Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sugar-Free Products Might Actually Stop Us From Getting Slimmer (dw.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the sugar-coating-the-truth dept.

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.

21 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Good then bad then good by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:Good then bad then good by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sigh... this again.

      Everything you eat can have good and bad effects. That a new good or bad effect to some particular food may be discovered in the future does not invalidate those discovered previously.

      Furthermore, a lot of the "refinements" are just that - refinements. For example, fat. First it was "too much fat is bad". Then we broke fats down: "saturated fat is bad, unsaturated fat is good". Then we broke those down. For example, "polyunsaturated fats are mixed but often bad, monounsaturated are mixed but often good". Then you break those down - for example, "omega-3 polyunsaturated are good, most of the others are consumed in too much quantity relative to the amount of omega-3". And then you break those down - "ALA omega-3 is good, but EPA and DHA are better".

      Just because you learn more and break categories down in more detail doesn't mean that the previous, more general statements, were wrong. Yes, sometimes things will actually be wrong, but that's not the general case; you just add more information to the corpus.

      As to this article:

      However, aspartame does not block the enzyme directly. It does so through one of its intestinal breakdown products called phenylalanine.

      So it's not actually a study on aspartame (which breaks down immediately in the stomach to phenylalanine, methanol and aspartic acid). Phenylalanine is an amino acid, found in many foods in quantities well more than in typical amounts of aspartame - for example, eggs, meat / seafood, nuts, legumes, dairy, etc are all high in phenylalanine. Basically, most source of protein are also major sources of phenylalanine. So why spin this study as an anti-aspartame study? And furthermore, are people who eat high protein diets (aka, rich in phenylalanine) famous for being overweight, for that matter?

      Looks like this study involved a questionable procedure I've seen in the past - feeding mice ad libitum either aspartame-sweetened water, or just plain water. The ones that had the sweetened water ate more and gained more weight. Great, except that's not comparing what you're claiming it's comparing. If you want to see the benefits of switching from sugary drinks to artificially sweetened ones, the control group should be drinking sugar sweetened water ad libitum, not plain water. At least in this study the sweetener was in the water in this one; I've seen some where they put the sweetener in the food. Which leads to the result "gee, I am so shocked that they ate more of their food after you sweetened it up". Even in this case, they're having a sweet liquid with their food, which could on its own explain why they're eating more of it. I'm no expert in the flavour of lab mouse food, but I'm going to wager that it's not the most delicious of substances on Earth.

      --
      People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
    2. Re:Good then bad then good by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sugar free. First good. Then bad. Then good. Now bad again.

      This article doesn't say a word about sugar. It's not sugar that's good, it's aspartame that's worse.

      And it was always a questionable ingredient, despite an overwhelming amount of sponsored research claiming that it's all ok.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:Good then bad then good by Gr8Apes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sugar free. First good. Then bad. Then good. Now bad again.

      Actually - sugar-free is good, and has been good always. Sugar substitutes whose ingredients include toxins (methanol)? Now that sounds like it's just bad.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    4. Re:Good then bad then good by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 2

      Then we broke those down.

      "We" didn't, the food industry did, so that they could sell more food and/or charge more for pseudo health labeling.

      If you want to see the benefits of switching from sugary drinks to artificially sweetened ones, the control group should be drinking sugar sweetened water ad libitum, not plain water.

      That would answer "whether". We already know "whether" and would like to understand "why".... Specifically, the mechanism by which Aspartame promotes weight gain / hinders weight loss.

    5. Re:Good then bad then good by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Funny

      And it was always a questionable ingredient, despite an overwhelming amount of sponsored research claiming that it's all ok.

      A good rule of thumb is don't eat anything that we didn't evolve to eat. If hunter-gathers didn't eat it, neither should you. I eat mostly roots, berries and grubs.

    6. Re: Good then bad then good by undefinedreference · · Score: 2

      Sugar free isn't really good. Humans tend to seek out sugar. Most foods have sugars in them. Our bodies are designed to process them effectively.

      The problem is that people like to use fake sugar due to a fear of sugar, or they replace fat with sugar... These things confuse the digestive tract, which causes the body to do weird things it shouldn't do to compensate. It's why "sugar substitutes" that insulin doesn't break down seem to be contributors to diabetes in the long term.

    7. Re:Good then bad then good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      A good rule of thumb is don't eat anything that we didn't evolve to eat. If hunter-gathers didn't eat it, neither should you. I eat mostly roots, berries and grubs.

      I'm lucky, my genetic profile shows I descend from a bacon-hunting and pancake-gathering tribe!

    8. Re:Good then bad then good by slew · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I know this was tongue-in-cheek, but how long did hunter-gatherers live on average?

      If they made it past infant, the best estimates are about the same as 15-16th century men. Generally hunter-gatherers that made it past infancy died from external means (accidents, infections, etc). Of course making it past infancy was pretty hard for typical hunter gathers. It is a myth that they somehow prehistoric people all died around 30 because that was their "life-expectanacy" at birth. The huge increase in infant mortality greatly skew their life-expectancy down greatly.

      Studies in the 50's and 60's of isolated hunter-gather societies in Africa and south america provide our best estimates for lifespans of hunter-gatherer societies post infant mortality. The studies of these relatively contemporary isolated hunter-gatherer societies tracked with human life spans in the 15-16th century when actual records were more available. One of the big assumption they make in many studies is that childhood and other infectious diseases were much more common in the 15-16th century as population densities increased vs isolated hunter gatherer societies so you can perhaps take all this with a grain of salt...

