Slashdot Mirror
Sugar-Free Products Might Actually Stop Us From Getting Slimmer (dw.com)
Nutritionists suspected that artificial sweeteners weren't really helping people lose weight, according to a new article submitted by schwit1. Now there's hints of proof in a new aspartame study by the Massachusetts General Hospital.
"We found that aspartame blocks a gut enzyme called intestinal alkaline phosphatase," explains Professor Hodin. IAP is produced in the small intestine. "We previously showed [this enzyme] can prevent obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome [a disease characterized by a combination of obesity, high blood pressure, a metabolic disorder and insulin resistance]. So, we think that aspartame might not work because, even as it is substituting for sugar, it blocks the beneficial aspects of IAP...."
The researchers confirmed their suspicions via a variety of tests on mice. In one case, they fed IAP directly to mice, who were also on a high-fat diet. It turned out that the IAP could effectively prevent the emergence of the metabolic syndrome. It also helped relieve symptoms in animals that were already suffering from the obesity-related illness.
The researchers confirmed their suspicions via a variety of tests on mice. In one case, they fed IAP directly to mice, who were also on a high-fat diet. It turned out that the IAP could effectively prevent the emergence of the metabolic syndrome. It also helped relieve symptoms in animals that were already suffering from the obesity-related illness.
Sugar free. First good. Then bad. Then good. Now bad again. Much like eggs (which seem to bounce between good and bad every 6-8 years). Moderation is really the key. Eat moderately, exercise moderately and you'll be OK.. Unless your genes say otherwise, that is...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yeah, at least anecdotally, I'm a little skeptical of these findings because I had metabolic syndrome at one point, (I was even on 40mg of lovastatin at one point just to control blood cholesterol) and it went away when I switched from regular soda to diet soda. While that doesn't mean that this study came to a wrong conclusion, I'd like to see this researched in humans rather than mice.
There is a difference between adding aspartame and not adding it.
Its not the absent of sugars that will stop us from getting slimmer. Its (allegedly) the adding of aspartame.
So I should not eat carrots and tomatoes?
"Sugar-Free Products Might Actually Stop Us From Getting Slimmer" I should drink more of Coca-Cola to get slimmer?
PS
Don't post this in the internet. Trump will now take this as we need more sugars in all food. "All I know is whats on the internet"
Can someone call Bill Gates so he can remove it? He is the one with the off-switch, right?
I hate these hit pieces about _all_ sugar free food when it is really about a specific calorie free sweetener in lab mice. I'd like to see other results using sugar alcohols, splenda, etc before saying they all do the same thing. I also would like to see it done in human trials. Not saying discount this test but it needs to be expanded and the frigging fake news (again!) headlines need to point out the specific substances involved and not label it everything. You suspect these are hit pieces because of this fact - but maybe it is just lazy journalism, who knows. Shills exist for every industry including both artificial and real sweeteners. My favorite for tea, Sweet'N Low caused cancer in rats' bladders but was shown not to in humans: http://www.health.com/health/g...
How long before this intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP) stuff comes as pills or a liquid in the herbs in bottles section of the store? The aspartame being potentially bad for you isn't the interesting part. This is the interesting part: ... fed IAP directly to mice, who were also on a high-fat diet. It turned out that the IAP could effectively prevent the emergence of the metabolic syndrome. It also helped relieve symptoms in animals that were already suffering from the obesity-related illness.
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
"Sugar-Free Products Might Actually Stop Us From Getting Slimmer" should be
"Aspartame Products Might Actually Stop Us From Getting Slimmer "
Another question is if the mice that where getting the high-fat diet where eating a surplus of calories or not, because if they did then all this study tells us that overeating while drinking diet sodas is worse than just overeating (which in itself is bad). The stupid article does however not link to the actual study.
And there is one more odd thing with the article. They claim that it's due to phenylalanine:
However, aspartame does not block the enzyme directly. It does so through one of its intestinal breakdown products called phenylalanine.
However phenylalanine is something that we get from a wide variety of food sources (quote from Wikipedia):
Good sources of phenylalanine are eggs, chicken, liver, beef, milk, and soybeans.[5] Other sources include spinach and leafy greens, tofu, amaranth leaves, and lupin seeds.
Even if they turn out to be reproducible, these results only apply to aspartame, not to all sugar-free products. Most sugar-free products don't contain aspartame.
I had to take care of my late father for two months after he had an episode that pushed him from pre-diabetic to diabetic and an extended stay at the hospital. I took him to a nutritional class that his doctor ordered. The instructor warned us that food labeled "healthy" are often less healthy than the regular food and check the labels to compare the differences. Food companies often compensate for something else to make a food product more healthier.
