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Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Weight Gain, Heart Problems In Analysis of Data From 37 Studies (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The theory behind artificial sweeteners is simple: If you use them instead of sugar, you get the joy of sweet-tasting beverages and foods without the downer of extra calories, potential weight gain and related health issues. In practice, it's not so simple, as a review of the scientific evidence on non-nutritive sweeteners published Monday shows. After looking at two types of scientific research, the authors conclude that there is no solid evidence that sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose help people manage their weight. And observational data suggest that the people who regularly consume these sweeteners are also more likely to develop future health problems, though those studies can't say those problems are caused by the sweeteners.
The review, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at 37 studies. Seven of them were randomized trials, covering about 1,000 people, and the rest were observational studies that tracked the health and habits of almost 406,000 people over time.
The review, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at 37 studies. Seven of them were randomized trials, covering about 1,000 people, and the rest were observational studies that tracked the health and habits of almost 406,000 people over time.
eat four times as much.
Just when I *finally* had started to get used to that artificial taste... and now it's not even a good thing? I should start putting actual sugar in my coffee again?
will you be eligble for make a claim that the stated benefits don't work. For all other creatures, use at your own risk.
I delivered pizza in college. 2 large Everything pizza's and 4 litres of Diet Coke. Who orders that? Yep, every time. Like the Diet Coke is going to offset 4 slices of Everything pizza.
I see it our community pool every summer. Some of these kids I don't see for 8 months. They come down each summer a little larger. Kids drink Diet Coke and then eat 4 hotdogs or 2 burgers. I see it every weekend. People eat multiple burgers/hotdogs, chips and fatty dip, strawberries with pound cake and whip cream, all while sipping their slimming Diet Coke.
the taste. The entire population of users consists of those who have an exposure to health problems that has either already exhibited, or is taken seriously by the user.
Amazing! Nearly all of the people residing in this building [hospital] have health issues! Must be something in the water.
Artificial sweeteners consumed by people who like sweets, associated with weight gain and heart problems.
The problem is that when people drink diet soda, they often do not keep their diet the same. It's easy to get a large calorie filled burger and a diet soda. But if science is science, then calories in is equal to work done with excess calories becoming weight gained. Unless our fundamental understanding of the calorie is wrong, there seems no way for diet soda to do anything but let you lose weight. Given an exactly identical diet.
I've struggled a bit with weight for years and recently started a new diet which includes not drinking zero calorie fizzy drinks. Instead I keep chilled filtered water in the fridge and drink that. I've also calorie controlled my diet like I have previously but this time the weight is falling off. The only real difference is the lack of these zero calorie fizzy drinks. Anecdotal yes, but seriously worth considering.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Many Nu-Sweeter have been shown to cause autism. Dont eat this.
Get rid of any Asian toys/products. Children should receive regular, healthy, not-infrequent beatings to prevent autism deposits from forming. Replace all their sugars with salts. Any salts will do, but radioactive salts work best.
Can anyone say confounding by indication? In the same way that people who get a lot of EKGs are at much higher risk of having a heart attack, people who consume artificial sweetners are at increased risk of obesity.
No one would suggest that getting an EKG increases your risk of heart attacks but people who get a lot of them are certainly at a much, MUCH higher risk of heart attacks. That is because if you have risk factors and complain of chest pain and shortness of breath to a doctor, she will send you for an EKG. In the same way, people self select to consume artificial sweetners if they are fat.
My understanding is that eating something sweet causes an insulin rush (actually, merely the taste of sweetness on the tongue triggers this, you don't even have to swallow it.) If the insulin arrives, and finds no real sugars in the bloodstream, this is like crying wolf. Eventually the insulin stops responding to the sweetness trigger, which is 'insulin resistance.' This causes real sugar to linger in the bloodstream longer before it's processed, although I forgot how that leads to obesity; probably a secondary metabolic pathway converts the 'leftovers' to fat.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
An Amazon dash button.
Its always assumed that artificial sweeteners are only "for fat people". People that care about their oral hygiene use artificial sweeteners for a different reason. The absence of sugar has a direct impact on bacteria present in the mouth. The two most direct consequences are tooth decay and bad breath.
If you are going to mock the person at the all-you-can-eat buffet ordering a "diet" beverage, be aware they may find it offensive as the sugar in your coffee, tea, cola, juice, etc may cause your breath to smell like a sewer.
Only skinny, healthy nutters would believe this sort of drivel. As any normal obese heart-failing American can tell you, artificial sweeteners are actually quite good for you.
So, skinny people are the #1 Market for low cal sweeteners?
I doubt that.
Sugar has paid millions to hurt, harm, etc artificial sweeteners.
It's BULLSHIT until you prove they weren't involved.
This is yet another bullshit study, with an obvious result.
oil, lead, sugar, etc. industries that have paid billions to debunk their harm.
I assume false, based on experience.
I am plenty overweight, I did drink a lot of diet coke but I gave it up a few months ago when there were reports that the sweeteners are causing dementia. My weight has increased since I gave up (and no, I have not started drinking full fat coke). My problem is the usual too many calories in / too few expended. Anecdotally of course I can't say that the diet coke was my downfall so far as weight is concerned.
Nullius in verba
The key phrase in the above summary is:
"those studies can't say those problems are caused by the sweeteners"
meaning the studies are pretty useless, and the /. headline:
"Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Weight Gain, Heart Problems In Analysis of Data From 37 Studies"
is completely misleading.
Undoubtedly as many other posters have suggested the problem is behavioral, which will surprise no one and doesn't require 37 studies to demonstrate.
It could be a lifestyle problem. I know that in my case I started with sugar cola, then switched to diet because I was getting too much sugar, so much I was starting to show off early signs of diabetes mellitus. Then now I am trying to switch off to water (more difficult than you think - I have now bouts of water consumption and bouts of soda without sugar - bad habits are hard to shake. On the other hand my weight is dropping).
For many people the alternative is not healthy lifestyle with diet soda and healthy lifestyle without, the alternative is unhealthy lifestyle with lotta sugar and sugary drink OR unhealthy lifestyle with diet cola , that is slightly less sugar. As such , yes people consuming artificial sweetener soda seem to are more likely to get lifestyle related disease... But the alternative may actually be they get those disease earlier if they consumed sugary drink instead.
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"I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke." Of course, that is sample bias like probably with this study. Someone wouldn't drink a Diet Coke because they taste terrible unless they were trying to cut back on calories.
The other have should be the connection to caffeine. As already stated below, sugary tastes make you hungrier. While the caffeine turns off the chemicals associated with hunger. This is why it's so prevalent in diet pills. But what happens when you put both together? You get a concoction which puts your body into a constant chemical imbalance. Has their been a long term study stating what happens when this happens? Or has Coke/Pepsi already buried the report?
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Full fake coke would be better. Fat makes you feel more full, takes longer to digest, and takes more energy to digest. Fat doesn't make you fat. Stop avoiding fat.
These products are simply there so people can eat sweet tasting things without feeling any remorse, without possible recrimination from others or themselves.
It's a "have your cake and eat it too", literally, thing,
Something's not right here. The meta-study aggregated 37 individual studies, at about 1000 people total. That's 27 people per individual study, which means that the individual study can't have any statistical significance. Isn't that the exact thing SlashDot is always railing against, that you can cherry-pick the sample population to meet the study's purpose? Who checked the quality of the other individual studies?
Some people actually like Diet Coke. I can't stand the regular non-diet Coke - it's way too sweet for me with a nasty aftertaste. And Diet Coke is just fine.
I think the subject of this post says it all actually.
awfully vague. is this being indirectly financed by the sugar producers the same way they axed artificial sweeteners in the US back in the 60's? sounds very familiar. and are they worse than the negative effects of sugar? i doubt it.
I've consumed the stuff for decades and I'm skinny and healthy AF. I bet I'm in better shape than 99% of users on this site.
Some guy's anecdotal evidence more convincing than peer reviewed research.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Eating too much & moving too little is what makes you fat.
I cant believe some people still have trouble with such a simple formula. I guess fat makes them retarded too
Aspatame influences the sugar and fat transfer from the digesting track to the blood and has an influence on insulin levels (insulin is already set free when you taste the right sweetness in your mouth) and hence amplifies transfer of fat and sugar into the fat cells.
I know that since over 25 years, so I guess the science is 30 years old or older ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"I'll have a large pizza and a diet coke please. I've got to think of my weight"
Protip: Anything that gives you diarrhea when consumed in high amount is not particularly healthy.
"Well if the artificial stuff is bad too I might as well enjoy my habit and drink the full strength real sugar soft drink right?" Wrong. I reckon I developed diabetes at least a good 5-10 years earlier with that attitude.