      As an additionally data point, many recovered fossils of prehistoric men (and neanderthals for that matter) have shown advanced arthritis and dental wear consistent with ages around 60yo so their is at least existant proof of older people of that era. Although there aren't enough fossil records to be sure of actual age statistics solely from fossil records.

      When the industrial revolution rolled around and our lives became less physically dangerous and learned more about diseases, infant/child mortality greatly decreases and our life expectancy has raised considerably and now people that made it past childhood were dying of typical cardio-vascular diseases (probably from higher calorie diets that didn't exist during our species hunter-gather phase).

      If you really want to live to your natural age limit of relatively cardio-vascular disease free life, various studies from the 1930's to present day have shown highly calorie restricted diets have shown to possibly be one way to go. It must be balanced, and sadly caloric levels are at the level of near starvation like some hunter-gathers that hit a few lean years. Unfortunately, the statistics have shown the next thing in line to get you is probably cancer, so it doesn't really make you live much longer just w/o cardio-vascular disease, so it may not be worth for many folks to basically starving yourself to get this benefit... yet...

    9. Re:Good then bad then good by dinfinity · · Score: 2

      Everything you eat can have good and bad effects. That a new good or bad effect to some particular food may be discovered in the future does not invalidate those discovered previously.

      I'm sorry, but this is the wrong explanation. The right explanation is that doing nutritional research is hard and that nutritional claims are often not well-supported.

      There was never enough proof to say "Fat is bad for you", nor is there currently enough proof to say that "Saturated fat is bad for you". Besides being instantly suspect by being ridiculously simplistic, such claims are almost exclusively based on correlations or effects in high-risk groups. But people really want nutritional advice, so somebody is going to give it to them, citing some paper that suggests some effect.

      Don't get me wrong: There are some things where the causal relation between it and a negative health effect is known, but in nutritional advice that generally is not the case.

    10. Re:Good then bad then good by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      Oh look, unprocessed whole food woo. We should avoid vaccines too?

      Most people are kind of shocked to learn a poorly-tuned fast food diet (yes, even McDonalds) is actually as healthy (or more) as a heavy-tuned fruits-and-vegetables diet, so long as you avoid eating too god damned much. The problem is meats and complex foods in general (that is: hamburgers with ketchup and onions and lettuce) contain an average amount of nearly all nutrients; various plant-based foods are high in specific nutrients, although have to average out in a mixture and so equate to similar (or lower) levels of micronutrients than fast foods; and people generally eat 1000-1800 calories in a single fast-food meal, including nutritionally-devoid sodas and french fries.

      Vegetables are mainly the only source of vitamin C (great and important) and fiber (not important), along with resistant starch (highly supportive of important gut bacteria). Meats are a better source of minerals like zinc and silicon, as well as several vitamins, notably Vitamin B12 (the form in plant-based foods isn't metabolically-available to humans) and Vitamin A (Retinol is six times as active as Beta-Carotine, which itself is greatly more-active than other plant-based vitamin A vitamers). There's some debate over whether plant-based food or animal-based food provides more calcium, except for seafood of any sort (fish or seaweed) being superior in that regard; and nobody seems to mention that meat contains a surprising amount of potassium, which is actually hard to get even from a plant-based diet.

      I'm kind of unsurprised, considering people claim a home-grilled hamburger or a bagel sandwich with sausage, egg, and cheese is a healthy, home-cooked meal, while a hamburger from McDonalds or a nearly-identical sausage, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich is "unhealthy fast food". It's the kind of double-think Orwell warned us about.

      Tl;dr the foods that give the most nutrients per calorie are debatable. Typically meat seems to fill that if you want to consider a broad spectrum of nutrients at average levels; vegetables can fill that for single nutrients, but lose nutrient density when attempting to include all nutrients, to the point that even fast food burgers are more nutritionally-complete with higher levels of individual nutrients than a balanced vegan diet.

      Oh, and low-fat diets have been shown to have severe negative health effects on and off, but nothing so alarming as to break the back of the campaign completely. Most research shows that the benefits of a low-fat diet are dubious; some research shows lower testosterone in men on low-fat diets, and other research shows no benefit to cardiovascular health or cancer rates in women on low-fat diets. Science is having a hard time lauding the virtues of a low-fat or a high-carbohydrate diet; although the low-carbohydrate diets (10% or less of calories) are also not well-backed. There's a great span of distance between carbohydrates as 70% of your calories and as 10% of your calories, though.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    11. Re: Good then bad then good by dinfinity · · Score: 2

      And this is how total misunderstanding of nutritional science spreads.

      Correlation does not equal causation and 'all major medical associations' do not disagree with me on this.
      There are plenty of studies that did not find any correlation or only a very very weak one between saturated fat and heart disease. Even if a correlation is found, it still does not prove causation.

  2. Added sugar vs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  3. Aspartame and Mice by jwymanm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Aspartame and Mice by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There have been studies on other sweeteners. Basically all of the sugar alcohols except erythritol interfere with your system in some way when used as a sugar substitute... And maybe that one too, and they just haven't figured it out yet. Stevia, on the other hand, so far appears as if it may even be beneficial. If you don't mind that it tastes like a leaf.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Where can I get this IAP stuff? by WolphFang · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  5. aspartame only by ooloorie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. I noticed by future+assassin · · Score: 2

    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*
  7. The entire diet & exercise industry is a scam by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. I know no one will ever believe me by ckatko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:I know no one will ever believe me by NorthWay · · Score: 2

      I could see that. Myself, I have a correlation between a few (but not most) sugarfree soft-drinks and getting a headache.
      So I simply have stopped drinking those. One does wonder about the others though...