81–90 of 106 posts
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Is it really specific to Aspartame though? What if you switched to a product with a different sweetener, such as Sucralose?
Limiting yourself to sucralose means paying a premium (it's only used in premium brands) and restricting what brands you can get. If you want "coke" specifically, aspartame is your only choice. They don't make sucralose cokes.
How is there not a slam dunk answer to whether this 50+ year old incredibly popular ingredient is ok for us or not?
There’s strong evidence that all artificial (including “organic non-caloric”) sweeteners disrupt metabolic responses, leading to lethargy and more weight gain than a comparably sweet amount of sugar. In addition to making you fat, most others have some other bonus side effects like causing cancer, migraines, screwing up gut microbes, etc.
How is there not a slam dunk answer to whether this 50+ year old incredibly popular ingredient is ok for us or not?
I can be a case study. I drink over 2 liters of Coca-Cola with aspartame, per day, every day on an empty stomach. With an energy drink, containing aspartame. I am not bragging, it is an addiction.
How is there not a slam dunk answer to whether this 50+ year old incredibly popular ingredient is ok for us or not?
There’s strong evidence that all artificial (including “organic non-caloric”) sweeteners disrupt metabolic responses, leading to lethargy and more weight gain than a comparably sweet amount of sugar. In addition to making you fat, most others have some other bonus side effects like causing cancer, migraines, screwing up gut microbes, etc.
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Japan's easy: only about 1-in-3 households in Tokyo (and presumably the other large cities, where the majority of people live, are similar) own a car. People walk and take trains to work or to go shopping or eat out. A half hour of walking can burn upwards of 100 calories. The typical diet is also relatively lower in bread (processed carbohydrates...with unnecessary added sugar in the US) and higher in protein. That…
> diet is also relatively lower in bread I've wondered about about carb substitution. The rice, and the wheat noodles, why are they healthier? (I can understand rice somewhat: it's less processed, by certain definitions.)
Buckwheat is not wheat, soba noodles are based on buckwheat.
Not sure how large fraction of all noodles they eat are that though. Feels like there is something related to additives and other things that makes people eat more.
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> This is at about the time the obesity epidemic took off. Correlation != causation. Average heights continued increasing through the 1980s. This suggests that a not insignificant chunk of the population was still in caloric deprivation until the 1990s. You can't get obesity while lots of people are still continuously hungry. For this one, correlation probably is causation. In addition, smoking bans took off in the 1…
Doubtful. Smokers only gain a handful of pounds when they stop on average.
In college, I knew a lot of girls who took up smoking to help get rid of the freshman fifteen. It seemed to work for the most part.
How is there not a slam dunk answer to whether this 50+ year old incredibly popular ingredient is ok for us or not?
I can be a case study. I drink over 2 liters of Coca-Cola with aspartame, per day, every day on an empty stomach. With an energy drink, containing aspartame. I am not bragging, it is an addiction.
My BMI and checkups were good. But I was also IFing a lot, having big meals in my eating window and eventually had stomach problems: mild gastritis, hiatal hernia and strong esophagitis. As my family has some history of stomach problems, it's hard to say what was the culprit.
How is there not a slam dunk answer to whether this 50+ year old incredibly popular ingredient is ok for us or not?
Have you read the abstract? I'm a physician with a BS in human nutrition, and at first glance I find it hard to consider anything about that abstract a "slam dunk" for mice and monkeys, far less for humans. I'm very open to human data that aspartame is bad for humans in reasonable amounts, if you have any, but I haven't seen it. I'm looking to avoid erythritol these days though.
Why? My loose sense of the current thinking on this is that erythritol is one of the "safer" alternatives.
Peter Attia has covered this at some length. https://peterattiamd.com/what-are-the-side-effects-of-aspart... >While an excess of alcohol sugars can cause gastrointestinal distress (e.g., if you overdo it on these you can get diarrhea), in most people they do not cause secretion of insulin from the pancreas due to their distinct chemical structure (see figure of their structures, above). The same is true for the first…
False, read TFA. It says the opposite -- there are effects on insulin secretion and resistance for aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. Only studies funded by the food industry say there is no effect.
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Sweeteners are processed food. Timeline shows more processed food hitting the market, period. Obesity rises. Coincidence? Doubt it. It's not just the sweetener itself. It's the whole shift. More processed crap in everything, sweeteners included. Cheaper, easier, engineered to be addictive. That's the real change that lines up with the weight gain. Focusing just on sweeteners is missing the point. They're just one pie…
Calorie intake is up. Don't overcomplicate it. From 2016: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-... > Broadly speaking, we eat a lot more than we used to: The average American consumed 2,481 calories a day in 2010, about 23% more than in 1970. That’s more than most adults need to maintain their current weight
You're doing the opposite - oversimplifying it. Why is calorie intake up is a legitimate, important question.