
Germs That Love Diet Soda - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/sunday/germs-microbes-processed-foods.html
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dnhz
Diet soda is either on the same level of harm as seltzer, or is worse. But I
believe both to be healthier than any sugared soda.

Different diet sodas use different artificial sweeteners, so diet soda cannot
be treated as a single group. Diet Coke uses only aspartame as sweetener; Coke
Zero combines aspartame and acesulfame K to create a more realistic taste.

I readily believe that any diet soda sweetened purely with aspartame is
harmless. The chemical structure of aspartame is such that stomach acids
should break it down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol, the
first two being ordinary amino acids. Methanol sounds threatening, but very
little aspartame is needed to sweeten a beverage. I thus have no problem
drinking diet coke.

What's more unclear is whether the sugar-like taste of artificial sweeteners
affect the body's blood sugar regulation.

~~~
e40
_Diet soda is either on the same level of harm as seltzer, or is worse._

What's wrong with seltzer?

~~~
cm2012
When my close friend got bariatric surgery, the doctors told him the
carbonatiob would expand his stomach much faster and so seltzer was forbidden
forever. Might also apply to all stomachs.

~~~
ztjio
This means nothing for a normal person. Stomachs are massively elastic under
normal circumstances.

~~~
jon_richards
Not quite nothing, there's a reason people get their stomachs stapled.

~~~
khedoros1
Reading the thread, the comment you responded to was using "normal person" as
a contrast against someone who had undergone bariatric surgery (which stomach
stapling is a variety of).

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aabajian
Article opens with, "There are lots of reasons to avoid processed foods.
They’re often packed with sugar, fat and salt, and they tend to lack certain
nutrients critical to health, like fiber."

Diet coke has no sugar, no fat, and less than 100 mg sodium. The specific
results from Nature are about trehalose, a sugar not found in diet coke. I'm
not aware of any diet soda that contains it, either. I realize it's an opinion
piece, but pseudoscience and speculative articles should not be the domain of
NYT.

Of note, the zero-calorie definition of artificial sweeteners is based on the
amount excreted in urine/stool: It should be very close to the ingested
amount. I find it hard to believe the conclusion drawn by the authors that
other sweeteners (sucralose and saccharin), are consumed by bacteria since the
amount ingested matches the amount excreted.

~~~
soperj
If you read the full article instead of just the opening, you get to it:

The prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease has, it’s worth noting, sharply
increased in recent decades.

Then there are artificial sweeteners like sucralose and saccharin, which we
consume in diet sodas and “sugar-free” snacks in hopes of cutting calories.
Our bodies can’t directly digest most of them — they’re meant to pass right
through — but it turns out that the microbes inhabiting our colons can
metabolize the sweeteners, potentially to our detriment.

Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have found that, in
mice, saccharin causes glucose intolerance, a marker of impending diabetes —
and one disease that those who eat these sweeteners are probably trying to
avoid. When the scientists transplanted microbes from mice fed saccharine to
mice that hadn’t consumed the sweetener, the recipient animals developed
glucose intolerance as well, suggesting that the microbiome that was warped by
the sweetener, not the sweetener itself, was causing the problems.

~~~
ravenstine
What diet soda contains saccharin? Also, that study only looks at saccharin.
What about sucralose?

~~~
Gregordinary
Besides Tab, Diet Coke from a fountain contains saccharin:
[https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-
Cola-w...](https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-Cola-wins-
sweetener-legal-battle)

(Trying to find another source, I believe Diet Pepsi from a fountain does as
well, to extend shelf life.)

~~~
therein
Wow that blows my mind. No wonder soda from fountain tastes different, and I
am not even talking about only the low-calorie ones. I thought it was merely
due to some sort of imprecision in dispensing the concentrate.

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kbutler
Clickbait title. The only germs loving diet soda would be the potential shifts
in gut biome as a result of saccharine consumption, which would only apply to
Tab.

    
    
        "The scientists also fed a small group of healthy people saccharin-sweetened drinks for a week. In a subset of volunteers, microbial shifts occurred, accompanied by mounting glucose intolerance. So for some people, diet sodas may not be any healthier than regular sodas."
    

The Nature study has a better title:

    
    
        "Dietary trehalose enhances virulence of epidemic Clostridium difficile"
    

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178.epdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178.epdf)

~~~
mythBustan
Tab? Are you joking?

