less than 20k per year so it's harmful to a small group of people not the general public.
...from Diet Coke?
I read the internet for the articles.
'nuff said
Precisely... but seriously... if it were a problem... there would noticeable effects in the medical literature and population. From the sweetener there is nothing but supposition. From the caffeine... quite a bit of medical data.
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Ditch the corn syrup - it just isn't same as sucrose.
If it did, there wouldn't be a market for the occasionally-available "throwback" version that does have sucrose.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
a lot more dangerous or health than anything else. It's the first cause of diabetic-2
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
... then where are the junkies going to get their fix?
I've been drinking diet soda since... always. A lot of it. And I'm hardly alone. If this stuff actually did anything... we'd have a fucking epidemic.
We don't...
Uh, the U.S.A. is the homeland of diet soda (and pretty much the only country with "free refill" madness for anything but tap water). And you have a fucking epidemic of people with eating habits completely unhinged from actual calory consumption. Not unrelated, the U.S. is the heartland of the obese. And studies have linked diet soda with it.
That's not exactly "nothing to be seen here" territory.
All artificial sweeteners have issues. #1 is that they raise the insulin resistance in type II diabetics. That's right, artificial sweeteners are bad for diabetics.
You can find multiple instances where artificial sweeteners lead to altzheimers, parkinsons and certain kinds of cancers.
There's a natural substitute for table sugar, called Tagatose.
Normal sugar is right-handed, ie, the molecule is spun a certain way, and our digestive tract have evolved to process only right-handed sugars.
Left handed sugars (mirror-image) of right handed sugars often pass through the digestive tract without being processed.
This means that most bodies will get no boost in blood sugar levels by consuming foods and drinks sweetened with Tagatose.
Tagatose can be mass produced by processing whey.
The pseudo science fucktards win again. Fuck them, and fuck religion while I'm at it.
I'll chime in on the aspartame==migrane bandwagon. I don't use caffeine, but consuming things like crystal lite can trigger migraines for me. I don't have the same problem with sucralose or sugar.
I have also had the same reaction from accidentally consuming a diet coke (handed to me by my wife to hold and drank absent-mindedly).
They need to put that on the can, too!
Yes, or as my server friend commented on after a late night shift:
A fairly large lady comes in with a friend after a night at the bar. She orders the double-decker cheeseburger, poutined fries with gravy, and a side of apple pie. Then she asks for a "diet coke" and comments "I'm trying to lose weight"
For thousands of years having a country full of well fed people was considered something to brag about.
Look at the world and you'll find lots of places where they're struggling to so much as feed themselves. And a fair number of the ones that can feed themselves only do so with food aid from countries like my own.
What is more, most of the countries that like to call the US fat, are statistically right behind us. The English and the Germans for example are right there with us.
So whatever. The obesity issue is largely caused by a lack of exercise. We used to move around more and we're more sedentary now.
And before you tell me it is the food, do you have any fucking idea how greasy food used to be in the 50s and 60s? And yet the obesity thing is happening now and not then. What changed? People moved around then. Played sports, went on walks... stuff. We're both sitting down on our asses having this conversation and that is something Americans didn't do way back when.
In any case... kindly restrict your comments to something topical instead of trying to pass off idiotic slights against other nations as somehow being a health issue.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I find that drinks sweetened with Sucralose just taste better than drinks sweetened with Aspartame, so I think this is a good move.
What's the biochemistry associated with aspartame or sucralose and an insulin response?
AFAIK, artificial sweeteners trick the tongue into tasting sweet but don't contain the chemistry (namely sugar) to induce an insulin response.
Now, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen (insert complex biochemistry here) and I wonder if there is possibly some kind of adaptive learned response associated with the taste of something sweet triggering it, sort of like a Pavlovian response. Or maybe there is some indirect connection with our taste buds and our insulin response -- it's not hard to see where taste and an instantaneous biological response would be beneficial, either in helping us reject poisons or in making some foods more quickly absorbed.
It also makes me wonder if could be un-learned -- if a person never ate anything sweet tasting that had sugars, would the body stop associating the taste of something sweet with an insulin response if there wasn't a corresponding increase in blood sugar?
When is pepsi going to make their cola taste good?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It seems like no matter what they use in diet drinks, all of them have a pretty horrific aftertaste that I get after just one sip.
Instead of diet drinks, I mostly drink water or just less soda. I used to drink a ton of soda but now half a can is enough for me - do be afraid to just throw out half a cup or can. It's just soda.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We've been flirting with not being the "heartland of the obese" for a while. Mexico, ton of middle east countries, etc, UK and Australia are trying to compete. Your "is" is too emphasized.
Aspartame does change to formaldehyde due to body heat. However, formaldehyde is required for proper metabolism and our body produces two enzymes which can break down the formaldehyde. The dangers of aspartame involve consuming aspartame faster than your body is able to break it down. To begin to suffer the effects of aspartame (formaldehyde poisoning) would require the consumption of approximately 50mg of aspartame per kilogram of body weight. So for me, I would have to consume about 60 cans of diet cola ) per day to feel the effects of formaldehyde poisoning. (1 12oz. can of diet coke: 125 mg) Results may vary based on metabolism speed and body weight.
I'm willing to be 99% of the people who drink pepsi don't even know what Aspartame is to begin with...
Also, I do believe it has more to do with the fact that Diet cola, be it Pepsi, Coke or any other... plainly taste disgusting, than this.
Aspartame doesn't taste as bad to me as saccharin did, but it's still bad, and the soda companies usually use acesulfame K as well, which tastes far worse (but doesn't break down as quickly as aspartame.) Unfortunately, Pepsi's keeping the acesulfame K in their recipe, so it'll still taste bad.
When I want diet soda, I drink iced tea. Tastes better, and restaurants give you refills. (And if it's bad iced tea, you can add lemon and sugar.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
- Unpopular substance X is used
- Scientists discover substitute Y
- Y is tested safe and approved by the FDA
- Companies massively use Y so that they can advertize "X-free" products
- Out of the now millions of consumers, a few of them develop conditions that appear to be caused by Y
- No matter how real the problem is, the information spreads wildly and Y become unpopular
- Repeat the process with Y as the new X
Donald Rumsfeld had stock in it, having run the company behind it back before he was appointed to approve it's use without proper testing. (Testing which happened later on - a lot of which was industry funded etc.)
Some people are extra susceptible to the stuff in addition to certain conditions such as heavy exercise making your tolerance level drop.
