When will we have artificial fat?
Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
91–100 of 137 posts
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#92The underlying research article ( https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/10/2454 ) is set up as a "no-fail" experiment since it infers toxicity with the slightest change (inhibition or induction) in a very sensitive reporter (luciferase). They are NOT measuring change in growth rate of the bacterial cells, the traditional measure of toxicity (aka IC, or inhibitory concentration). The study has positive and negative contro…
Whether or not that is the case, it seems to me the most interesting conclusion of the study was this: > the bacterial responses were correlated to the results of previous toxicity studies and bacteria may be used as a toxicity evaluation tool. One would want to establish that this method is actually useful, no? It seem this study is pointing in that direction. If it is effective, there may be interesting ways you ca…
Those are interesting possibilities, but they seem crippled by the underlying failure to calibrate or prove the assay.
It's possible there's prior lit here and I'm just not seeing the reference, but it looks like there's no claim that these changes are sweetener-specific. Without that I don't think it's a viable environmental test.
The correlation with prior toxicity work is more promising since this looks like a relatively easy test, but I still have some questions about how robust that correlation is to changing substances and dosages.
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#93It would be interesting to see some kind of health warning with stats or articles, including replication, funding sources, invitro/animal/human studies etc.
I just cannot trust even the most basic science announcements on mainstream media as things stand. It is simply more important that it generates clicks than it advanced people’s understanding these days.
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are looking for reasons outside of "me". It's "they" (aka school), caused by "that" (food/chemical) and so on. Not that it might not contribute, actually I would be surprised if it didn't somehow, but - its "us". You, me, everybody. We are lazy, we are overworked, we just sit on our asses whole day, lack sleep, eat junk food, drink crappy drinks, we know damn well we should exercise often but still we don't becau…
By this rhetoric, a lack of obesity and obesity-related illness in a population indicates that the population has consciously decided to be healthier, eat healthier, exercise more, and work less. In short, they are morally superior entities with stronger wills. Since obesity and obesity-related illnesses spiked in America in the 1970s, and the rhetoric here implies that such illnesses are primarily about conscious ch…
the rhetoric here implies that such illnesses are primarily about conscious choice and will, the conclusion is that humans in america before 1970 were stronger people
No, that conclusion is incorrect. And equally valid hypothesis is that "industries" have become much better at making people choose against their own interest (and against their health). Maybe television has played a big part in that?
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#95Off-topic, here is one of my favorite HN comments ever, about artificial sweeteners: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440566
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
By this rhetoric, a lack of obesity and obesity-related illness in a population indicates that the population has consciously decided to be healthier, eat healthier, exercise more, and work less. In short, they are morally superior entities with stronger wills. Since obesity and obesity-related illnesses spiked in America in the 1970s, and the rhetoric here implies that such illnesses are primarily about conscious ch…
the rhetoric here implies that such illnesses are primarily about conscious choice and will, the conclusion is that humans in america before 1970 were stronger people No, that conclusion is incorrect. And equally valid hypothesis is that "industries" have become much better at making people choose against their own interest (and against their health). Maybe television has played a big part in that?
This hypothesis ignores that the post I am analyzing is against attributing external factors as a primary cause for obesity and obesity-related illness.
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#97The article doesn't say which sweeteners did they study and this is a very bad style. Fortunately it links to an article on EurekAlert which in its turn links to the actual scientific paper (doi.org/10.3390/molecules23102454). It says aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame and acesulfame potassium-k (ace-k) (BTW at least saccharine and ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK) were tested agains…
It is sad, but understandable, that only the mass quantity, low quality, sweeteners are being considered. Rarely are the alternative sweeteners used by health conscious consumers at home examined.
You mentioned erythritol, which is undergoing an explosion in popularity due to Swerve. Xylitol is available in Whole Foods, and even some regular grocers on occasion, and is a bit more work to good with but works very well for some uses. And of course Stevia, when used appropriately, is all over the place. Monk Fruit is also used on occasion, but its flavor profile has to be carefully considered.