The point isn’t about one specific chemical, but rather the principal that the
prevalence of non-nutritious, edible chemicals seriously augments the dark,
warm controlled environments of our guts.

Nutrient capture as a whole, shifts in a way that, at the bottom of the tract,
there are chemicals that humans leave unused, but which are still useful to
certain opportunistic organisms.

If only those chemicals are available, and normal food is absent, every member
of the environment is forced to deal with scarcity, and the strongest survive,
and fill the void if they can.

If those organisms are forced to opperate with greater efficiency, then their
capacity to deal with adversity offers them an advantage as an invasive
species, and they will prevail in general, everywhere, not just in the adverse
scenario.

~~~
kbutler
Yes, Tab. Exactly.

Which other diet sodas were identified as having "germs that love diet soda"?

The studies show effects for trehalose and saccharine. No diet soda contains
trehalose, only Tab contains saccharine.

Any effect from the non-nutritive sweeteners in other diet sodas did not
appear in the studies, so they focused on saccharine.

There may be more subtle effects from those sweeteners, or future effects from
those sweeteners, but we haven't found them yet, extrapolation from a general
principle not withstanding.

"Germs that love Tab" wouldn't draw as many clicks as the current title.

~~~
matuszeg
Someone posted this above.

[https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-
Cola-w...](https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-Cola-wins-
sweetener-legal-battle)

Supposedly diet coke from fountains contains saccharine

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scottie_m
Soylent used to contain 12g of trehalose per serving, and I’m wondering if
that might have some impact? Based on this research it seems likely. I’m not
sure if they switched out the trehalose for isomaltulose, and I don’t know if
isomaltulose would have similar effects on the GI tract. I find this portion
of the Soylent Wikipedia page interesting though:

 _Later versions of the product lowered the amount of fiber content, but this
did not stop the reports of gastrointestinal problems._

~~~
raverbashing
Soluble fiber usually produces more bloating, maybe that's what they're
referring to?

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raverbashing
Funny how the narrative goes from "microbiome helps you adapt to new foods"
except when it doesn't and it then becomes this super sensitive thing that
breaks down when approached by any foreign substance.

In every test done with a different substance the question needs to be, how
much was it given to the subjects? (g/kg body weight). A lot of tests are done
with excessive amounts (which are fine for testing purposes, but doesn't mean
the effect will be as pronounced in smaller amounts)

I'll get the sugar-free soda as opposed to something that is the definition of
high glycemic index empty calories. Or even better, just water.

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viburnum
This article is an amazing test of reading comprehension.

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nategri
This is a data point of one, and I am certainly _not_ implying that there is
only one kind diet that works for everyone, but:

Every time I've lost a significant amount of weight (currently at -70 lbs from
my peak) it's because I have drastically reduced sugar/carbohydrate content---
while continuing to guzzle aspartame-based diet soda like water.

So either: 1.) I'm an outlier, 2.) These results are only relevant to
saccharine sweeteners, and not aspartame, 3.) These results are bunk, like so
many other nutritional studies, or, 4.) Low carbohydrate intake offsets any
negative effects

~~~
Spooky23
Most of the things I’ve read about diet soda were more related to individuals
with insulin resistance, and problems related to that.

Soda is bad for other reasons too. The carbonic acid will rot your teeth.

~~~
refurb
Do you have a source on the carbonic acid rotting your teeth? I thought it was
the phosphoric acid. Carbonic acid is an incredibly weak acid.