What we really should know is how they were involved in corruption behind the stevia ban. Also what it took other industries to bribe away that ban in recent years...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Aspartame and a few of the other artificial sweeteners are excitotoxic (they overexcite some neurons to the point of death). For example, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and other research like it. The main counterargument is that studies showing excitotoxic effects in vivo have always been done with doses significantly higher than would be ingested using regular consumption of foodstuffs in which artificial sweeteners are used (indeed, a benefit of advanced artificial sweeteners is that they reach the threshold of sweetness when very dilute). While even a good deal of overconsumption of artificially sweetened soda drinks may not reach the amounts having been shown detrimental. However, I've found no safety evidence either way regarding very long term exposure at lower intensity, over decades. For me, that's cause for caution and limiting consumption (though even I don't totally avoid it, and that's from someone that doesn't particularly like the taste of soda drinks).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Dangerous smangerous. I don't drink diet because it tastes terrible.
Depends on your taste buds. Once you drink diet for a while the regular stuff tastes a bit weird. I have trouble finishing a regular can of coke.
Plus the amount of sugar in the normal stuff is ridiculous. I think they should start selling a free insulin shot with every case. Basically you are literally picking your poison.
Same here. 1 can of aspartame based diet soda and like clockwork I get a blinding headache which prevents me from doing just about anything.
.0001% of people have side effects, but within an hour of the story being posted there are many multiple anecdotes about how this product causes agonizing pain. It is still a small percentage of people, but it is more than the FDA claims.
Funny how the aspartame lobby talks about safe it is, and how only
https://xkcd.com/641/
Pepsi (I believe it was them) had already changed the sweetener of their diet drinks from 100% aspartame to a mixture of aspartame and Acesulfame K a few years back. The reason they gave for the switch is that aspartame breaks down in the heat, and some of their product was being stored in warm or hot settings, making the sweetener break down. When the customer bought that product and drank it, it tasted terrible.
Acesulfame K is far more heat stable, and adding it to the mix meant the product survived in better shape when it got to the customer.
The fact that they are now eliminating the aspartame completely and claiming it is for health reasons rings pretty hollow. They wanted to get rid of it all along for the reason I gave above, but probably couldn't do it all at once because the product's flavor would change too drastically, and now they can do so and market it as a health move. Very clever.
When I go to mac donalds, I get a hamburger and a diet soda (I don't really care for the fries).
Makes sense for me, a 500-600 calorie meal. I't a nice lunch, tastes good (all beef, even MCD, is awesome this side of the world), and even has lettuce and tomato.
A standard McDonalds hamburger does not come with lettuce and tomato. Catsup, mustard, pickle, minced onions. Has 240 calories.
In your example, that double big mac has 700 calories.
A Big Mac has 530 calories. Not sure what a double Big Mac is since it isn't a standard part of McDonald's menu. By itself a Big Mac is fine now and then but people rarely eat just a Big Mac. Usually they have some fries and a sugar loaded soft drink too. This easily can get the meal over 1000 calories as you mention which is about half the daily caloric intake for an adult male.
Not a diet meal, but not that excessive. It even has a lot of lettuce, which is good against blood sugar spikes, esp. a good thing for most fat people.
No burger sold by McDonalds has "a lot of lettuce". It has at most a small piece (possibly shredded) the size of the bun. That is not a lot of lettuce using any reasonable definition of the word "lot". Furthermore to get enough fiber to actually affect blood sugar levels you would have to eat several cups of the stuff, far more than is in any McDonalds burger.
A great deal of the public concerns about aspartame are due to an infamous troll named "Betty Martini". By spewing her nonsensical, unfounded claims into so very many different venues, she's convinced many people that where there is so much smoke, there must be fire. Her web site is at http://www.mpwhi.com/our_found..., and her photo there depict her, correctly, as a the kind of ill-informed trailer-trash wannabe that make real science and medicine so hard, and populate the ranks of Fox News fans. Among her silliness is that "brain cancers are made of formaldehyde from aspartame" and "cellulite is made from formaldehyde". This entirely ignores the fact that formaldehyde is water soluble and would dissolve away rather than form lumps of any kind.
Betty Martini is to aspartame what the Scientology front group "Citizens Commission on Human Rights" is to psychiatry. They're nut jobs, collecting and twisting every possible scare story into a nonexistent secret agenda of abuse and power and interpreting any real concerns into complete negative nonsense. And she's been at this for *decades*.
And a fair number of the ones that can feed themselves only do so with food aid from countries like my own.
And because countries like your own are destabilizing those countries. Including with the alleged food aid, which tends to impoverish local farmers.
Not every country has a strong government like India's that will concentrate on the national interests.
And before you tell me it is the food, do you have any fucking idea how greasy food used to be in the 50s and 60s?
Assuming facts not in evidence. First that the food was actually of the same composition, and then that it is the "greasy" part that is the problem.
Myself as well. There is no comparison between a mild caffeine headache and the splitting migraine associated with Aspartame.
Of course it's more than the FDA said, the head of the FDA at the time of approval immediately quit and got a cushy job at Monsanto immediately afterward.
Read away: https://www.google.com/search?q=fda+head+aspartame+monsanto&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Which is proven linked to kidney problems!? They won't remove something that is actually dangerous but will remove something proven repeatedly harmless??
Since Mountain Dew Throwback also goes back to the more citrus formula of the 60's you might have another reason for the taste difference
In 1985 my girlfriend and I would ride to work together. She won a contest and won 2 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke from 7-11 for a year. So we would stop and get the diet coke on the way to work. The free diet coke only lasted a year and the girlfriend not much longer, but I am still drinking diet coke. Best. Marketing. Ever. I like diet coke. I like the way it tastes. I've cut down a bit over the years, but if they want to study the effects of 25 years of aspartame they ought to look me up.
I've read a lot of posts about the biology of whether aspartame is good or bad for you. Wrong science. The relevant sciences are marketing, economics, and law. Pepsi doesn't care whether it is good for you or not. They care whether they are in regulatory compliance, they care what people want, and they care about making money off selling it to them.
Okay, I stretched the definition of science, there, but in defense of the economists, they do call it the dismal science. And friends don't let friends drink pepsi.
As to your silly belief that the United States invented hunger or incompetence... no. There were wars, famines, plagues, and death long before the old US of A was but a sparkle in the American eye.
Does the US do things on occasion that might make a country less stable then it was already? Sure... comes with taking any role in anything. The Germans had a hard time feeding themselves for awhile after we bombed them into oblivion during the world wars.
With very few exceptions, our actions in such matters are not ones we feel any moral responsibility for...
The most recent issue with Iraq would be an exception to that. But even then, the people that live in these countries must take some responsibility for their own governance or how can they be credited with responsibility when things go well?
Take South Korea which the US had some hand in making the prosperous society it is today. Are the South Koreans responsible for any of their good fortune or is everything they have the responsibility of the US? They would I am sure protest the suggestion that their years of hard work bore no relevance to their current success.
Well dear one, that is a double edged sword is it not? If those that do well are responsible for their good fortune then those that do poorly are responsible as well.
