I've been sticking to sugar version all along on a admittedly simplistic "devil you know" rationale
WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
141–150 of 210 posts
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normal Coke is probably worse but they're both horrible. I only drink normal Coke but sparingly. Usually I'm having water or plain black coffee. I think the takeaway is that diet Coke doesn't allow you to train yourself to enjoy normal sweet foods again. I just had an apple and strawberries and it is basically candy to me. Edit: I have a question. Rank these food items by how healthful they are: a) 150 calories of Co…
> Rank these food items by how healthful they are: Are you considering mental well-being as well, or just pure physical health? Because in case of the former, option b) will end up with the lowest score.
I'm considering the same as the parent comment.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#143This 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…
If you read the guideline[0] it is way more circumspect. There are a lot of "probably" all over it. There is a need for way more research for a definitive guideline as it is stated in this guideline. [0]: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073616
Thanks for your comment. Having read the conclusion, it is more of the authors saying "NSS could be responsible for hypertension/T2 Diabetes etc but it's not really conclusive".
I'll likely still consume some NSS'es though that is more due to my preexisting condition.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
We now know that the intestines have 'taste buds' that can detect sweetness. There's a theory, and I don't know how tested it is at present, that the body uses these detectors to control the digestion process. Within this theory, the presence of the artificial sweeteners may encourage the body to work harder to scavenge calories from your digestive tract. The upshot of this model is that if you eat a burger with a gl…
So I could be totally off, but I think the calories listed on food are derived from the Atwater factors of Carbs:4kc/g, Protein:4kc/g, and Fat:9kc/g.
The caveats section covers a lot of variations, between food samples and individual digestive tracts.
I've you've ever been diagnosed with anything that isn't mainstream, you're familiar with how much the medical community likes to stuff pegs of any shape into their favorite receptacles. A patient with ideopathic symptoms could be lying to you and sneaking food in the parking lot (I've known a couple of those), or they could be an anomaly. Singular or a few percent of the population. The world of genetics is vast and a handful of rare conditions can net you several examples within your Dunbar number.
We have a lot of people these days who don't seem to correspond directly to calories in/calories out. And unless they're absorbing energy from the universe, then something about our assumptions is broken.
At work I often find myself having to remind people that if your assumptions tell you that an event must be impossible, then it's not your eyes that are wrong but your assumptions. Half of debugging is being able to efficiently name your assumptions and sort them by probability x difficulty of verification.
If people aren't losing weight on diet soda, we need to be dismissing rules of thumb and directly testing patients instead of shrugging and saying, "exercise more, scrub." Which is a polite characterization of how medical people treat my obese friends.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I heard it was because the species of rat they used tend to get cancers anyway when they got older, and shouldn't be used in any long-term study.
I love scientists, loved working with them, best clients i ever had (if you're a devops or automate dev/scientists tools, and have to regularly explain stuff to scientists and to other devs, we don't compare advantageously at all), but sometimes there is too much noise.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm super dubious about their conclusions here. Fat people drink diet soda because they are trying to avoid sugar. Diet soda actually tastes damn good these days, there isn't really a reason to drink regular soda.
Aspartame has a negative effect on the myelin sheath of neurons: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6014252/ As far as I know, all of the sugar alternatives have some (usually neuro?) downside that makes them scarier to me than sugar!
Some caveats for others who don't want to read the study.
1. This is a study done on rats and is only a single study, so caveat emptor.
2. They administer 250mg/kg/d Aspartame (human recommended max dose is 50mg/kg/d) based on the claim that "Species correction required a five to six times higher dose in rats than humans, as rats metabolize aspartame faster than humans"
3. Even if you assume effects correlate perfectly to humans, a dosage of 50mg/kg/d in the average American 90kg male corresponds to 22.5 12-oz cans of Diet Coke (200 mg Aspartame) per day for 30 days straight (length of the study).
4. There was a group of rats fed Aspartame at those levels for 1 month, then left to recover for 1 month. The sciatic nerve in these rats recovered significantly, and although it appears the recovery was incomplete, they also state that this difference is not statistically significant. There is also no discussion about whether recovery over a time period > 1 month would have resulted in complete recovery.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm super dubious about their conclusions here. Fat people drink diet soda because they are trying to avoid sugar. Diet soda actually tastes damn good these days, there isn't really a reason to drink regular soda.
> Diet soda actually tastes damn good these days, there isn't really a reason to drink regular soda. I've been wondering about that. I wasn't sure if my memory has faded or maybe drinking it often made me like the taste but these days I find Diet Coke/Coke Zero to be equally enjoyable as Coke. Have the taste of the non-sugar Coke been steadily modified?
Coke Zero has been reformulated multiple times. I think "diet coke" is still the same crap and still tastes bad.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an impressively reductionist view.
As someone who knows nothing about either side (and I assume many other readers are in the same boat), can you explain why it's reductionist? Genuinely curious about both sides.
Well - simple thought: You are reading a random comment that has made a claim:
Claim: A plan was in place in 2016 that would have been effective for covid, but was not followed.
But right now they have absolutely zero evidence to back that claim up -
where is the plan?
Who decided it would work in 2019?
Did the plan need to be changed for reasons not foreseen (ex: expected or real supply shortages, unclear statistics/data, dissenting opinion from other groups, etc)
Did the WHO even have the ability to implement this plan? (ex: political meddling is a real thing)
---
Basically - I'll start with question #1: Show me the plan, because googling for a 2016 World health organization pandemic plan comes up essentially blank outside of some general influenza prep that was absolutely not usable for a pandemic of the scale of covid.
If this is so obvious, and this plan was so readily available... I would think a 10 minute google search would turn something up - but I have not found it (not claiming it does not exist - just that the rest of the conversation is fucking pointless without it).
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Diet soda actually tastes damn good these days, there isn't really a reason to drink regular soda. I've been wondering about that. I wasn't sure if my memory has faded or maybe drinking it often made me like the taste but these days I find Diet Coke/Coke Zero to be equally enjoyable as Coke. Have the taste of the non-sugar Coke been steadily modified?
Coke Zero has been reformulated multiple times. I think "diet coke" is still the same crap and still tastes bad.
The last time I tried Coke Zero, it tasted like Diet RC. I didn't like it at all.
Diet Coke has huge differences in flavor between sources and packaging options. It's universally bad out of a can or bottle, and the stuff from soda fountains varies by restaurant.
Re: WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
#150This 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…
> 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've been in America only once while overnighting in a hotel near LAX en-route to New Zealand from the UK.
Everything I ate at that hotel tasted sweet from the pizza I ordered that night to the toast I had in the morning. What should have been delicious and savoury was instead sickening and unpleasant - it was so weird.