
Five Reasons the Diet Soda Myth Won’t Die - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/upshot/diet-soda-health-myths.html
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post_below
There is all kinds of solid research on the detrimental effects of artificial
sweeteners.

One area that comes to mind where there is _a lot_ of redundant evidence
backing up effects is on the microbiome.

Another is glucose uptake pathways and insulin resistance.

These things aren't myths, prior to this article I'd never heard anyone
suggest that possibility. The amount of research, approaching the problem from
numerous angles, arriving at a similar conclusion, is hard to deny.

[https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener-
microbiome...](https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener-
microbiome-9935/)

[https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/530...](https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/5307224)

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huge87
Did you even read the paper in your second link? Nothing in that review
suggests "_a lot_ of redundant evidence backing up effects" on the microbiome.

Excerpt from the review:

"To our knowledge, there are no data on the potential influences of aspartame
on the human gut microbiome. It is hard to understand how aspartame influences
the gut microbiota because this NNS is rapidly hydrolyzed in the small
intestine. In fact, even with the ingestion of very high doses of aspartame
(>200 mg/kg), no aspartame is found in the blood because of its rapid
breakdown (29). Upon ingestion, aspartame breaks down into residual
components, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol and their
components, which are readily absorbed so that they do not reach the large
bowel (30)"

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post_below
I did read it, you maybe didn't, if you had you couldn't say "nothing in that
review suggests..." with a straight face. There's quite a lot of evidence
cited in that review.

Also in the paragraph directly before the one you quoted you must have skipped
over this:

"Aspartame consumption increased the fasting glucose concentrations in both
the standard feed pellet diet and high-fat groups independent of body
composition. A metabolomics analysis showed that aspartame was rapidly
metabolized and related to SCFA production, especially propionate production.
Changes in the microbial composition were observed in animals that received
aspartame; the total bacteria and abundance of Enterobacteriaceae and
Clostridium leptum increased."

If you don't find that convincing, here's the first Google result for
"aspartame microbiome":
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4615743/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4615743/)

By your response I'm not sure if maybe you think I'm making this stuff up? If
you're really interested you won't have to spend much time searching to find a
wealth of info.

~~~
21240fl00rbot
Ok that's an animal study that suggests some changes in microbiome, still need
to show its applicable to humans and that the changes are meaningful to health
in anyway.

The second paper doesn't make any definitive claims on health or humans
either.

There are reviews of multiple blinded, randomized controlled trials showing no
adverse health outcomes. Are any such meta-analyses that show there are?
Animal trials at extremely and dosages coupled with some human trials
suggesting (without controlling for confounding factors) possible changes in
gut microbiome without demonstrating any meaningful health outcomes is
significantly less convincing.

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Smithalicious
Just drink diet soda if you think it tastes good and drink normal soda if you
think that tastes good, and don't drink soda too often in general. Constantly
worrying about things like these probably takes more years off your life than
the difference between normal and diet soda.

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paulddraper
> probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal
> and diet soda.

Type 2 diabetes can take a lot of years off your life.

~~~
blackflame
Maybe, but heart disease is the #1 killer and stress is its biggest nemesis.

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rusticpenn
Type 2 Diabetes increses the chances of Heart strokes, kidney problems,
cataracts, nerve issues etc.

~~~
blackflame
Yea I think that's more of what caused the Type 2 Diabetes to begin with
rather than Diabetes being the sole contributor.

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perl4ever
I don't care about the debate of sugar vs. artificial sweeteners - my personal
hobbyhorse/trigger is the way artificial sweeteners are added to products
these days that are not marketed as "diet" or sugar free, apparently because
someone figured out it would save money. I don't know if it's legal to
completely fail to disclose, but I've noticed it's often quite obscured or
they use tricky language. For instance I saw something that said "no
artificial flavoring" but had sucralose. Yeah, people will smugly say "read
the ingredients", but you used to be able to rely on the rest of the writing
on the package not being actively deceptive.

If there's a market for drinks with _less_ sugar, why not just _do_ that?

A few decades ago I was pretty much on board with the smug disdain some people
had for the unscientific tendencies of the organic/natural foods movement, but
now I have to admit it seems like companies have decided that anyone who _isn
't_ buying organic has absolutely no standards and they are going to exploit
it to the hilt. Even if organic standards are mostly BS, at least they aren't
regarding their customers as asking to be abused.

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jjtheblunt
What if the problem with sodas isn't only the sugar (variants) but the
preservatives?

I mean, why do we presume the preservatives don't affect the body's ability to
process the rest of the soda content, so it accumulates?

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xsmasher
What if carbonated / acidic drink removes the fat/sugars from your tongue and
make your body think you haven't eaten?

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throwing838383
It's important to remember a simple fact about artificial sugars: they're
about 10 times less dense than sugar (at least the one i use, which is a combo
of maltodextrin and sucralose). This means that 10g of sugar is sugar sweet
equivalent of about 1g of artificial sweetener. Which means if you're
switching your sweetener from sugar to artificial you're getting 10 times less
sweetener! Which means, even if sugar and artificial sweeteners were equally
bad for you gram for gram, you're still getting 10 times less of thus 10 times
less bad for you.

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paulddraper
> gram for gram

I have no earthly idea if these are comparable gram for gram.

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RugnirViking
Exactly - there are plenty of things I will happily eat 500 grams of, and
there are a great many things in this world I should never eat even a single
milligram of.

This comparison is not even close to a given.

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woodandsteel
Even if the claims in the article were correct, which they are not, the basic
reasoning is still wrong.

The author says that we should drink diet sodas unless they are proven
harmful. But the artificial sweeteners are a new artificial chemical. That
means we should not drink diet sodas unless they are 1) proven safe and 2)
proven to help in weight loss, neither of which even the author claims is the
case.

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throwaway981211
Can’t see the article (pay wall). Does it speak to artificial sweeteners? How
bad are the two splendas I put in my coffee everyday?

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tasty_freeze
I've read repeatedly (but never dug into it) that contrary to intuition,
replacing sugar by artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss. My own
take is that I should consume less sugar, but if I'm going to commit that
particular sin, I'll use sugar and not the funny tasting alternatives.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/07/17/5372621...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/07/17/537262142/artificial-sweeteners-dont-help-people-lose-weight-
review-finds)

~~~
episteme
The intuition is correct and the article mentions it, purely taking a diet and
replacing sugar with sweetener will help. It's just that in the real world
people don't often make such pure diet changes, so what people are often
asking is 'Does the average person who tries to consume artificial sweetener
over sugar successfully lose weight?'. The answer to that appears to be: Not
really.

Why? Is it to do with the sweetener itself? Or is it just with food labelling?
Or marketing? Much harder question.

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blackflame
I think the biggest impact that diet soda has it the high salt content
dehydrates you which makes you perform worse at the gym and creates this
negative feedback cycle. Additionally, diet soda's cause you to retain water
which will make you look softer and the scale weigh heavier. If the majority
of your liquid intake is water, diet soda is just fine. I've been able to lose
significant weight while drinking it. It's the carbs that kill you!

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mizchief2
Article does nothing to debunk any of the "myths" just offers suggestions as
to why you might not trust any scientific study.

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fredgrott
remember folks most diet soda has no sugar but has phenylalanine to get body
to produce more dopamine to want more soda..hence no weight loss

