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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.

12 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Drink filtered water by blindseer · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have not had any weight problems until recently. I did two things to reduce my calories. First, I cut out my end of day beer. It took me a while to figure out why people enjoyed a beer at the end of the day but for some reason I started the habit. It's relaxing and dulls the aches from the day but it also has a lot of calories. I lost 20 pounds fairly quickly after dropping that habit. Second, I started to keep bottled water around the house. When thirsty I tended to grab whatever I had in a single serve bottle or can. This usually meant a fizzy drink. With bottled water on hand I can grab one of those instead.

    Bottled water comes in handy when there are things contaminate the city water like floods or some idiot put a backhoe through a water main. This does not happen often but when it does and city water is deemed undrinkable then bottled water can get real hard to find. I keep a few bottles in the freezer for when I need to put ice in a cooler, when the ice melts I drink the water from the bottle. Also good for adding thermal mass to the refrigerator and freezer for when the power blinks.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  2. Re:GREAT... by lucm · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is even trickier than it looks. The artificial sweeteners are so realistic that they fool the body into thinking that you just drank tons of sugar, so insuline level is adjusted, but since there's no actual sugar it makes you crave sweets.

    So yes you probably should use actual sugar, if possible natural sugar (brown) not white processed poison, but if you can progressively dial it down to a point where you don't put sugar at all your body will thank you.

    Let's be clear: the body has no need for sugar, it has no nutritional value whatsoever.

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    lucm, indeed.
  3. Re:GREAT... by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Informative

    "brown sugar" isn't natural sugar. It is refined sugar with molasses added back in. The molasses is what they removed in previous steps, slightly burnt.

    Natural sugar, which you can buy in most stores now, will be labeled "raw sugar" or "washed sugar" and it will be large crystals of a honey blond color.

    The advantage of brown sugar is only that the flavor is so strong, you can modify recipes to use less. At a 1:1 ratio with no reduction, the brown sugar is more processed and more unhealthy than regular refined sugar.

  4. Re:Fat people can't help it? by lucm · · Score: 1, Informative

    If they see no advantage in prioritizing health over immediate gratification, then why the hell should they change a damn thing?

    Here's the thing: unless you consistently eat busloads of food (like 10,000 calories a day), the quantity of food that you eat doesn't actually impact your weight on the long term. Neither does the amount of exercise you do. The body always adjusts itself to maintain its weight, slowing down or accelerating the metabolism, playing with body temperature, etc. That's why people on a diet are cold or tired, and why fat people sweat more (it's not because of "insulation").

    So even if you put those people on a treadmill they're not going to lose much weight, which makes your "delayed gratification" approach useless. You can burn them down and they will temporarily lose weight, but most of it will be lean mass and water, and soon they'll get back to their initial weight.

    To lower the target weight, the key is not to exercise more or eat less, it's to gradually increase sensitivity to leptin, by having a carefully tuned rotation of high fat and carbs aspects to the diet.

    This is not wishful thinking. See on wikipedia:

    Dieters who lose weight, particularly those with an overabundance of fat cells, experience a drop in levels of circulating leptin. This drop causes reversible decreases in thyroid activity, sympathetic tone, and energy expenditure in skeletal muscle, and increases in muscle efficiency and parasympathetic tone. The result is that a person who has lost weight below their natural body fat set-point has a lower basal metabolic rate than an individual at the same weight who is of that natural weight; these changes are leptin-mediated, homeostatic responses meant to reduce energy expenditure and promote weight regain as a result of fat cells being shrunken below normal size.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    lucm, indeed.
  5. Re:The Sweetener That Cried Wolf by x0ra · · Score: 3, Informative

    Insulin releases is triggered by the pancreas (and more specifically the islets of Langerhans) when heightened glucose level in blood is being detected. It has nothing to do with sweetness on the tongue...

    I'd suggest you take back Human Biology 101 instead of posting on /.

  6. Re:Fat people can't help it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Fat people who are diagnosed with diabetes stop drinking regular soda, and switch to diet soda. Their dietary habits stay mostly unchanged.

    Then they gain weight, based on the diet and because the diabetes meds cause weight gain.

    Hold calories and exercise constant, then compare various beverage choices and tell me who gains weight.

    The problem is, of course, getting people to count calories over years.

  7. Re:The Sweetener That Cried Wolf by gravewax · · Score: 3, Informative

    old myth still perpetuated by poorly informed fitness experts and dietitians. insulin release is purely a chemical reaction to blood sugar levels not to what you taste or think.

  8. Re:Prove to me the sugar industry didn't pay for t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  9. Re: no extra calories? by michelcolman · · Score: 5, Informative

    The direct effect of artificial sweeteners on insulin levels (as described by GP) seems to be unsubstantiated. There is, however, an Israeli study demonstrating an effect of artificial sweeteners on gut bacteria, which in turn does result in increased blood sugar levels.

    Also, the negative effect of those sweeteners seems to be very apparent if you compare their usage on a national level (try finding a non-light product in a US supermarket, for example) with the prevalence of obesity (US way worse than other countries). I've often been flabbergasted by this, looking at the rows and rows of light products and the humongous people buying them and thinking "guys, wake up, this is obviously not working!". Not only is it not helping, it's actively making things worse.

  10. Re: Seems flawed by arth1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    And any fat you exercise away goes out in sweat or urine.

    Much of it goes out your breath, actually. Both water and carbon dioxide are byproducts of the oxidations.

  11. but wait, there is more by transporter_ii · · Score: 4, Informative

    [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...

    --
    Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
  12. Re:no extra calories? by bug_hunter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not a 100% confirmed thing by any means, but here are the citations you were after
    https://www.scientificamerican...
    http://sydney.edu.au/news-opin...

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    It's turtles all the way down.