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WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

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Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#111

This was posted when it was published in May. To use an analogy their argument is: Vaping is bad for you, don't do it. While ignoring that a ton of people quit smoking using vapes and that they're letting the perfect be the enemy of good. Same thing with NSS. While NSS are a useful tool for sugar reduction, studies have shown that over the medium-long term, you'll want to reduce artificially sweat foods and even swea…

Vaping is wrong for a very different reason, i.e. because the amount and quality of nicotine is unregulated which means the standard vape has an overdose of nicotine which can result in death in a single vape. 6 deaths by vaping in my state of Indiana alone last year, and all of them teenagers.

That's not vaping nicotine.

These kids are vaping THC adulterated with vitamin E[1]. Vitamin E is added because it makes a cut product thicker, and thickness is thought of as an indicator of quality. My guess here is that marijuana still has a stigma/is illegal, so these kids are finding it easier to just blame nicotine vapes to try and get themselves out of trouble.

There's no reason to cut nicotine vape liquid since the base ingredients (vegetable glycerin + propylene glycol) are absurdly cheap.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#112
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are trying to replicate the assault on your taste buds that is sugar soda. They've gotten pretty good at it. The problem is that the levels of sweetness, acidity, salinity, carbonation etc. in diet soda have become normalized. People give these dessert drinks to children, and drink it like it's water. You know how overpoweringly strong some chocolate mousse can be? The kind where you can't finish a tiny slice of…

> Ask someone from 100 years ago to sweeten a glass of lemonade "to taste" and you'd get something so weak that a consumer of diet soda would mock it like the meme "hint of hint of lime" or "transported on a truck near strawberries" flavors of LaCroix. This is quiet a suspicious claim if you've studied food or beverage history. We have cocktail recipes dating back 150 years, and punch recipes dating back almost 500.…

I think normalization is the problem but not because people didn't drink sweet things; my suspicion is that previously they were drunk rarely and in smaller quantities (due to cost, if nothing else).

We've gone from "Twelve full ounces, that's a lot" to a 12oz can being the smallest commonly available size, and a 20oz bottle being common in vending machines.

Over my lifetime, the "medium" size soda at a fast-food restaurant has roughly doubled.

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on the sweetener. There have been recent articles linking bad health effects to erythritol and sucralose that I am aware of.

Damn, I thought erythritol was downside-free. Looks like it is associated with a nontrivial risk of heart attack and stroke https://www.realsimple.com/study-links-stevia-and-monk-fruit...

On the positive side, while researching my comment, apparently that old boogieman of artificial sweeteners, saccharine, may be fine for humans (as the cancer-causing in rats is because of a unique rat feature that humans don't share).

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#114
post #107

In all honesty, after and during Covid19, I find it hard to trust WHO or anything coming from hospitals’ doctors, integrity was lost, or maybe clear it was gone long ago.

The reality is, this stuff is hard to get right, especially in the middle of something - someone is unlikely to be right 100% of the time.

Who are you following that's getting everything right? Or getting more things right than The WHO?

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#115
post #107

In all honesty, after and during Covid19, I find it hard to trust WHO or anything coming from hospitals’ doctors, integrity was lost, or maybe clear it was gone long ago.

...like most things in life, just trust your own instincts, and eat a mixed diet (including carbs, meat, gluten, dairy), with the occasional splurges. And like with most things, the poison is in the dosage.

These Do's / Don'ts change like every 10 years. But most people seem to love self-searched guidance in their life, especially from so-called authorities, or other "SMEs".

PS: Come on introverted HN lurkers, i want more downvotes! You can do it - give them to me! 46 Karma to go!

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#116

Companies need to stop using artificial sweeteners because they're just too sweet! If you ever do a low carb diet, it feels like your pallet is forever changed afterwards. Unmodified and unprocessed food taste naturally sweet on its own. Food with artificial sweeteners added tastes unbearably sweet.

Yep, when I've cut sugar I've noticed things like carrots and even bell peppers actually taste sweet.

Carrots taste sweet to me and I eat lots of sugar and artificial sweeteners normally.

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#117

This was posted when it was published in May. To use an analogy their argument is: Vaping is bad for you, don't do it. While ignoring that a ton of people quit smoking using vapes and that they're letting the perfect be the enemy of good. Same thing with NSS. While NSS are a useful tool for sugar reduction, studies have shown that over the medium-long term, you'll want to reduce artificially sweat foods and even swea…

[deleted]

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#118
post #109
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to create a "new normal" or new baseline where an e.g. strawberry is sweat again. Just an interesting story. About 5 years ago, I tried to cut out all processed carbs from my diet. After several months, I was away from home and I had to eat something ---the only thing open was a Dunkin Donuts. I ordered an egg-white sandwich on a plain English muffin, and for kicks I took a bite out of the English muffin. Holy shit…

I’m sure it did have added sugar. Basically all American supermarket bread products (including most bread!) do, and are are super sweet to Europeans. It extends shelf life though. European supermarket bread will mould in usually less than a week, but it’s really unusual for an American bread to go mouldy.

I think Twinkies last forever and they have tons of sugar.

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#119
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which blows my mind, because when all else in the diet holds equal, swapping two sugar'd sodas with two artificially sweetened sodas will save you (using my old vice Dr Pepper as an example) 54g sugar and 200 calories per day. It's just a little annoying that WHO (or this article, not sure who's most at fault) decided not to get into the nuance that people tend to make up those missing 200 calories in other ways.

"All else being equal" doesn't seem to really happen in practise. Some mechanism means this doesn't work. Maybe Swapping 2 sodas (diet or not) for e.g. 2 glasses of water means you will have less sugar dependence over time and will get healthier all around.

Why doesn't it happen?

I meal prep for all my meals. All my food is measured out and counted beforehand.

I started exchanging regular soda for zero sugar soda and did not change a single thing about my diet otherwise.

Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners

#120
post #107

In all honesty, after and during Covid19, I find it hard to trust WHO or anything coming from hospitals’ doctors, integrity was lost, or maybe clear it was gone long ago.

The reality is, this stuff is hard to get right, especially in the middle of something - someone is unlikely to be right 100% of the time. Who are you following that's getting everything right? Or getting more things right than The WHO?

When COVID hit, the WHO had a pandemic plan in place (written in 2016). Organizations often do this so that when an emergency happens, they can use the decisions made with cooler heads rather than trying to react to a rapidly changing landscape... at least until new, solid evidence emerges.

The WHO did the opposite of its pandemic plan. They failed to follow best practices and did so without any evidence for it.

The best evidence that the current WHO is not to be trusted... is the old WHO.

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