And since we're actually talking about Africa more than anything else because that's where the really impressive famines are... what war or destabilizing action would you like to lay at our feet that caused their little problem? I'd love to hear the logic of it. And keep in mind, you're talking to someone that is logical. Too many people can't even form rational thoughts. Just a warning... try to actually try to think. Otherwise this will be boring for me. And we can't have that.
As to assuming facts, shut up. What food was like in the US in the 50s and 60s is a matter of record, you miserable little weasel. Open a cook book from the time. Do you own an American cook book from the 1950s? I do. Have you ever been to an American restaurant that hasn't changed its menu since the 1950s? I have. Do you have any American grand parents that can tell you in detail what the food was at the time? I do.
So kindly sit down, put this bib on, and enjoy this bucket of deep fried dicks. American food prior to the obesity issue was if anything a good deal heavier than it is today because the lighter food was a response to people getting self conscious about their weight. So they started cutting down on fat and sugar. Mostly fat.
What do you think Americans were eating 60 years ago? Wheatgerm? Try bacon, eggs, toast, big wedges of butter, cream... etc.
You guys are fun. So arrogant and so ignorant... all in the same package.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Soda has around 100 calories per 8 fluid ounces (varies slightly with type of soda). So you get a 32 ounce drink, that's 400 calories. That's a fair bit, even by fast food standards. Most fast food burgers are in the 800-1200 calorie range (a double quarter pounder with cheese is 740 calories for reference). So you are adding 33-50% more calories to a meal with a 32oz soda.
Well the thing is, the calories in that soda won't do much if anything to fill you up. Drink as much as you like, you still feel hungry. Not so with a hamburger. While it isn't high quality nutrition, it is still plenty of protein, fat, and carbs and your body is going to be satisfied by the consumption of it.
Thus cutting out the soda really can help. You reduce a non-trivial amount of calories and it isn't likely to make you feel less full. Ya, you are still eating fast food and it is not high quality nutrition, and it is high calorie for what you get, but it is better than just drinking sugar water which is more or less what soda is.
Weight loss and eating healthy isn't an all or nothing proposition. There is better and worse, and cutting out soda is doing better than leaving it in.
I react to aspartame (difficulty swallowing, spike in blood pressure), so I avoid it. I'm glad if it were used less. Saccharin doesn't seem to bother me, it's very bitter tasting and it might cause bladder cancer, but I can at least enjoy a TAB.
What worries me if that Sucralose is ending up in everything. Sure, making sugar free products with sucralose makes sense. But I find it in plenty of things that already include corn syrup or sugar. Why? It tastes terrible and reducing a 120 calorie ice tea to 80 calories seems kind of pointless, when you could learn to drink a third less or perhaps drink something less sweet.
My guess is that sucralose is cheaper than sugar, because far less of it is needed. And that's how it's ending up in everything.
Many years ago, I read in Omni Magazine (a source to be trusted, for sure) of a breakthrough that was dubbed "Left-handed sugar". The claim was that some lab had produced a compound that was essentially the same as regular sugar, but in some fashion, it's molecular arrangement was a mirror-image. The trick of it was that the taste buds thought it was sugar, but the digestive system would ignore it.
For years, I expected to hear about some real product; but I guess that I was fooled.
...the switch to sucralose will not impact the taste of these drinks, but we should expect a “slightly different mouthfeel.”
That funny, different feeling in your mouth? That's called taste.
Basically funded bogus studies and had a negative press campaign as they came out.
Sacharine-- it turns out-- is actually quite safe while aspartame is bad for some people regardless of how it is handled. Handled improperly (over 100 degrees) it breaks down into bad stuff... but also many people break it down into bad stuff anyway and get headaches from it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
We get a case of Mexican Coke from Costco periodically - although they had cases with 1/2: Coke 1/2: Sprite + Fanta Orange. Most non-Juice "drinks" in any given grocery store here in the States (except for maybe Whole Foods, and Trader Joes) are either artificial sweetners or HFCS.
OK, to the point (for my location): I emailed Pepsi Canada last Friday. I received a response, today (Monday). Basically, Pepsi Canada said that since Diet Pepsi is the largest-selling diet cola in Canada - they ain't changing a thing. That Splenda switch they'll be doing in the States does not extend into Canada. As to why I prefer Spenda - I hate the bitter after-taste in drinks with Aspartame. Pop with Splenda, my taste-buds are happy with. Just give me a high-caffeine cola (as much as the top coffees have), with no sugar, that tastes OK & I'll be happy. I NEED my caffeine, I do NOT need sugar (I want it, I just don't need it).
OK, so Diet Pepsi was sweetened with Aspartame, and Pepsi Max was sweetened with Sucralose (Splenda) why didn't the babies who had a problem with diet Pepsi just drink Max? BTW Sucralose IMHO is worse for one than Aspartame. That said I don't drink any artificial sweeteners. I prefer regular sugar, not HFCS for me either.
When I first switched to diet soda, with no other change in food/exercise, I lost 10 pounds in about a year.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Karmashock, I've read a lot of books and research articles on nutrition in the past 5 or so years and I believe your response to be completely wrong. Here are some findings from the last decade or so of nutrition science.
In the 50's, the "heart healthy" hypothesis gained widespread acceptance because of a charismatic spokesman (Dr. AncelKeys). His theory was that eating fat caused people to be fat. More broadly, his theory was that high fat causes the broad spectrum of "western" diseases such as diabetes, heart disease that are related to diet. This theory has been accepted as gospel for decades.
Recent objective analyses of his data shows that he excluded data which did not fit his ideas, and when looking at all the data, it does not support the "heart healthy" hypothesis. For example, in one study where subjects were force fed 6000 kcal/day on a high fat diet, the subjects did NOT gain weight.
However, looking at diet trends and health over the last hundred or so years shows there IS a DIRECT correlation between the sharp increase in consumption of simple carbohydrates and "western" diseases such as diabetes, heart disease. Rigorous tests that have been done recently show that the health of subjects improve drastically when they significantly limit their intake of simple carbohydrates. These results are not seen by simply reducing fat in the diet.
The past 40 years, America has been told to reduce fat. You won't find a single aisle in the supermarket that doesn't tout "low fat" products. But you know what? The incidence of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and a whole host of other diet-related illnesses have skyrocked in the past 40 years in spite of the "low fat" focus. You know what's also skyrocketed in the past 40 years? The change in food formulations to replace fat with carbohydrates. Go grab your favorite "low fat" food option and compare it to the "full fat" version. 9 times out of ten you'll see that the fat has been replaced by carbohydrates.
