the evil of artificial sweeteners

[Pandora]

I've always been suspicious of artificial sweeteners. First of all, I think they taste really awful. But I also suspected that the sweet taste combined with a lack of calories might confuse our brain mechanisms that regulate our appetite, and therefore lead to craving, and - ironically - to more food intake. There's now a study that shows that something like that really happens, at least for rats. Those rats being fed articifical sweeteners became obese more quickly than the the sugar-fed rats. The authors propose that artificial sweeteners might actually cause, not prevent, the obesity epidemic.

[ccb056]

humans != rats

[Sedwick]

Ever notice how you only see fat people drinking diet soda?

[Krom]

Ever notice how you only see fat people drinking diet soda?

Yeah, that is one of the first things I thought when I read this topic.

[Spaceboy]

I avoid all but xylotol, which has no known side-effects, and actually helps get rid of some bacteria. Splenda is a chlorine (I think) which obviously isn't good, and I think there was another which was known to cause cancer.

humans != rats

They also used a sweetener I've never heard of.
It's also very easy to manipulate data by setting up experiments in certain ways.

[Theftbot]

few others are
Sorbitol
Sacchrin-only known to cause cancer in the state of California-wth oh well

Aspartame-happens to be a natural chemical

I only use sugar

My dad being a diabetic uses stevia like the indians did centuaries ago.

[TIGERassault]

I've been suspicious of artificial sweeteners ever since I found out I was allergic to Aspartame.

[Kyouryuu]

I'm reluctant to ever ingest artificial sweeters, mostly because they have questionable side effects and, oh, taste like ass. Besides, sugar is a natural thing, so I have to believe the body can better process it than a synthetic chemical.

[Krom]

Or more accurately, the body can actually use sugar. It simply has to dispose of artificial sweeteners in the same way it would dispose of toxins, which can be bad for people with liver problems.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Don't you guys have anything better to ★■◆● about? We all intake stuff that is probably far worse than that every friggen day such as energy drinks, mutated ice cream all kinds of weird food with all kinds of weird preservatives and weird ingredients.


I drink diet soda and I'm like 155 lbs or so. I drink it because regular soda and juice was ruining my teeth because I tend to sip. Diet soda actually cleans your teeth from what I understand. It doesn't taste as good but it grows on you. My mother is diabetic so she has to eat splenda pretty much. My dad can not consume anything with wheat in it as he has celiac disease, which can kill him a lot faster than diet soda.

I would actually be more concerned about fast food and the way many restaurants in America shove ridiculous portions in front of your face so that you feel inclined to eat all of it so that you don't feel that you have wasted money or food.
Artificial sweetener makes you feel inclined to eat more.... So what, eat some salad with your meal.

[Pandora]

humans != rats

You're right, of course. That also exactly how the sweetener industry responded to this research. But nevertheless, once such a mechanism is identified in the animal model, it is highly likely that it (or something similar) can also be found in man.

[Pandora]

Artificial sweetener makes you feel inclined to eat more.... So what, eat some salad with your meal.

hmmm, as I understood the research, sweeteners make you crave high-calorie/high-sugar stuff, so I think the salad won't work.

[Pandora]

Or more accurately, the body can actually use sugar. It simply has to dispose of artificial sweeteners in the same way it would dispose of toxins, which can be bad for people with liver problems.

wow, didn't know that.

[Kiran]

I see more people of better weight drink diet soda than fat people around here... so I disagree with that image. And yes, there is A LOT of overweight people around here. I work for a grocery store.

In terms of artificial sweetners, I highly doubt that that even small portions of food with artificial sweetners would harm someone's body that bad. At least, not as bad as 1 cig. would harm the body. So unless someone has a bad reaction to the sweetners or don't consume large amounts of artificial sweetners a day (such as a few twinkies a day) I don't think it's something we should be too concerned with. Again, small consumptions= ok. large consumptions= can be bad for ya. Just my opinion.

I try to drink soda in moderation and that's only for two reasons: 1, certain sodas with phosphoric acid causes more harm to my scarred kidneys than it would to a person with healthy organs. and 2, heart disease runs in the family and we tend to get higher blood pressure once we get older, plus there were research done that shows drinking big volumes of sodas can lead to higher blood pressure later in life.

I don't know if that last part is still supported or not. Been a few years since I heard about it.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Hey Krom,


You could actually be right. I know that my Mom does tend to crave more sugary things but she never liked really liked stuff like candy or ice cream or sugary sodas. I really haven't noticed that problem but I keep a bit of an even balance between diet and non-diet because I tend to miss the feel of a regular soda.


The funny thing about my Mom, is that while she craves sugar more, she can consume it to some extent so when she does, she is usually has something with sugar in it and it is pretty much more than enough for her.