Limiting sweetners is a great idea if you can bring yourself to do it without introducing more real sugar.
This is why Trump won.
"Diet coke? Diet coke? If diet coke is so good how come you only see fat people drinking it?"
...but I'd sure as hell like to have an easy-access, nicely detailed list of funding parties for this research, along with the head researchers background, with their past work clear and conclusions accessible.
I like my research unbiased and authorship transparent. That also applies to headlines around the subject - I see none of that in this post.
Or did everyone already forget, now that it's silly season, that big sugar is a large research patron?
Replacing all beverages with that, along with intermittent fasting help me shed 30kg in 5 months. I certainly plan on not drinking it forever though; have already begun to replace it with water as approach my goal weight. I don't think artificial sweeteners are good for you, but i think the weight gain - from my own experience - is just a lack of discipline/willpower.
In a rare burst of insight, he tweeted a couple years ago that Diet Coke doesn't seem to help him control his weight because it only made him hungrier.
He was referring to he type of coke you snort
He was referring to he type of coke you snort
Those piggy nostrils are probably not well suited for that particular habit. Of course, it can be administered the other way too, if your reach is long enough...
Article, summary, and even the abstract of the study are all completely useless garbage because none of them tell us which sweeteners they actually studied.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cutting out "Diet" coke isn't what made you gain weight. "Diet" coke isn't some magic weight loss drug that makes you loose weight. You obviously replaced the coke with something containing more calories. Fruit juices? Those can be just as bad a normal soda. Compare the calories and sugars contained in both products.
Some people think fruit juices are more healthy than regular coke, because well its fruit juice, its natural, it must be healthy. In the end calories are calories. They are a unit of energy. If you are consuming more energy than you burn, then you body has it do something with the excess. The body converts the unused energy to fat and stores it to be released at a later time when your are not consuming enough calories required for your body's needs.
The trick to loosing/maintaining weight is to figure out what your body's baseline caloric needs are. Once you know that number. If you consume calories up to your caloric baseline, then you maintain your weight. If you consume fewer calories you eventually burn off the fat. You can also increase your body's caloric baseline with exercise.
This is how Olympic athletes like swimmers can consume 10,000 calories a day and not have a singe bit of fat on their bodies. Since they train and swim all day, their bodies actually burn that many calories throughout the day so none of it gets converted to fat. If they stuck with a "normal" 2000 calorie diet they would look like wasting away Ethiopians.
If you want to loose weight, start logging all of the calories you consume every day to figure out what you are taking in on average. Then for a week or two at a time drop your caloric intake by a couple hundred calories a day. Weigh yourself daily and track that as well. As soon as you start seeing a few pounds go off you have found your magic number of calories. Somewhere around what you were consuming the previous week. As long as you stay under that number the weight should slowly melt away even without added exercise. You can increase this rate with exercise.
[T]he sweeteners appear to change the population of intestinal bacteria that direct metabolism, the conversion of food to energy or stored fuel. And this result suggests the connection might also exist in humans.
https://www.scientificamerican...
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I'm a drinker of diet sodas, but what really bothers me is that people really over-emphasize the "diet" in the name. I wish they'd change the name so people would stop focusing on the "diet" part of the name. I don't drink these things because it's a "diet" drink or because it has no calories. I drink them because I can't stand the taste of sugary drinks. Yet, I've suffered some of the stupidest comments from people who seem to be self-proclaimed "experts" on diet drinks, only to be disproved by actually speaking out loud. And people really, really want to give their opinions about the subject when none was ever asked for. I've had some people think I'm in good shape because of diet sodas, and I've had others warn me that I might suffer and end up in bad shape because I drink them. They kind of ignore the possibility that going to the gym every other day might have a lot more to do with it.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
No, that kind of coke is a well-documented appetite suppressant.
You are correct in regards to CHEAP brown sugar. It says right on the label, "refined sugar and molasses". Publix' store brand is like that.
Now, the 365 organic brown sugar (Whole Foods) actually says, "Ingredients: Brown Sugar".
It's like head-shaving, early mornings, shouting and strict rules in boot camp; it breaks you into being obedient. Why should you follow your diet when you've got a nice cold, delicious glass of no-guilt Coke Zero sitting next to you? But when drill sergeant "Bland Water" is yelling at you, you *know* that supreme pizza is off-limits.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Unless they had a control group eating the same exact diets (minus the artificial sweeteners) as the artificial-sweetener-consuming group, then the study is complete bullshit.