I have been reading research on food the past few years and it is pretty clear to me that the problem is not with fat, but with carbohydrates. Are there enough calories in the world to feed everybody? Absolutely, but most of them are junk calories that lead to poor health. Someone once said that "America is the most over-fed and under-nourished nation that exists." And unfortunately, we're exporting this lifestyle to the rest of the world. Don't blame America though--blame the big food companies. Big food has deep pockets, and they're striving to increase their influence. Unfortunately, it's at the expense of everyone's health.
I was a pespi drinker. When I lost my job I had to drink "sams choice" soda from wallmart. It's 90 cents compared to pepsi's $1.75. Now I drink sams choice because I think it tastes better.
your business. But I have Multiple Sclerosis and my old neurologist told me to avoid anything with artificial sweeteners and aspartame specifically. FYI, fatigue and vertigo are things I experience regularly without ever drinking any artificial sweeteners.
CAPTCHA: pharmacy
Seriously. That's all that's happening here. Pepsi's going to move on to another sweetener that's probably worse for you than Aspartame.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Here's hoping they go back to real cane sugar and stop using that corn-syrup shit.
Other parts of the world will still have Aspartame as sweetener.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I think I'm proably like a lot of (non-diabetic) Europeans in that I mentally lump aspartame, sucralose, splenda, corn syrup, saccharin, MSG and all other man-made sweeteners into the same "big money is covering these up as a direct cause of serious health issues" category, and sucrose into a "not great, but way better than anything artificial" category.
My question is: Is my paranoia scientifically justified?
Funny how the aspartame lobby talks about safe it is, and how only .0001% of people have side effects, but within an hour of the story being posted there are many multiple anecdotes about how this product causes agonizing pain. It is still a small percentage of people, but it is more than the FDA claims.
That's called "confirmation bias."
bullshit, americans eat massive amounts of calories compared to the rest of the world. Diet soda is not a factor
for you.
maybe you have phenylketonuria, most people don't
At least for me, [witchcraft] gives me really bad migraines. Actually, it does it to my wife and daughters as well. And there are studies that show that it may be related to the rise in Alzheimer's.
The [entity] paying for all those studies saying that it's safe is [Satan], who doesn't have the best track record for being honest about what all their chemicals are doing (see honeybee hive death, different proteins in GMO wheat, pesticides, etc.)
I believe Aspartame was used as rat poison at one point.
They are only going to stop the use of aspartame in the usa. in many other markets they have no plans to stop
I used to drink 2-3 44-oz diet pepsi cups every day. I soon was having seizures that sent me to the ER a couple of times. After months of trying to figure out what was causing the problem, I eliminated Aspartame and within 2 weeks all of the symptoms disappeared. So I am glad to see Aspartame being used less. Obviously, diet drinks of any sort are not healthful, for reasons mentioned by Calzones and others above, but it's still good to know market pressure can drive companies to dump FDA-approved additives for what the public experience has determined is a safer alternative.
You don't want sugar in your food, get used to not eating sweet things.
You'll feel better for it.
I guess that it got rejected once.
then it got rejected twice.
then the boss was fired and replaced.
then it got passed.
was not because it wasn't safe? LOL.
Did you know you are eating the shit of the ecoli bacteria everytime you eat aspartame?
mmmm yummy
Donald Rumsfeld is smiling wide.
...how to get me to not drink their product. First they killed Diet Pepsi Lime, arguably the BEST SOFTDRINK EVA, but that didn't quite stop me. Now they will screw with the taste of the drink I have enjoyed for 20-odd years. Yep, that'll do it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
Oh well, Diet Coke is still better anyways.
The radio story where I first heard about this claimed that Coke was considering doing the same to Diet Coke.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Aspartame has problems for some people (like my wife and brother-in-law) and not for others (like me).
Sucralose has problems for some people (like me) and not for others (like my wife).
Seems to me the thing for Pepsi to do is to bring out another formula - with a different name - using Sucralose, put them in the stores side-by-side (they get a LOT of shelf space to play with), and let the customers decide.
Changing the formula of an existing brand strikes me as a stupid move. I suspect Pepsi is about to have it's "New Coke!" moment...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Seriously misleading commentary, as it implies Xylitol is also not safe for humans.
Also, the commenter's calculations appear very off. The toxicity levels appear (via wikipedia) to be 500 – 1000 mg/kg bwt. So an average dog, say in the 30-40 pound range, needs 7 or 8 grams to have issues. And this is more than is likely going to be incidentally lapped up from a spilled diet soda, assuming you are otherwise careful about providing your dog access to bulk/unmixed Xylitol.
Same thing can be said for Glock's and AK-47's.
There's been a few articles lately about how published studies tend to be positive about the product, and negative studies are hard to find.
Oh, yeah, and it's the corporation making the product that usually funds the study.
So weird.
The strange feeling on your tongue after diet soda is the aspartame hacking on your taste buds, pretending to be sweet.
it messes up your taste buds, big time.
Seriously, ask any professional chef or food taster if they drink diet soda, pay attention to their reaction.
There has to be more differences in the formulas that just the sweetener me thinks.
I didn't phrase my post at all well, and ended off on a tangent... but this is exactly the question I meant to ask with my subject.
I'm really curious if there are other differences besides just the sweetener between diet and non-diet drinks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Aspartame is being replaced in Diet Pepsi by sucralose, which is the worst-tasting sweetener I have ever encountered. Britvic, who license Pepsi in the UK, scrapped all their Robinsons sugared cordials ("squashes") in the UK this year. Simultaneously, they switched the no-added sugar squashes to using sucralose.
I taste-tested the sucralose-based apple & blackcurrant flavoured squash recently and it had a seriously nasty chemical aftertaste. It was so bad, I actually had to gargle with water afterwards to try to get rid of the very unpleasant taste. Needless to say, I'm now boycotting the entire Robinsons squash range after decades of enjoyable consumption of their (sugared) product.
Of course the cans are still lined with BPA.
First you seem reasonable and intelligent. That's refreshing. Congratulations I am also reasonable and intelligent. Lets see if we can have a spirited discussion on this issue. :)
As to people eating fewer carbohydrates way back when... you do realize that the modern world was built by carbohydrates?
Staple crops.
Wheat, Rice, Maze, Potatoes, even Poi (Polynesians liked this stuff on their little island paradises... completely gross. Like eating paste.)... no major culture rose without a staple crop.
So your argument is that past generations didn't eat so many carbs? The Egyptians were huge fans of it. They drank a thick beer like drink as the energy drink of the ancient world. Full of carbs. Were the Egyptians fat?
What about the Romans? One of the big things the Romans offered anyone that lived in Rome was free flour. And they offered because Egypt's tribute to Rome was regular shipments of wheat. That wheat was then ground into flour in huge water powered flour mills in the heart of Rome. Water from the aqueducts was run through water wheels to turn mill stones to turn out huge amounts of flour. This flour was given to the people at no cost as a kind of ancient welfare. As you'd imagine , the Romans ate a LOT of wheat in any form you can think of because the flour was literally free to the common people.
Were the ancient Roman's fat? They'd have to have been because they were consuming a lot of simple carbs. No?
As to your reading... All of that just sounds like you've made up your mind. Can we have a discussion for the sake of argument? Is it possible for me to propose alternative theories and have them be listened to with an open mind?
You tell me. What sort of evidence would you like to see?
The biggest problem I have with modern statistics is that they conflate entirely different lifestyles and suggest that the only change was diet. This ignores changes in exercise etc.
As to heart disease etc... I question the accuracy of statistics going back in time. What is more the human body rapidly starts having all sorts of problems after the prime mating and reproductive phase in the life cycle. Pass the 30s or so and everything starts to have problems because evolution stops caring about you. You're just running on inertia at that point.
And to that point, there are some people that can eat cheeseburgers every day and smoke a pack of cigarettes and be very healthy into their 90s. This has been studied. And their DNA has been studied. What they found was that people that seem to be able to do this don't have any one special gene but rather they don't have a lot of genes which generally make us unhealthy. Most people have some of those genes but some people have none of them. Those with literally none of them can abuse their bodies horribly and suffer no consequences from it.
This is the 21st century... this is slashdot... Yes, I am suggesting the genetic engineering diet. Fuck GMO food, I want to GMO me.
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Obesity is not caused by lack of exercise. It is caused by eating too much.
Exercise is not a good way to reduce weight. Eating less (and better) is.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal...
As to your silly belief that the United States invented hunger or incompetence
The only silly belief here is yours that that's somehow what I or anybody else said in this thread.
But no such statement can be found in my review, so it is your silliness, please take ownership of it, and clean up the mess it has made of your own post.
Once you can post a reply devoid of such silliness, I'll consider engaging further with you. Failure to do so will only mean you're not capable of recognizing your responsibility for your own actions.
Actually that was your argument. You blamed all hunger in the world and the obvious incompetence at the root of most of it on the US.
Now, you may not wish to maintain that argument, but then you're going to have to limit your argument to specific countries and specify what the US did to create famine in those societies.
Absent that, your position is so vague that you're effectively blaming us for everything and that is obvious not sustainable.
So. Limit and specify or concede.
Those are your options. Make a falsifiable argument like a rational educated human being or you will have not made a sustainable argument.
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That's physically impossible.
Are you telling me that if I spent all day burning calories by working out and maintained eating what I currently eat while not excersing, I would not lose weight?
Not only would I lose weight but I'd need to eat a good deal more or I'd actually start to starve.
Laws of fucking thermodynamics call bullshit on this argument.
People that I find more informed on this issue are body builders. I don't know if you've talked to any of those people but they are a neutritional gold mine. Not because I think what they do to their bodies is healthy or desirable but because they have a better idea of what leads to what then either you or I. They have a whole culture and information pool sourced from the collective experimentation of their entire population.
Now, do body builders eat fewer carbs than the average person? No. They do very carefully monitor their intake of EVERYTHING. That includes protein, carbs, and various vitamins. They literally measure out their meals by the gram in precise amounts of everything. Go to a body builder nutrition store and look at those big jars of powdered everything.
From what I've gleaned from those guys, you have to balance all these things out to suit your ACTIVITY and your goals. If you want to build lots of muscle, they recommend lots of protein and they even say that consuming actual meat is better if your goal is to get bigger. So just big slabs of steak. But of course you need to exercise while you do that and your exercise needs to be focused on encouraging that muscle growth. So cardio for example is less useful in that situation then lots of weight training.
Now, as to your BBC study... I repeat... Egyptians and Romans... oh and the chinese and japanese with their rice.
How much rice do the Japanese eat? Isn't that a major part of their diet since always? And how fat are they? What fatty thing are the Japanese eating that is in your opinion making them thin?
See, the incurious nature of your position is something that bothers me. These statements are made without any attempt to connect them to anything else and it makes me suspicious that its just more medical bullshit.
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How does that undermine anything I said? The fellow took a comment I made about artificial sugar and caffeine and started talking about calorie intake.
Diet soda has no calories. So he was basically just trolling. The various stereotypical anti american comments were fairly typical of his argument. And when I responded to his bullshit in detail he basically evaded because he isn't able to actually have a conversation. He just knows how to make some dumb insults to piss people off. Well, I am annoyed by him but not mad. I responded to him and he ran away like the intellectual coward and lackwit he always was... that is all.
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ehm, depends on what you mean by the rest of the world. Canada, the UK, Australia, and Germany are roughly as fat as we are... so I don't know what kind of superiority you're trying to claim here.
What is more, I'd much rather live in a country full of fat people than one full of skinny people.
We can feed ourselves. We're net food exporters. Come to the US and enjoy a big juicy steak.
What is more, we've eaten very well for a long time. The initial English colonists for example to the Americas generally ate much better than their European cousins. They also had more land... and generally a higher standard of living. And that has mostly not changed.
Our weight is largely a consequence of being well fed and not needing to move around so much. This leads to an increase in weight.
Send Americans back to physical labor instead of having robots do everything and we'll trim up quite quickly.
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Nope, sorry, again, these silly beliefs are your own, take responsibility for your fabrications. They're your strawman, you built them, they have your name on them, you're the one saying them, and I won't give you any respect if you can't take ownership of your own creations.
They're yours. Not mine. There's not even a tenuous misreading of my words that even approaches the one you have.
So take the time to clean up your mess, rather than expect others to deal with it.
Own your silly beliefs. They're yours, and nobody else's.
And yet you're not correcting me by specifically stating your beliefs. Thus rendering your argument non-falsifiable because it is so vague that it could mean almost anything.
I admitted that I could be wrong about your position in the previous post but pointed out that I can't be held accountable for such errors if you make no effort to clarify things.
As we see in your most recent post, you've still made no such effort and are now merely throwing off stupid insults.
Either clarify your position rendering your arguments falsifiable or you will concede by default for failing to offer a coherent and rational position.
Choice is yours. You can either define your position clearly enough that I can rip it to shreds while laughing at you OR you can cowardly refuse to explain yourself at which point you just surrender the field to your superior... me.
Its heads I win and tails you lose. Pick which ever one you want. Insects like you aren't even any fun... you're too stupid to put up a credible fight.
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Funny, everything you say about sucralose is how I've felt about aspartame. It's super sweet then gives way to a chemical aftertaste that I find vile. I loved Pepsi One because it was close enough and had none of the aftertaste. Now it looks like they're going back. Good news for me. :)
And yet you're not correcting me by specifically stating your beliefs.
Because you're refusing to take ownership of your own fabrications.
The conditions were previously stated. I'll repeat them for you:
"But no such statement can be found in my review, so it is your silliness, please take ownership of it, and clean up the mess it has made of your own post.