I still say that it is insignificant in comparison to the psycological effects that are caused by buying a huge portion of food and feeling inclined to eat all of it.

[Gekko71]

This is a thorny one, as there are conflicting viewpoints on all fronts. Some further reading for the truly curious:

http://womansday.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=344443

http://recipefinder.ninemsn.com.au/arti ... ?id=371660

Another link to the 'rats' study:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=378212

The following link however cites a study on reported weight gain in humans too:

http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=150757

None of the above makes a convincing arguement on its own, but given all the debate and the growing number of adverse studies, I'm starting to think that avoiding artificial sweetners altogether is a good idea. Especially when natural substitutes like Maple Syrup or Stevia Rebaudiana can be readily found.

[azgsusfreak]

Well, you either die of cancer or diabetes, pick your poison accordingly....

[Sirius]

Solution: Don't eat so many sugary things. If it has enough sugar that there's any reason to swap it for artificial sweeteners in the first place, steer clear of it.

You don't NEED sweet food/drink.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Diabetes isn't always JUST caused by consuming sugar.

Also note that most things you eat HAVE sugar of some form in them and in many cases without it, that food tastes like dog crap, that's why you have sugar.


Virtually anything you buy on the market has sugar in it. If on one side of the family, you have sugar diabetes (and my Mother's problem with that was never caused by consuming large amounts of sugar, in fact, she has always hated anything sugary), and you have celiac on the other side of the family which causes you to die by eating wheat/flower and other similar substances... then you throw on heart problems and there isn't much left to eat.

Sooo, with all this in my family, I'm better off to avoid lets see here... bread, soda, juice, greasy food of any kind, eggs, meat, fruit and candy. So, what's left is probably things like, vegetables, water, and milk. Mmmm...mmmm that should do me for every night for the rest of my life, though I'll probably have consistent diarrhea, and a severe lack of vitamins that help things such as calcium to actually work. Not to mention, I am constantly underweight and have extreme difficulty putting on muscle or weight at all in the first place and I'm sure a lack of vitamins will help out a lot with that.

I could also try and live on a diet like this, walk outside, and get struck by lightning or run over by a car, making all this a moot point in the first place.

I think I'll pick my poison and maintain a balance between sugar and artificial sweeteners and have a piece of cake or bread every once in a while, while I can. I'm probably screwed from all directions anyway. I could worry about it all day, or I could sit back, watch a little TV and enjoy a sandwich and a diet soda as it's a bit cold outside to go out and play.

[Sirius]

Also note that most things you eat HAVE sugar of some form in them and in many cases without it, that food tastes like dog crap, that's why you have sugar.

Exactly - this is why anything particularly sweet is just surplus... things like bread at least have more beneficial carbohydrates, whereas simple sugar gives you a short-term and usually quite useless energy boost that then just goes to your waistline, or something like that.

If you're underweight I'd just say not to worry about it. Drinking soda is something that should be done sparingly anyway - one way or the other it's not particularly helpful to your health - but as for sugary foods, well ... as long as your health is good your diet can't be too far off course.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Yeah, but the body needs fruit and other sugary products, not for the sugar, but for the vitamins and other nutrients that your body requires. Not to mention, it is extremely expensive and time consuming to make everything yourself. I barely have time to get four to six hours of sleep a night. That is at ONE job.


Now what I mean by underweight, isn't a healthy underweight. I'm talking about physically ill underweight. As in, you will start to see ribs stick out of my chest and I used to have a nasty hole in the center of my rib-cage to look at. I also tend to become very pale and I would become incredibly weak and felt exhausted all the time. No one could figure it out, why I couldn't eat. I would eat as much as I could without getting sick to my stomach, we would cram protein shakes down my throat, I would work out but I would never gain any muscle. Nothing worked and I usually felt worse from it.


Last year, my mother read about a kid that had a deficiency in natural vitamins and calcium so his bone structure wouldn't hold his weight, thus he couldn't gain weight. She started giving him vitamin and calcium supplements and he suddenly gained weight and felt stronger. We tried the same thing when I started my new job as a computer tech. Guess what? 3 months, I started to gain weight and feel less exhausted, in 6-8 months I had a pretty nice build.

However, I don't have time to take these supplements as much anymore and I'm starting to look skinny again.

This kind of crap can happen to people man, and it isn't fun at all. I was a 23 year old that looked like a 16 year old. Now I at least look the right age and can gain muscle.


The point is, use BALANCE and SELF CONTROL and you will be fine, but your body needs more than milk, water, and vegetables. I don't care if your a vegan or a tree hugger, you need a nice fat plate of meat, fruit, and a piece of bread every once in a while.