Here's the thing: Diet soda is about harm reduction. If it didn't exist, I'd still be stuffing my face full of greasy chicken tacos, loaded with cheese and sour cream - but I'd also be drinking an additional 420 calories worth of Coke with the meal too.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Artificial sweeteners fool the belly buds and trigger a cascade of responses normally associated with sugar. This is one citation, but there are others I have seen. This is pretty settled science it appears.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
of hotdogs every day and never gain any weight. Me? I can eat like a bird and gain weight all while doing 60 miles a week on my road bike at 15/mph average.
As science gets better we're finding out people aren't fat without reason. It's mostly genetics and gut bacteria as far as we can tell. Yes, the laws of thermodynamics haven't gone away. But there are massive differences in how two people process the same amount of food.
What's that old quote? For every complex problem there's a solution that's simple, elegant and wrong. Guess what, you just found one of those.
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Atkins 'works' because you can't eat carbs, and most of the junk food people eat is carbs (Soda, Cake, cookies, etc). People on Atkins clean up their diet. I went vegetarian a few years ago for the same reason and it's kept the weight off. I can't go to Mickey D's and scarf 3 double cheeseburgers when I'm eating veg.
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"METHODS We searched MEDLINE, Embase and Cochrane Library (inception to January 2016) for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated interventions for nonnutritive sweeteners and prospective cohort studies that reported on consumption of non-nutritive sweeteners among adults and adolescents. The primary outcome was body mass index (BMI). Secondary outcomes included weight, obesity and other cardiometabolic end points."
So....they didn't do any experimentation. They researched a couple databases, collated some results, and posted a paper about it with no verification.
There is one big flaw in these studies. I don't think it is an unreasonable assumption that people who already have a problem managing their weight are more likely to consume foods with artificial sweeteners than someone without weight issues. People whole have weight issues are more likely that people without to have broad range of other physical ailments that come with being overweight.
Da turds AND da water belong in da toilet, dumass. For everything else, BRAWNDO! It's got what everything craves!
"Full fat coke" isn't really a thing. It is just an alternative way of saying regular coke. Regular coke has loads of sugar in, but near zero fat. It isn't a healthy thing to drink in any case.
Artificial sweeteners are not a single thing. They are a variety of different substances that have a large number of different effects and one similar one (the sweetness). Your microbiome will adjust WHENEVER you change your diet, in ways both good and bad. It will adjust differently depending on how you change your diet, but what you stop eating is just as important as what you stop eating. Soda is known harmful with or without the sugar and calories (due to the particular acids in it), but that doesn't mean that it doesn't help to remove extra calories and excess sugar. Most likely, soda consumption correlates highly with other unhealthy behaviors, even diet soda, and so a correlation between that and wait gain is highly likely.
Additionally, since most people like the taste less, diet soda (among other artificially sweetened things) is likely to become a common choice when someone is already desperate, and has failed to maintain their weight for a long time. I have never heard of a well controlled study where people simply are given artificial sweeteners to see how that affects them. The observational studies in this group are useless due to the selection effects, and the randomized trials were short and simply did Not PROVE the Superiority of artificial sweeteners as compared to other interventions that also reduced calories and attempted to improve weight, which is an entirely different question. Artificial sweeteners are a tool, not a silver bullet. They reduce the number of calories and don't have all the bad points of sugar, when you simply use them to replace sugar. They are not meant for other uses, or to give you an excuse to eat more of other things.
It's not about calories but about your addiction to sugar rushes. Sweeteners are like e-cigarettes. The real solution is modifying your addiction behavior. But that's hard so people don't want to hear it.
that is actually false. Insulin is a blood sugar chemical reaction not a reaction to what "might" be coming, it is not influenced by what you taste or think.
Instead of guessing things, why don't you document yourself? The amount of insulin that gets released is not based on the actual sugar content of what you eat, it's based on a fairly complex combination of what's in the liver and how the hypothalamus interprets signals.
lucm, indeed.
Did you know that the level of insulin during fasting is higher for obese people? This has been demonstrated time and again, and if you know someone with type-2 diabetes that needs insulin shots, they will confirm to you that it's really difficult to lose weight when you're swimming in insulin, and it's not a matter of being hungry, the body simply won't shed weight.
They did an experiment in the 90s, giving gradually larger doses of insulin to subjects for a period of 6 months while cutting their calorie intake, and yet on average they gained 20 pounds.