As an aside, for those complaining about Stevia, the $6 bottle from Whole Foods has more than 10x as much Stevia in it as the $6 bottle from your local grocery store. Stevia is also not appropriate in all places, but as a replacement for simple syrup in gin drinks it is great, and it is also great to use in Lemonade and Limeade.
(In ice cream, or anyplace with dairy? Use something else, and maybe add a couple drops at the end for a bit extra of a kick.)
It looks like lactulose is prescription only in the US, so that makes it a no go for home chefs!
My ultimate advice for people though, it just get used to things not being sweet. After a couple weeks, the taste isn't missed, and food tastes a lot more subtle when everything isn't accompanied by a sweet aftertaste.
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Refined oils, fat, and animal protien cause arterial hardening immediately, lasting for several hours. Keep ingesting and you end up with heart disease....arteries filled with plaque restricting blood flow, raspiration, mental function. Ingesting refined sugar and flour causes an insulin spike (make fat out of carbs!) that lasts for hours causing a crash and repeated cravings for...more carbs. This leads to diabetes.…
Fat is slept on macronutrient because of the misguided idea that increased fat = increased cholesterol in arteries. Vitamin K2 is an important vitamin that isn't metabolized well from foods containing K1 (vegetables). Animal sources and natto (fermented soy beans) are the best sources of it. It has been shown to help with heart disease, cancer and bone health. The interesting thing with animal protein is that no stud…
So you are denying that endothelial dysfunction and it's triggers exist? Interesting.
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some books I've read say increased portions are a symptom of something else. E.g. Inability to feel satisfied.
So, tying it back to artificial sweeteners, there's a fair bit of research to suggest that consuming them causes you to feel more hungry.
Just the taste something sweet spikes insulin levels[1], and as you said at least some artificial sweeteners don't cause fullness[2] (I am amused that is not the major finding there, heh).
It makes sense, the body releases insulin in expectation of nutrition coming in, but no nutrition comes in, so the end result is feeling hungrier than before.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17510492 [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21255472
Re: Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria
#100When will we have artificial fat?
Oh man, that is a tough order.
Sugar has the convenient trait of being essentially a flavor, so all that's needed is to trick chemical receptors on the tongue with something that's nontoxic and either not bioavailable or very high intensity relative to sucrose. Fat ends up affecting flavor, mouthfeel, and food traits (e.g. water retention, bulk) - and a lot of those roles are inherently tied to fat volume.
Safe, bio-unavailable fats already exist, more or less, in the form of fatty alcohols. They can cause minor irritation to the liver, but nonlinear long-chain fatty acids are safe enough that we already use them in food as emulsifiers. Wax esters, which bind fatty alcohols to fatty acids (i.e. normal fats), are also poorly digested and extremely fat-like. Escolar and oilfish are notable as fatty fish with wax esters making up almost all of the fat.
Unfortunately, that 'volume' issue now comes home to roost. Wax esters in low doses (e.g. orange roughy) are fine, but in high doses (e.g. escolar), they tend to cause stomach pain and bowel issues - not because they're toxic, but because they simply aren't digested. Other replacement fats like Olestra (once FDA approved as a fat substitute) have the same problem: they simply come out in the same form they went in.
To replace a significant portion of our "fat experience" with artificial fat means we need something which is similar in the mouth, low calorie and cholesterol, but also digestible. The best options we've found are either variant fats with lower absorption and calorie density, or other-macronutrient substances which serve only some of the same roles, like pectin or whey. Those, again, can lower cholesterol but can't do much better than half the calorie density of fat.
I'm not sure what artificial fat on the level of artificial sugar would mean. It would, I suppose, have to be something which is digested sufficiently to excrete without deriving energy or other components like cholesterol. And in an Algernon Argument sort of way, we probably shouldn't expect to find the body digesting very many compounds it derives no benefit from, so "somewhat better" is probably all we can hope for.