Artificial Sweeteners - What's the deal?

I never liked diet or zero sugar soda. No matter what always seems at the very least the tradeoff for no calories is the shitty after taste. I suspect there's a greater cost long term but I don't know what that is.
 
I just read about a couple of them being bad, xylitol and erythritol, and knew sucralose was bad too. Now I'm wondering if there's any sugar-substitute that's not dangerous.
 
Gender: Xenomorph said:
I know people that drink 2l of soda a day.
Crazy.
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I went through a phase of heavy consumption as a kid, it gave me stomach issues. A blessing.
SSj_Ness said:
Yeah? Better just stick to them, I guess. It's a shame the shit they can poison our food supply with.
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My wife and I watched this video seemed decently researched. I couldn’t remember what was bad so I just stick to regular sugar in limited quantities.
 
Magical Negro said:
I make a point of reading the ingredients in everything I eat or drink
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Wise man. Always read the labels. Quite shocking what you find on them.
For cosmetic and personal care products as well. There’s a few ingredients like parabens that I’ve been avoiding for years. People scoff but I’ve noticed the paraben type things disappearing from labels over the last few years which suggests to me that they are harmful and are being quietly phased out.
Unless you’re diabetic and need to keep a very tight grip on your carb levels the most sensible way is just to enjoy sweet stuff but LESS of it and less often. I rarely have soda, maybe once a month or so if that.
I enjoy baking, and if I’m baking a cake for a kid I will go all out with the icing. Sod it. Just don’t do that every day. As long as 95% of what you eat is good, and you’re active, you can enjoy the odd cake, soda, or pastry. The idea that you eat junk and it’s fine as long as it’s got artificial sweeteners not sugar in is barmy. I don’t think most of them are good for you.

They do try to sneak it in stuff - yoghurt seems to be particularly bad for that
 
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Mr Bones Wild Ride said:
I swear a few years ago there was some preliminary research posted on here that discussed how certain sugar free sweeteners cause insulin spikes anyway, which over time leads to insulin resistance.
Also some preliminary research that it fucks with your gut flora and may increase ghrelin levels causing people to overeat (thus defeating the purpose of "low calorie soft drink")

Fucked if I can find any of those papers now though.

At any rate, your best bet is to drink water.
Water is awesome.
#waterniggas
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He talks about both the points you mentionned, gut bacteria and insulin.

He cites Yanina Pepino for the latter.
 
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My mother may be the only skinny person who drinks Diet Coke. She never drank regular soda because she saw how fat all her friends were.

The incredible amount of sugar in sodas (usually around 10% of the weight of the product) really contributes to weight gain.
I can cut 5 lbs in a week by not drinking soda.


Artificial sweeteners are a “solution” to this problem.
You’re really better off drinking smoothies or water instead though.
 
SSj_Ness said:
I just read about a couple of them being bad, xylitol and erythritol, and knew sucralose was bad too. Now I'm wondering if there's any sugar-substitute that's not dangerous.
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The -ol sweeteners are only bad if heart disease run in your family or you are clot prone. Their danger is that they are platelet activators. So, they make your blood more "sticky". This means that you are more likely to form clots, which is the basis for cardiovascular disease. People with a family history of heart disease typically have "sticky" platelets. Same for people with family that have PE or DVT. For people that bleed like a stuck pig or have a known genetic mutation that makes them less likely to clot, it's no risk. I wouldn't be surprised if you take a baby aspirin every day that you can eat all the -ol sugar you want since the platelet activation effect is not strong, but it is strong enough to be clinically relevant.

Agent Abe Caprine said:
Stevia and monkfruit are pretty safe.
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Stevia is only safe if its purified rebaudioside A. If it's just unpurified Stevia leaf that is broken up, it's possible it can cause liver failure because rebaudioside B is a liver toxin. Some people can tolerate it, some can't. The people that may react to it are only 0.8% of the population, but if you happen to be one of them, even ingesting a small amount of whole stevia will murder your liver, and the only solution is a liver transplant.

Monkfruit, pure, is safe. If it's cut with erythritol, you end up with the same problem as pure erythritol, which is sticky platelets. If it's mixed with maltodextrin, just eat sugar, since our bodies convert maltodextrin directly into sugar, so you are basically eating the same thing.

Buttigieg2020 said:
Artificial sweeteners are a “solution” to this problem.
You’re really better off drinking smoothies or water instead though.
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The only things you can drink that are good for you are filtered water (tap water is full of shit, and bottled water is even worse), tea (green, black, etc... whatever, except white tea, that is a waste of time) hot or cold, and coffee (with or without milk, don't put anything else in it) hot or cold, and a moderate amount of any milk not skim, and then up to a reasonable amount of skim milk each day. Everything else is crap for you, literally speaking, as a result of recent research done into beverages.
 
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Prokhor Zakharov said:
The -ol sweeteners are only bad if heart disease run in your family or you are clot prone. Their danger is that they are platelet activators. So, they make your blood more "sticky". This means that you are more likely to form clots, which is the basis for cardiovascular disease. People with a family history of heart disease typically have "sticky" platelets. Same for people with family that have PE or DVT. For people that bleed like a stuck pig or have a known genetic mutation that makes them less likely to clot, it's no risk. I wouldn't be surprised if you take a baby aspirin every day that you can eat all the -ol sugar you want since the platelet activation effect is not strong, but it is strong enough to be clinically relevant.
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I don't think heart disease runs in the family but to hell with that shit anyway then lol
 
Diet drinks are actually not terrible if you're trying to cut excess sugar from your diet, yet still need something sweet from time to time to ease the cravings. There have been studies conducted where people who were allowed to drink diet soda as part of a weight loss program had better outcomes than those who weren't, not because Coke Zero has magical fat burning properties, but because the people in the artificial sweetener group found it easier to stick to the program.

It's sort of like how people use nicotine strips to quit smoking -- obviously it's better to just stop drinking soda, but that's often easier said than done. Personally, I only ever drink diet soda because drinks made with real sugar make me terribly queasy and I think the diet options often taste better anyway.
 
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Doktor Grimm said:
Diet drinks are actually not terrible if you're trying to cut excess sugar from your diet, yet still need something sweet from time to time to ease the cravings. There have been studies conducted where people who were allowed to drink diet soda as part of a weight loss program had better outcomes than those who weren't, not because Coke Zero has magical fat burning properties, but because the people in the artificial sweetener group found it easier to stick to the program.

It's sort of like how people use nicotine strips to quit smoking -- obviously it's better to just stop drinking soda, but that's often easier said than done. Personally, I only ever drink diet soda because drinks made with real sugar make me terribly queasy and I think the diet options often taste better anyway.
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The only problem with this is that they may lose more weight, but their insulin resistance, glycemic control, etc... will be worse because of how we are coming to understand how the body deals with artificial sweeteners. In ways we don't quite understand yet, when the body gets the sensation of sweetness it responds in a way that makes it expect incoming calories. When that doesn't happen often enough, it start to derange the glycemic/insulin feedback system. This seems to happen because the body starts to disregard the sweet sensation and fails to act accordingly when actual sugars are absorbed, which then leads to a deterioration in glycemic control. Somehow the actual sense of taste of sugar somehow impacts the bodies reaction to incoming sugar based calories. This is something that was hypothesized for a long time, but the mechanism isn't understood, since as far as it is known, the taste receptor system doesn't have a feedback loop into the glycemic control system. But, the results of studies don't seem to lie about this. People that drink artificial sweetened drinks, compared to people that don't, that are generally comparable in most other ways, have poorer glycemic control and insulin response. Generally the people that drink artificial sweeteners have their body react like it has a BMI 2-3 points higher than their actual weight. The "Why?" of it is still being worked out.

So, for the most part, avoid sugar, and artificial sweeteners. If you think your body can handle the natural -ol sugars, those don't appear to have this problem, since you actually go get some caloric input from them when they are absorbed, something like 1/10 of a calorie per gram. So far, the research seems to indicate that this small caloric value seems to avoid the decoupling between sweetness and glycemic control. But that only is beneficial if you are sure your platelets won't get reactive as a result of consuming them, so its a balancing act.
 
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Farsided said:
He talks about both the points you mentionned, gut bacteria and insulin.

He cites Yanina Pepino for the latter.
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This was absolutely fascinating. He went off a bit toward the end, but he's got information in there that I simply didn't realise, like how fructose is processed in the body. It explains why HFCS and its ilk might be bad for you, which nobody has ever really done before. They just yell "fructose bad!" until everyone thinks they're a lunatic.

Anyway, artificial sweeteners seem give me a headache. I can't say it's universal, but stevia and aspartame both definitely do.
 
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