There is no pill to fix that. There's some evidence that a diet of mostly high fat and plants with intermittend fasting and intermittent carb days is the best approach. So far it's the best hope because the level of physical activty in the USA has significantly increased at the same time as the level of obesity skyrocketed, so "eat less move more" just doesn't work.
But again, only time will tell.
lucm, indeed.
In January I decided I should do something with my weight.
Come back in one year and tell us about it. 6 months is not evidence when it comes to diets; most dieters gain back the weight after 12 to 18 months.
I'm not saying it will happen to you because you seem to go about it in a responsible way, but don't call things BS based on 6 months of personal data.
lucm, indeed.
I shudder to think.
That must be exhausting
lucm, indeed.
People who are overweight consume sugar free products because they are overweight. Its not the fact they are consuming sugar substitutes that causes fatness its being fat and wishing you can get slim that causes consuming sugar substitutes.
Who read the study?
So in the Results they say that uncontrolled cohort studies showed people who drink artificial sweeteners are fatter yet in Randomised Controlled Trials there was no link between sweeteners and weight gain.
" In the included RCTs, nonnutritive sweeteners had no significant effect on BMI (mean difference 0.37 kg/m2; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.10 to 0.36; I2 9%; 242 participants). In the included cohort studies, consumption of nonnutritive sweeteners was associated with a modest increase in BMI (mean correlation 0.05, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.06; I2 0%; 21 256 participants). Data from RCTs showed no consistent effects of nonnutritive sweeteners on other measures of body composition and reported no further secondary outcomes. In the cohort studies, consumption of nonnutritive sweeteners was associated with increases in weight and waist circumference, and higher incidence of obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular events."
Then in the conclusion they REVERSED the results..
"Evidence from RCTs does not clearly support the intended benefits of nonnutritive sweeteners for weight management, and observational data suggest that routine intake of nonnutritive sweeteners may be associated with increased BMI and cardiometabolic risk."
So Artificial Sweeteners have no effect on BMI and showed no other problems in actual trials, but that is of no benefit? And cohort studies are a joke, all that means is in the population the people drinking diet drinks are fatter, no shit, that is not CAUSATION though merely CORRELATION...
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Now they need to compare the results of those studies with people that consume the same quantities and types of food and beverages but with natural sweeteners (full calories) instead. Did the artificial sweetener group gain less weight and have fewer health problems than the group that didn't? Without artificial sweeteners, the people gaining weight would be even worse off. The problem is not what people are consuming at all, the problem is a lack of exercise which government and industry are to blame. If government wants people to be healthy, then government needs to provide adequate infrastructure to make exercise more accessible.
I ran across this over about five years ago when a relative forwarded a link to an academic paper. A year later; the lab results on animals were in and you could consistently give a lab rat diabetes by giving them artificial sweeteners. And, it didn't matter which artificial sweetener you used.
The hypothesis is that using artificial sweeteners triggers the taste buds to release hormones to tell the pancreas to produce insulin. But, with no calories to burn, you get lowered blood sugar and feel very hungry. Over time, you train the pancreas to produce less insulin, a condition known as diabetes.
I've been diagnosed as diabetic after a case of pancreatitis back in 2008. I had hell with the side effects of metformin for control of serum glucose. I decided to try an experiment.
I cut out all artificial sweeteners, I rationed my processed sugar intake but didn't eliminate it. (I like sugar in my coffee. Deal!) I added niacin to my morning meds. (Niacin was used for diabetes treatment before there was insulin. Went old school and niacin also lowers cholesterol levels in the blood.)
After six months; I quit taking metformin. That was almost 5 years ago.
NRRPT/RCT
You're wrong.
I prefer the taste of Diet Coke. Regular coke tastes too sweet to me and feels like it's coating my teeth. Mexican coke makes me feel like my head is exploding from sweet.
For whatever reason, my taste buds are that way.
Some people really like Dr. Pepper, others despise it. It's preference.
The reason I am drastically reducing all sort of sugar consumption (sugar AND starch - potatoe/bread/pasta etc...) is because the doc think I am what he call "pre-diabetic" e.g. if I continued my way I would get diabetes melittus in short order. Now I have a chance to have my beta cells live a "little" bit longer, apparently. Although since I am not a cat, they won't come back
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Simply do not tell anyone anything different than "it's better for you", then do NOT try to measure anything, and who knows what the probabilities could be!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.