Once you can post a reply devoid of such silliness, I'll consider engaging further with you. Failure to do so will only mean you're not capable of recognizing your responsibility for your own actions."
I was not kidding. Go back and post a reply devoid of such silliness. That's the condition for further engagement. Or continue to establish your inability to recognize what actions are yours. Nobody else owns them, they're entirely yours to deal with.
Bad slashdotter! GO LAY DOWN! You know that buoyancy effects cannot be called "falling" or the lack thereof. Vector diagram it, and get back to me, umkay?
Bad slashdotter! GO LAY DOWN! You know that buoyancy effects cannot be called "falling" or the lack thereof. Vector diagram it AGAIN, and get back to me, umkay?
OMG, guy! You're still at this? That is a material strength issue. You could make the balloon out of lead and it won't pop. It'll still fall at 9.8m/s^2 inside that vacuum. Goddammit! I mean how have we kept the ISS from popping under all that pressure? *rolleyes*
Could you please share with us which company you are the CEO of? With the kind of quality control exhibited in your post, I want to make sure I don't accidently buy one of your "products".
But I do get diarrhea from sucralose and erithyrol and stevia and truvia and all the other crap out there today.
And confirmation bias is a real thing that you scientists need to account for.
As usual, you're lying. There is not one thing in your post that confirms you are intelligent or reasonable. There are PLENTY of things that point to you being an autistic, conceded, know-it-all though.
Conceited is the word. Karmashock couldn't concede his own errors if the entire MLB umpire staff called a strike against him.
And you decide to conclude with more baseless insults?
Very well. Your devolution into nothing more than another stupid zero contribution troll is your own choice.
You're an AC so that was likely to be expected. Most of the ACs appear to be trolls and sockpuppets. So that's fine.
I showed you respect and invited you to have a rational discussion. You responded with stupid insults.
So be it. Your forfeiture is accepted, fuck off.
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I actually did take responsibility and I pointed out that they were due to your own vagueness forcing me to infer and guess as to the meaning of your words. I then invited you to correct me specifically.
Until you do offer a falsifiable argument you have not in fact offered any argument or reasoning what so ever. And absent that, your entire presence in this thread is null.
I predict you'll continue to make more empty insults and continue to fail to make a rational argument about anything. Know that until you do, all further comments will be taken merely as whining at your own mental weakness and general inability to form a rational thought.
I find this pitiable though not especially uncommon. Also noteworthy is that you're another AC waste of oxygen. I rarely run into non-ACs that are utter voids of value. But with ACs it appears to be incredibly common. I've never understood why they let you comment at all without at least forcing you to use a fake name. For one thing who can tell you idiots apart? For another, you feel no obligation to represent yourself as anything but a troll because you've literally no reputation to protect.
You're garbage. Fuck off.
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This sounds like another instance of the anti-science rhetoric which led to the anti-vaccination movement. Why people take the word of badly spelled Facebook links with captial-letter Tourette's over empirical scientific study and consensus is beyond me.
You weren't forced to infer anything, let alone your silly beliefs about was said by me, or anybody else in this thread. That was a matter of choice on your part. Nobody has exerted any form of coercion upon you that has compelled such content from you. The only person writing your posts is you, and you chose to post your silly beliefs, nobody else made that choice. It was entirely within your control.
The conditions for further engagement were clearly stated after you stated your silly beliefs, and you have yet to produce a reply devoid of your own silliness. So therefore, you have willfully chosen not to be responsible for your own silliness. Thus what I'm choosing to do is repeat my condition to you. But you? You actually increase the silliness by claiming you're been forced to make such silly claims of your own fabrication by my words. Nope, you made them up with no basis in what was said, and you posted them. Nobody else did it. You did it.
So clean up your own mess. Post a reply devoid of your own silliness. The initial post I made is still waiting, you can choose to click reply, and you can choose to write a reply that doesn't contain any of your own silly beliefs. Or you can choose to fail to do so.
Fat guy on the internet sez:
Just avoid soda/pop altogether. It's candy in liquid form, no matter what the sweetener is. Drinking soda just isn't good for you, pure and simple. Avoid it.
Aspartame is my favourite of all the sweeteners and I've tried them all over the years.
I use it every day in my coffee and it tastes just great.
I do that.
However I am not doing it to lower caloric intake or because I am trying to watch my weight.
Bottom line is too much refined sugar is probably the worst thing for you. I'll eat as much fat and salt as I want, and not be as concerned. Avoiding the 100g of pure refined sugar that is in that drink is why I do it.
Avoiding sugar can be awfully hard to do in a lot of products. Opting for a Diet Coke or whatever is an easy way.
Mind you I put sugar in my coffee, I'm not a savage. I try to avoid it as best I can otherwise.
If you don't elaborate then I have no choice but to try and guess what it is that you're actually talking about. So, no.
skimming through the rest to see if you defend argument... and you don't.
Your concession stands.
Better luck next time. Good day, sir.
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Aspartame has caused me migraines most of my life. (ditto sucralose actually)
... all I can say is - for me anyway, the stuff isn't harmless.
No I don't know why
But having been hospitalized for it going back to when I'm 12
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Again, the requirement for further engagement is for you to reply with a post which is devoid of your own silliness.
Which you continue to fail to do of your own accord.
That's your choice. It's not like anybody else is going to post one for you. It's your own mess, deal with it on your own.
As you haven't elaborated on any of your positions your arguments remain null.
Your concession stands.
Better luck next time. Good day, sir.
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The FDA was about to not approve Aspartame. Rumsfeld then played every trick possible to delay a decision as the installation of Reagan (worst US president ever) was imminent. As soon as Reagan was in office the FDA was forced to reverse course and Aspartame was suddenly deemed safe making Rumsfeld a lot of money. Ye think they care about long term effects? As long as the Dollar rolls into the right pockets we get to eat whatever. If it has to be fake sugar I lean towards Splenda, which isn't great either, but it does not taste as nasty as Stevia. My prime choice is no sweetener / sugar.
As to people eating fewer carbohydrates way back when... you do realize that the modern world was built by carbohydrates?...
Very long ago, say centuries ago, the physical activity levels were very high. Cars, computers, running water, writing, petroleum, even antibiotics and healthcare all together have reduced human body energy consumption levels hugely.
Not so long ago - say the US middle class in 1950s, rich people in India in 1890s - typically ate rich food. Because they could afford it. Which meant more fat, and proportionally less carbohydrate. These very people did much less physical activity than say the US poor people in 1910, or Indian poor people in 1890s who ate more carbohydrates. Foods were relatively suitable for their own lifestyle - carbs for work, and fat for sitting on your ass.
Fast forward to around 1990s and later - where people with least physical activity are eating the least fat.