Artificial sugar may cause other problems:
After TASTING the sweetness, the body may ask, "But where's the calories?"
Sweet tooth unsatisfied, we may be eating more other stuff.
Artificial sweeteners appear to disturb the body's ability to count calories and, as a result, diet foods and drinks may wind up encouraging weight gain rather than weight loss, an expert contends. ... Commonly used sweeteners include sucralose, aspartame and saccharin, among others.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Mice are mostly herbivores, they aren't evolved to get their energy from fats like carnivores or omnivores. Even the "omnivore" varieties eat insects, which is a far cry from animal fats that real omnivores eat.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
when I start my energy drink addiction vs caffeine pills I gain weight even with one large (Xience) sugar free drink per day. I do get less anxiety from the energy drinks like say Beaver Buzz Green Tea vs popping one pill. Seem the pill (200mg) hits way faster. One thing I did notice if I get 8+ hours of sleep I much way less during the day and especially at night when I get crazy cravings if I only get 5 hours of sleep or less. It does take about a week for the body to adjust from the short to long hour sleeps.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Nothing at all to do with being sugar-free and everything to do with the artificial sweeteners?
So I should be fine, since I add the original cane sugar to my coffee, and only drink original coke, no diets.
The whole industry is predicated on you not losing weight in a short period of time and keeping it off without you continually having to buy their products. If you lost weight in six months by using a product that reset your metabolic rate to a faster rate permanently, you wouldn't need to buy that product anymore (and they've lost a revenue stream). Think this sounds crazy? Consider how many things in your life that you never actually own but rather pay "rent" on every month. You don't pay for just the electricity or water you use. You cough up a mandatory service fee every month. So in a way you rent your utilities. Same with your cellphone and internet access. Same with your car particularly if you haven't paid it off. Think you own your house because you paid off your mortgage? Think again. You're paying property tax (a form of rent) and insurance (another form of rent). More and more businesses are changing over to subscription models, basically rent. Health insurance is yet another form of rent and an expensive one at that and by extension, your health itself is being rented. Ultimately, you're renting an attractive body (not a healthy weight), by paying for a gym membership and/or Weight Watchers. Welcome to The Machine.
Short answer: eat real food and stop eating sugar and you'll lose weight quickly, without starving and without even exercising.
all this study tells us that overeating while drinking diet sodas is worse than just overeating
Most people already overeat, so information about whether diet sodas benefit overeaters is more useful than whether they benefit moderate eaters.
Except that I prefer them sweet. My coffee is black, but I add 3 spoons or 6 cubes of sugar. Soda water itself is a tad bitter, but I like it w/ lime juice cordial
From the article: "aspartame does not block the enzyme directly. It does so through one of its intestinal breakdown products called phenylalanine."
So I guess phenylaline is a terrible substance that gives people the fats?
"Good sources of phenylalanine are eggs, chicken, liver, beef, milk, and soybeans. Other sources include spinach and leafy greens, tofu, amaranth leaves, and lupin seeds." It's also an important component of mother's milk.
So, I guess the same logic as this study could tell you to never eat some of the healthiest foods we are aware of, or else you will get fat. This is just yet another article that tries to come up with some reason why it's not as simple as calorie in v. calorie out, when calorie in v. calorie out has been thorougly proven. Aspartame has been so thoroughly tested that a study that injects superdoses into the stomachs of mice doesn't prove anything.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
You mean all I have to do is burn more calories than I eat? But how can businesses make money with that model?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If you have health problems and are drinking soda than you are an idiot.
Eating less and "exercising" more will lead to weight loss. What the studies try to figure out is how I can eat less and exercise more than someone else of the same size and age, yet I gain weight, while he loses weight.
When nobody can explain that, all the studies done are in question.
If you want to loose weight, ignore these ever changing studies and do the obvious. There is no cheat, there are no excuses.
Great. But I have cut calories and increased activity and gained 50 lbs (over 5 years). How much more do I need to do? Will I ever be able to see results? Nobody, even you, can answer those questions. I know the cause. It's medical. But nobody can explain the causal relationship, or what level of calories and activity will result in getting back to the starting weight and staying there.
Learn to love Alaska
"We previously showed [this enzyme] can prevent obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome [a disease characterized by a combination of obesity, high blood pressure, a metabolic disorder and insulin resistance]. So, we think that aspartame might not work because, even as it is substituting for sugar, it blocks the beneficial aspects of IAP...."
So when looking for the mechanism that causes weight gain with all low calorie sweeteners[1], we found that aspartame reduces the effect of IAP in mice. IAP, in turn, reduces metabolic syndrome in mice who are force fed high fat diets.