[roid]

hmm... interesting OP. i really do need to know more about this stuff.

i wonder if it's because the taste of sweetness triggers the brain to increase metabolism, and then when it finds there was no carbohydrates, it panics and makes you want to find some.

Kinda similar principle to the smell of food will make a dog dehydrate faster, coz it drools. Even if it doesn't get to eat anything - just the thought of it makes the dog drool, so it dehydrates faster. End result being that the smell of food makes a dog drink more water.
(note: i completely made this up for the sake of an illustration, i dunno if it's even accurate)


I'm type 1 diabetic, so artificial sweeteners scare me. I've gotten into trouble before when i'm hypoglycemic (insulin overdose) and i grab for things that i THINK contain sugar (but don't, but i don't know this!).
Because i inject insulin, my metabolism is nuts. When i am trying to loose a bit of weight i'm never sure how diets even work for me - because they all assume you can't control your insulin levels - but i can, directly! So i'm sure there is some shortcut i can use - but i'm never certain of what it is.


btw: i think i see some ppl in this thread saying that sugar causes diabetes (specifically type 1, insulin dependant), this is an urban myth.
The only truth to it is that eating too much sugar can make you a fat - and being fat can give you type 2 diabetes (not type 1) - in which case it's curable by loosing weight.
Type 1 diabetes however is generally understood to be caused by an autoimmune disease, it's like HIV. It has little to do with what you eat (although there are some theories that it can be caused by allergic reactions to things like milk).

[Sirius]

eating too much sugar can make you a fat

Yeah, being a fat really sucks!

[Pandora]

i wonder if it's because the taste of sweetness triggers the brain to increase metabolism, and then when it finds there was no carbohydrates, it panics and makes you want to find some.

that's exactly what I always thought.

[roid]

but if that were the case Pandora - i think artificial sweeteners would lower your blood sugar. This would be very easy to test.

Maybe it's true, i don't know.
I do know that when i'm manic, my blood sugars tend to get low quickly. I've never been entirely certain if my low blood sugars cause the mania, or if the mania causes the low blood sugars.

I read that MRI scans tracking brain metabolism while ppl did tests, showed that people with high IQ are able to use more of their brain at once when needed. When doing normal things the brain metabolism was the same for all people, but during hard problems with high IQ people more of their brain was able to light up at once to tackle the problem.

Also, in relation to highly sensitive people i read that \"sensory over arousal depletes blood sugar\".

This is something that has confused my doctors, that when my blood sugars are high - i often feel that it's making it EASIER to think, and it relaxes me. This is odd, because it should be the opposite - high blood sugar should make it HARDER for people to think. (i wonder if i need a large glucose buffer to feel ... comfortable, safe)
However, i've read various things about the relationship between insulin and sugar in the brain. Some things have said the brain is unique in that (similar to muscles) the brian cells don't need insulin to utilise glucose. But other doctors have told me that \"no, the brain actually DOES use insulin just like all other cells\".
*sigh* I sometimes think i'd have to goto medical school to study this myself to know the truth.

[Pandora]

but if that were the case Pandora - i think artificial sweeteners would lower your blood sugar. This would be very easy to test.

that's a great idea. Let's have a look if there are studies out there that test it.

[roid]

oh i just remembered:

among diabetics, i have heard people say that artificial sweeteners have rather... unpredictable effects on blood sugars.
Sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they lower blood sugars, other times they raise them (it should be noted that stress can raise or lower blood sugars, in my experience it raises them, probably typical cortisol/adrenyl stress reaction mobilizing the body's energy reserves).

[Kiran]

We tried the same thing when I started my new job as a computer tech. Guess what? 3 months, I started to gain weight and feel less exhausted, in 6-8 months I had a pretty nice build.

However, I don't have time to take these supplements as much anymore and I'm starting to look skinny again.

This kind of crap can happen to people man, and it isn't fun at all. I was a 23 year old that looked like a 16 year old. Now I at least look the right age and can gain muscle.

Okay, to my understanding you were at a very unhealthy weight and could not get anything to make you gain weight. No consumption of food could help you with that. But when you started taking vitamins and supplements, you got better, you had a good build, you looked healthy. Now you can't be that heahlthy anymore because you do not have the time to take those supplements?
That is so bull****. I can understand if you forget to take them, but not having the time to take something that would give you a better chance at life is bull. If you don't have time, make time. You do not need to let yourself be a sick person again. Everyone's busy with their lives but no one should be too busy to take vitamins and supplements. It's also bull that you could barely get 4-6 hrs of sleep. No human body can go that long with that little sleep Especially if that body is a sick body.

Pardon me for taking those few lines of your paragraph and making a rant of it... but it seems to me with the last paragraph of your commentary you should know better than to let this happen to you.

[TIGERassault]

Question: Aside from weight gain, what other side-effects does sugar have?

[Kiran]

hyperactivity in young children

[roid]

mentally? \"sugar buzz\"

i think most ppl handle sugar well. But some ppl it knocks them too far off center - they go really high, and then have a sugar crash.
High sugar levels will themselves cause and antagonise a lot of problems, but as i said above - i figure most people can handle sugar so it's not really the sugar at fault, but the person's inability to handle it.

[ccb056]

roid, what do you think of the insulin pump

</offtopic>

[Jeff250]

btw: i think i see some ppl in this thread saying that sugar causes diabetes (specifically type 1, insulin dependant), this is an urban myth.
The only truth to it is that eating too much sugar can make you a fat - and being fat can give you type 2 diabetes (not type 1) - in which case it's curable by loosing weight.

Really, so my skinny ass can down as much sugar as I want without having to fear increased risk of getting type 2 diabetes? I guess I've been buying into the urban myths you've mentioned. If so, that's a stone off my back...

[Firewheel]

I hate Splenda and won't eat anything with that crap in it.

[Kiran]

I'm curious about something...

I dislike coffee very much and before I discovered flavored coffee creamers, I would put in a lot of sugar in my coffee. Prolly about 7-9 packets/teaspoonsfull of sugar for every cup of coffee. I never get hyper off of those coffee drinks.

Now, when it comes to eating sweets such as a slice of cake, cupcakes, bread pudding, I would be bouncing off the walls.

This would puzzle my co-workers and friends but never me until now.
Any explaination?

[Testiculese]

I'd say it's your metabolism. You've already mentioned yours is slow(or unstable, I don't recall). Mine's always fast, so regular sugar just winds me right up, but the foodstuffs you mentioned don't do anything for me. (Cake+icing gives me a buzz though).

Your pancreas might also be overly efficient in dispensing insulin for cane sugar. I'm only barely familiar with the process, though, I'd have to look up all that stuff again to see how it relates (if it even applies!).

[roid]

roid, what do you think of the insulin pump

</offtopic>

They are troublesome, because they just keep pumping insulin into you regardless without testing your blood sugars - it forces you to keep EMACULATE track of your blood glucose readings or you could get into serious trouble - it's kinda like a gun to your head.

However, there are new pumps now that i have only just heard of that actually automatically test your blood sugar themselves as well. I have been taking an interest in these - they might be very good, as far as i can see they are like a fully functional artificial pancreas.
However they still recommend you double-check your blood glucose reading, and don't trust the pump's reading.

So perhaps they still need some work. But it's a good direction to go - perhaps in time they will be as good as a (currently fictional) fully implantable artificial pancreas and i'll never have to worry about it again.

btw: i think i see some ppl in this thread saying that sugar causes diabetes (specifically type 1, insulin dependant), this is an urban myth.
The only truth to it is that eating too much sugar can make you a fat - and being fat can give you type 2 diabetes (not type 1) - in which case it's curable by loosing weight.

Really, so my skinny ass can down as much sugar as I want without having to fear increased risk of getting type 2 diabetes? I guess I've been buying into the urban myths you've mentioned. If so, that's a stone off my back...

exactly, you're A OK (in relation to diabetes anyway).

however - i should mention that when i was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes i was skinny as all hell and had an incredible craving for sugar. This is because diabetes is a wasting disease, insulin is a multi-use hormone - it's also needed to maintain muscle mass. Also my body was using up all of it's fat-stores as a substitute for glucose which it needed insulin to get into cells.
So if you are incredibly skinny and craving sugar, it's remotely possible you already have (undiagnosed) type 1 diabetes. In which case, me telling you to eat as much sugar as you want would probabaly put you into hospital. Which is probabaly a good thing anyway coz it'll at least get you diagnosed , and therefore you won't die an untimely death which is THE FATE OF ALL UNDIAGNOSED DIABETICS.

[TechPro]

That's good advice from Dr. Roid!

(... sorry. Couldn't resist. )

[Jeff250]

In which case, me telling you to eat as much sugar as you want would probabaly put you into hospital.

Oh I do this anyways. Now I get to feel less guilty about it.

[Sirius]

... EMACULATE ...

For future reference, this word starts with "im" rather than "e", and the "i" is also short - a lot of people tend to lengthen that letter on other words as well (hence "rediculous" instead of "ridiculous"), but that's only for some kind of emphasis and is ... probably incorrect, really.

Just FYI. "Emaculate" reads very similarly to either "emasculate", which means something entirely different, or... *cough* something even worse, which also means something entirely different.