You tell me. What sort of evidence would you like to see?
Dozens of my acquaintances, and hundreds of forum members I frequent who have reduced their own body fat by increasing proportion of dietary fat? Mediterranean diet?
There haven't been direct studies on it judging from pubmed, but at least studies indicating lack of correlation between proportion of dietary fat and blood cholesterol. This just dispels the usual bogies.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Mediterranean diet?... you're saying Italians don't eat wheat?
Have you ever been to Italy... seen what they eat? Plenty of carbs my friend.
The Greeks tend to eat more lamb and veg. I assume that's what you're referring to... the Greeks aren't especially thinner than the Italians... and the Italians eat lots of carbs.
But lets have a look at the Chinese and the Japanese. I don't think people think of either society as being especially fat. The japanese I believe are known to be skinny if anything. And what do they eat a lot of ? Rice and noodles (mostly wheat noodles but they eat a lot of rice noodles as well).
Generally, I think the japanese especially eat less meat than most cultures. They eat a lot of veg of course but the rice and noodles are a huge portion of their calories.
Again, this is what kills me with this blanket carb hatred... WE BUILD THE MODERN WORLD ON CARBS!!!
literally every major culture sustained its population's diet to a large or even primary extent on a staple crop that are without exception carbs.
Wheat.
Rice.
Maze.
Potatoes.
And Poi.
Find me any sedentary culture of note in the world and I will show you their carb based staple crop.
Now that as a given because you know your history that well... exactly how can you say that carbs are so bad when we built the whole fucking modern world on them.
We are currently going through the information revolution. The carb thing is something we dealt with in the agricultural revolution. This is roughly the period of time when some societies became sedentary and learned to cultivate crops. And once they figured that out, they were able to vastly out compete rival hunter gatherer or nomadic herdsman tribes.
Now, if carbs were so fucking bad... then why did our carb eating ancestors kick the shit out of the palo diet hunter gatherers and whatever we'd call the diet of a nomadic herdsman?
The Pyramids: built by carbs.
The Great Wall of China: built by carbs.
The Parthenon: built by carbs.
The Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan: Built by carbs.
See a pattern here? The Egyptians were POUNDING carbs in their day. They had this very thick heavy beer like drink that was sort of like an ancient energy drink. It was basically slightly fermented liquid bread. Maybe think of it like a liquid sourdough bread? Anyway, they drank that stuff all the time. Were the egyptians fat?
Its exercise.
The people that say "exercise doesn't work" are talking about 15 to 30 minutes of exercise a day. When I say exercise, mean a hard day's work. Manual labor. Spend a day digging ditches, plowing a field without a tractor (using an animal is fine), or any of the millions of things people did way back when.
Now does this mean we need to eat less? Yes and no. The human body doesn't work very well if subjected to an extremely sedentary lifestyle. Simply reducing the food you eat or changing your diet isn't going to make you healthy. We evolved to move around, be out under the sun, etc. You put us inside all the time, not moving... and then you cut our food... the body reads that on an evolutionary level like winter. People huddling in caves because it is cold out and just waiting for better weather.
So the body goes into an energy conservation mode. The body stores as much energy as it can as fat because it thinks you're waiting out bad weather in a cave or something.
This is not a leap here. Every physiological response has a basis in our genetic history.
Try to see our lifestyle through the lens of evolution. It doesn't know why we're sitting around indoors. It just knows we are. And in our genetic past when would humans stay indoors not moving around much for long periods of time? Winter. And what is the appropriate response in that situation? See all those fat people the way that evolution sees them... they're like hibernating bears from the perspective of our genes. Yes, a hibernation that can last your whole life. The system isn't set up to assume cy
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Italians don't eat wheat
It is not about don't eat, it is about the proportion. Mediterranean diet traditionally has 40% calories coming from butter, cheese, cream and fish which are all low carb items. The low fat bandwagon foods have typically less than 5% calories from fat.
blanket carb hatred
There is no "carb hatred" in my post, and it is light years away from blanket carb hatred . People physically working very hard are not harmed much by carbohydrate consumption as I said clearly.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I'm not pushing a low fat diet either you know. I was talking about exercise. Not fats versus carbs.
Obviously the ratios can matter but for most people that get fat, the issue is the amount of food they eat... PERIOD and the amount of exercise they get PERIOD.
The types of foods or types of exercise will matter but if your goal is merely to keep a healthy weight, the ratios don't matter that much so long as you don't do anything extreme.
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the ratios don't matter that much so long as you don't do anything extreme.
But the food pyramid IS extremely low fat for sedentary people. The other heuristics adopted since 1970s are all extremely low fat - I recall one has something to do with plate. As soon as we go around 35-45% calories from fat, the "doing anything extreme" goes away, as most people starting balanced diet (which is a high-fat diet as per propaganda since 1970s) discover quickly.
So the AC here was pointing out this extreme high carbohydrate diet the US (and many other parts of the world too) is increasingly on, to which you didn't agree.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
No one cares about the fucking FDA food pyramid besides the government.
In your mind, do you think people are sitting at home figuring out their diet and thinking "well, according the food pyramid I need X percentage more of Y?"... No one gives a shit.
If you have a restaurant and they are trying to figure out a good meal to put on the menu, do you think they're consulting the food pyramid while they do it?
Then lets just accept that government's opinion on the matter isn't actually that relevant because people don't consult the FDA tables prior to making dinner.
As to the US having a higher amount of carbs than other societies, the asians eat a lot of Rice and noodles my friend... as do the indians. They're not fat. The Italians eat a lot of noodles and bread and they're not fat.
And as I keep pointing out to you, the Egyptians were pounding liquid bread during the days of the Old Kingdom and they weren't fat.
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And as I keep pointing out to you, the Egyptians were pounding liquid bread
Repeating for the second time : People physically working very hard are not harmed much by carbohydrate consumption as I said clearly.
If you have a restaurant and they are trying to figure out a good meal to put on the menu, do you think they're consulting the food pyramid while they do it?
OK, so you have no clue about fat content in food before 1970s and the trend thereafter.
As to the US having a higher amount of carbs than other societies
Let me know where I said that.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
And most people are not bodybuilders.And I wouldn't call bodybuilders healthy either.
Individuals might be able to do enough exercise to burn off the excess food that you eat, but why do that (except to have a healthy level of physical activity)? If you are exercising just to get rid of the excess food, then maybe the most efficient way to go about it is to eat less. You should be eating enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle, not using exercise as a way to get rid of food you shouldn't have eaten in the first place.
For the amounts that most obese people eat, they are not going to be able to do enough exercise to get rid of the excess food. So they gain weight instead.
I have actually been to Japan, and one thing they don't do is to eat large quantities of food. Oh, and they don't eat over-cook either - the body doesn't expend as much energy digesting cooked food than it does raw food. You certainly don't get 2 litre sodas with your food in Japan. They eat much more healthily than in the west, and in shows in their waistlines.
And if you don't believe me, check this out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
It's quite obvious than, for example, Americans eat a lot more than the Japanese - about 34% more. is it any wonder the US is one of the most obese countries on the planet?
The average Japanese person also walks a lot more than the average American person, in part because they use public transport a lot more, and are much more likely to cycle to work etc.
I actually was quite clear in my observation that body building was not the healthiest thing. My point was that they understand nutrition better than almost anyone. The empirical science conducted in those communities is extremely good. They are unhealthy because their objective is not health but bulk or strength. They're not trying to be healthy. They're trying to be BIG. And there is no group on earth that knows better how to get big than the body builders. Not your nutrition experts. Not your doctors.
The meat heads at the gym are experimenting on their bodies all the time and sharing their observations with each other on an ongoing basis.
And I've talked to them about these issues because I long ago had the realization that if anyone understood this sort of thing it would be them.
And according the body builders, you shift the balance of PROTEIN versus carbs depending on activity. A certain amount of fat is good for health but if your objective is to build muscle mass or burn weight, they say you want protein. Their belief is that it is just easier for the body to process proteins into proteins rather than to make proteins from fat or sugars. According them, if you give the body fat, the easiest thing for the body to do is turn it into fat. That said, they say that fat, protein, sugar will get turned into fat if you don't do any exercise.
As to the japanese walking more than we do, that in no way contradicts anything I said because I said the CHANGE was a reduction in the amount Americans moved around. So your citation of the japanese moving around more doesn't undermine my position at all. NOT EVEN A LITTLE TINY BIT. If anything you're validating my position.
Frankly, I think you're replaying an argument you had with someone else some time ago and I'm just the hapless fellow that is being subjected to your replay.
I'm not defending the fucking food pyramid. I find the whole concept of an organized food paradigm to be asinine. You're not my mother and I am not a child. You don't get to tell me what I eat.
And as to your complaint about Americans being fat... So what? Oh heart diseases and various other obesity related illnesses? What does that actually mean? We all die of something. Do obese people die a little faster than other sorts? Usually they do. Same thing with smokers etc. But what does it matter? Are they cutting their productive years short? No they're not. Fat people tend to live to be 70 or so which might be statistically five to ten years less than their thin peers. But are you honestly getting this excited over trying to keep a 70 year old alive until 80? This is a not a great social problem if that is the effect of it.
From a purely utilitarian perspective, what is your problem? Pretend I'm the alien overlord running this world... Explain to me why I give a shit?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Aspartame makes me physically ill. When Coke Zero first came out, it was aspartame-free. Then, Coke pulled a bait-and-switch and started using it. As soon as they did, Coke Zero started making me sick. I still don't think I'll try diet Pepsi, but this is a good thing. I hope Coke does the same thing.
Michael Earls http://cerkit.com/
You are going remarkably offtopic!
I did not discuss the food pyramid, proteins vs carbs, the amount of fat people should be eating etc. And I don't know of anyone forcing anyone to eat off a food pyramid. You are getting rather hysterical about that. And the bit about where I got my argument from, it's from my brain. It's called logic - try it some time.
Anyway, back on topic, the only point I made was that the prime cause of people being obese is them eating too much. Too much is _obviously_ relative.
You countered by saying this was because they do not do enough exercise. I disagreed, and showed you a chart showing, as an _EXAMPLE_, that Americans eat much more than the Japanese, and that - surprise surprise - they are more obese. In fact, so are the Brits and the Germans.
The point I made is pretty simple, one should not eat more than they need to, otherwise they become obese. If you become obese, it is because you are eating more than your body needs, and your body just stores the excess as fat. I think this is beyond obvious.
If you are a professional athlete your calories needs are obviously greater than those of an office worker. The solution isn't for the office worker to eat as much as a football player and then exercise as much. it is to eat less. The amount you eat should be informed by your energy needs.
This is the point that I was making, perhaps too subtly for you. I made the point that exercise is not a substitute for not over-eating. You shouldn't exercise to get rid of calories you shouldn't have eaten in the first place. You should exercise to remain healthy, and eat enough to allow a healthy amount of exercise. If you can't understand that last point, then there is no point discussing this further.
As to statistics, I don't take statistics seriously unless I understand how they're taken and have audited the methodology of the statistic. I've seen too many bullshit statistics over the years to take any stat at face value unless it is very very simple and the methodology is effectively raw.
If there is any filtering or analysis in the statistic then I need to audit that.
So, how are they arriving at these numbers exactly?
I actually clicked on those links associated with that wiki page and found this in the Excel file:
""The food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away.""
That was something I found in the first 10 seconds of checking on this thing. So... your stats are already questionable because they're not even measuring consumption. I knew they couldn't possibly be because how could you possibly measure that? Are you sitting at my dinner table?
Anyway, the UN links on the wiki page are dead short of that excel file. That's not good. And the hunger map doesn't actually address the US at all. The US is cited as "not assessed" on that map.
Basically I think you're trying to turn the availability of food in my country into something we should be ashamed of... which is kind of funny. Nothing new though, we get blamed for being rich, and powerful. Why not blame us for being able to feed ourselves as well? I mean... lets just go completely Orwellian on this and say that Famine is Bounty or something.
Too funny. :D
I ignored your stats before because stats are so frequently bullshit that I tend to just ignore them by default. But if you want to poke me and force me to rip them to fucking shreds... so be it. *yawn*
As to just eating less, the human body doesn't respond well to that scenario. It slows the metabolism down, causes the body to shed muscle mass, and sends various evolutionary signals that you might be suffering through famine like conditions. Which means the body will ramp your energy levels down, prioritize fat creation, and generally make you into a fat piece of shit.
The best way to not be fat is to have an active metabolism. You don't need to be an Olympic athlete. You do need to have enough activity to keep the system running. If you stop moving and start eating fewer calories than you burn just by sitting on your ass... your body is going to assume you're in a famine and trigger all the emergency famine responses.
Understand WHAT you are... you are a product of millions of years of evolution. Understand that evolution is the silent partner in all these situations. What is the perspective of evolution in this situation?
Human beings having lots of food, doing nothing physically, and not being at any risk of ever running out of food is unprecedented in our genetic history. So our DNA is not going to read this situation accurately.
We don't fail to build muscle because the body NEEDS us to move to build muscle. We build muscle because we send an evolutionary signal to our bodies that we NEED the muscle and so energy is directed to build and maintain that muscle.
Genetically there is no reason why you couldn't have an eight pack without any exercise at all. You don't get that because the body doesn't like to waste resources on things that are not being used. That is all exercise really does in most cases. It communicates to the body that certain things are needed.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.