This may or may not mean something with human beings. Sugar, however, is strongly correlated with obesity, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimers. [2]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yeah I caught that too. Phenylalanine is in a LOT of things, including some fruits (I know for example that bananas have it.)
Not exactly. Soda doesn't have anything in it that you won't find in a number of other foods that a lot of people would say are "natural" (and I use that term loosely because practically nothing that anybody eats is truly "natural", even if you eat organic fruit/vegetables, as practically all of them have been selectively bred to bear almost no resemblance to the wild vegetables that they came from, which as it turns out, our bodies can't digest the "natural" ones very well to the point that we'd likely starve on them.)
That includes the much lauded sodium benzoate, which is also found in cranberries and apples in quantities not far off from the FDA maximum for packaged food. Also, fruit juices (especially grape juice) have basically the same amount of sugar as a typical soda.
What kills you is having excess macronutrient beyond what you metabolize. And yes, soda can easily contribute to that as it is very high in calories, but this is true of many things. Personally, I work out so much these days that I've actually been calorie deficient at times, and sometimes I'll have a regular soda. The metabolic syndrome so far has not returned, and isn't showing any signs of returning (my employer does annual screenings in exchange for a discount on health insurance.) And in fact, I've gained weight while having very obvious loss of body fat.
Except... that he's doing that... and it's not working...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So, I guess the same logic as this study could tell you to never eat some of the healthiest foods we are aware of, or else you will get fat.
The question is, then, what is found in those healthy foods that helps your body process that phenylalanine, potentially rendering it beneficial (or, at least, neutral) rather than harmful? Much like fruits (not juices) contain fructose, which we know is bad for us in quantity, they're fine because that fructose is bundled with fiber, which your body utilizes in the course of processing and storing that sugar, rendering it beneficial (as a stored source of energy) rather than harmful (as a literal poison).
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What happens when you've met your weight loss goal and return to a normal diet?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
But I have consistently been able to identify (without prior knowledge) sucralose, an artificial sweetener, in my food.
I can do that because I get sick immediately after.
I get a horrible after-taste coming up from my stomach, and one time I ate a whole can of peaches before realizing it (canned PEACHES have artificial sweetener now?!), I ended up dizzy and I could feel heart was beating out of my chest and a pain all around it.
I've thought about doing a live double blind study, on video, and posting it to Youtube to prove I'm not full of crap. But it's also strange that I'd have to go to such extravagant lengths to "prove" I'm not lying. Are we supposed to assume every chemical produced by a "food" company is good for us now? When did Big Pharma become the good guys?
And, now I don't know if this is true or not but I've heard that mice don't break down Aspartame exactly like humans either which also makes it harder to extract truths from such studies. AFAIK all studies done on humans and aspartame have shown that it's equivalent to water when considering body weight.
Well if you are overeating you will gain weight and have a high chance of getting metabolic syndrome anyway. Unfortunately they do not quantify the higher risks in TFA so we cannot even know if what they claim is what the actual study found.
Black means no cream. Which is what I do. Sugar has nothing to do w/ the color of the beverage
Many seed that are probably part of Mice traditional evolutionary food supply are very high in fat content, a high density energy source is necessary for many seeds to germinate and establish themselves and that is exactly what fats are. Our brains are hard-wired to crave certain types of foods, fatty-salty foods and sweet foods, Fritos corn chips have almost the exact combination of fat and salt to elicit this, almost addictive response.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here's the actual URL to the Massachusetts General's study. Initially, I questioned whether this was true or a hit-piece/fake news against Aspartame.
http://www.massgeneral.org/abo...
http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pressrelease.aspx?id=2016
No sig for you! Come back one year!
This is true, but they are also high in carbohydrates. Feeding a mouse low-carb and high-fat could be just as damaging as a high-carb low-fat diet is to a human, not taking into account the sugars, salts and other chemicals used to entice us to eat those high-carb low-fat foods. Of course a high, or even normal-carb, high-fat diet could be just as fattening to the mouse, with or without Aspartame.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Amazing, isn't it? People often underestimate the power of walking, veggies, and drinking water. Walking takes longer than more active exercise to burn the same amount of calories, true, but it's easier on the body. Veggies and water don't taste as good as other things. Even after years of doing it, I can't say I enjoy the taste of most veggies. But my body feels better when I eat them. Short-term pleasure vs. long-term satisfaction, I suppose.
I understand that people seem to store calories with varying degrees of efficiency. My body seems bad at storing calories, which means I can eat more than others and not gain weight (although that's changing as I get older). If someone tells me they tried doing this for months and saw no benefits, well, perhaps they are one of those unfortunate people who are super-efficient at storing calories, and therefore need some other method to lose weight. But it seems to me that this is always a good first step to try.
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones