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Comment by craftyguy | Hacker News Reader

> stomach acids should break it down

"should", but it's really hard to find reliable information as to what actually happens since the internet is filled with FUD websites claiming aspartame gave their brother/grandma/cat/chair cancer.

> Methanol sounds threatening, but very little aspartame is needed to sweeten a beverage

Methanol is very toxic to humans, so that's a good thing.

> What's more unclear is whether the sugar-like taste of artificial sweeteners affect the body's blood sugar regulation.

Why would it?

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The only legitimate health risk I can ever find from criticisms of diet soda is that due to it being sweet and delicious it might make you eat more and then you’ll get fat. Which is a legitimate issue but more of a personal problem than a problem with diet soda in and of itself.

If a substance significantly alters the metabolism of it's users that's not a "personal problem," it's a "side effect."

> it's really hard to find reliable information as to what actually happens since the internet is filled with FUD websites claiming aspartame gave their brother/grandma/cat/chair cancer.

The burden of proof should probably be on the side of those asserting safety of novel food components, and if that means waiting a full generation for the data to come in, so be it (note that animal tests don't really tell us enough, because metabolism doesn't seem that well conserved between species; there are plenty of things that humans can eat safely that animals can't and vice versa)

Human metabolism and our food has coevolved over thousands of years, and we have evidence in the fossil record that shifts in diet (e.g. agriculture, pastoralism) had negative impacts on human health (worse teeth, shorter, weaker bones) until either our genomes or microbiomes adjusted.

If you decide to consume large quantities of novel ingredients in combinations that no humans have ever eaten before in our evolutionary history, then sure, it may turn out just fine—but metabolism is an intricate dance and there are a lot of ways to screw it up.

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." and "Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." seem like sensible advice for people who can afford to follow it [1].

[1] https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090323/7-rules-for...

> and if that means waiting a full generation for the data to come in, so be it

I think we're pretty close to having a full generation's worth of data, considering it was approved by the FDA in 1981.

I'm not particularly young and my great grandmother lived into the mid-90s. This would amusingly give me significant leeway. In my own quest to solve my stomach ailments I permanently quit soda and juices, switching to carbonated water. Helped tremendously.

> Why would it?

I believe the theory goes something like: the taste of sweetness causes changes in the body in preparation for a carbohydrate load.

How much truth there is in this claim is left as an exercise for the reader.

Well, merely swishing liquids with carbohydrates around in your mouth and the spitting it out can increase athletic performance in athletic activities lasting over 1 hour!

From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916844/ :

> Carbohydrate (CHO) mouth rinse is defined as a CHO fluid distribution around the mouth for 5 to 10 s with subsequent expulsion by spitting. The utilization of either a low-concentrated 6.0% to 6.4% glucose or partially hydrolyzed maltodextrin are the most common CHO used, with the latter being colorless and tasteless when dissolved in water.

...

> CHO mouth rinse seems to improve performance during moderate- to high-intensity exercise (~60% to 75% VO2max), of at least 1 h duration. It is probable that the mechanism involved in this improvement may not be metabolic but neural, via oral CHO receptors (glucose and maltodextrin) that activate brain regions related to the sensation of reward and pleasure.

Note that it apparently isn't taste that is having the effect, as (according to this paper) maltodextrin, when dissolved in water, doesn't have a taste. So apparently there's some mechanism other than either ingestion (metabolic) or taste.

I thought that there had been studies that proved insulin spikes in response to sweet flavors even without caloric content? Not that I have links to them on hand.

Fairly certain I have, at least, seen the headlines.

I meant my last line not as a disputation against, but only as an indicator that I was, at the time, too lazy to provide references.

Ah, yes. Sometimes I'm amused by the expectation of HN readers that anyone commenting will have kept an exhaustive bibliography of everything they've ever read.

I'm not aware of human studies, but rodent studies have shown increased glucose intolerance when fed artificial sweeteners.

Which artificial sweeteners? Do you have a link to the study?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25231862

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