Five Reasons the Diet Soda Myth Won’t Die | Hacker News Reader

Five Reasons the Diet Soda Myth Won’t Die

nytimes.com

32 pointsjohnny31327 comments

There is all kinds of solid research on the detrimental effects of artificial sweeteners.

One area that comes to mind where there is _a lot_ of redundant evidence backing up effects is on the microbiome.

Another is glucose uptake pathways and insulin resistance.

These things aren't myths, prior to this article I'd never heard anyone suggest that possibility. The amount of research, approaching the problem from numerous angles, arriving at a similar conclusion, is hard to deny.

https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener-microbiome...

https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/530...

Did you even read the paper in your second link? Nothing in that review suggests "_a lot_ of redundant evidence backing up effects" on the microbiome.

Excerpt from the review:

"To our knowledge, there are no data on the potential influences of aspartame on the human gut microbiome. It is hard to understand how aspartame influences the gut microbiota because this NNS is rapidly hydrolyzed in the small intestine. In fact, even with the ingestion of very high doses of aspartame (>200 mg/kg), no aspartame is found in the blood because of its rapid breakdown (29). Upon ingestion, aspartame breaks down into residual components, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol and their components, which are readily absorbed so that they do not reach the large bowel (30)"

I did read it, you maybe didn't, if you had you couldn't say "nothing in that review suggests..." with a straight face. There's quite a lot of evidence cited in that review.

Also in the paragraph directly before the one you quoted you must have skipped over this:

"Aspartame consumption increased the fasting glucose concentrations in both the standard feed pellet diet and high-fat groups independent of body composition. A metabolomics analysis showed that aspartame was rapidly metabolized and related to SCFA production, especially propionate production. Changes in the microbial composition were observed in animals that received aspartame; the total bacteria and abundance of Enterobacteriaceae and Clostridium leptum increased."

If you don't find that convincing, here's the first Google result for "aspartame microbiome": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4615743/

By your response I'm not sure if maybe you think I'm making this stuff up? If you're really interested you won't have to spend much time searching to find a wealth of info.

Those comments are specific to aspartame, which is a tiny minority of AS use nowadays.

Ok that's an animal study that suggests some changes in microbiome, still need to show its applicable to humans and that the changes are meaningful to health in anyway.

The second paper doesn't make any definitive claims on health or humans either.

There are reviews of multiple blinded, randomized controlled trials showing no adverse health outcomes. Are any such meta-analyses that show there are? Animal trials at extremely and dosages coupled with some human trials suggesting (without controlling for confounding factors) possible changes in gut microbiome without demonstrating any meaningful health outcomes is significantly less convincing.

Just drink diet soda if you think it tastes good and drink normal soda if you think that tastes good, and don't drink soda too often in general. Constantly worrying about things like these probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal and diet soda.

> probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal and diet soda.

Type 2 diabetes can take a lot of years off your life.

Maybe, but heart disease is the #1 killer and stress is its biggest nemesis.

Type 2 Diabetes increses the chances of Heart strokes, kidney problems, cataracts, nerve issues etc.

Yea I think that's more of what caused the Type 2 Diabetes to begin with rather than Diabetes being the sole contributor.

> Constantly worrying about things like these probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal and diet soda.

I'd love to read this study.

Who's worrying? It feels good to make informed decisions about what I ingest.

I don't care about the debate of sugar vs. artificial sweeteners - my personal hobbyhorse/trigger is the way artificial sweeteners are added to products these days that are not marketed as "diet" or sugar free, apparently because someone figured out it would save money. I don't know if it's legal to completely fail to disclose, but I've noticed it's often quite obscured or they use tricky language. For instance I saw something that said "no artificial flavoring" but had sucralose. Yeah, people will smugly say "read the ingredients", but you used to be able to rely on the rest of the writing on the package not being actively deceptive.

If there's a market for drinks with less sugar, why not just do that?

A few decades ago I was pretty much on board with the smug disdain some people had for the unscientific tendencies of the organic/natural foods movement, but now I have to admit it seems like companies have decided that anyone who isn't buying organic has absolutely no standards and they are going to exploit it to the hilt. Even if organic standards are mostly BS, at least they aren't regarding their customers as asking to be abused.

What if the problem with sodas isn't only the sugar (variants) but the preservatives?

I mean, why do we presume the preservatives don't affect the body's ability to process the rest of the soda content, so it accumulates?

What if carbonated / acidic drink removes the fat/sugars from your tongue and make your body think you haven't eaten?

It's important to remember a simple fact about artificial sugars: they're about 10 times less dense than sugar (at least the one i use, which is a combo of maltodextrin and sucralose). This means that 10g of sugar is sugar sweet equivalent of about 1g of artificial sweetener. Which means if you're switching your sweetener from sugar to artificial you're getting 10 times less sweetener! Which means, even if sugar and artificial sweeteners were equally bad for you gram for gram, you're still getting 10 times less of thus 10 times less bad for you.

To me it comes down to this: sugar is bad for you in a multitude of very measurable ways, both short-term and long-term. Artificial sweeteners, at the very least, seem to be more subtle in any adverse effects. (And some which I wish got used more, like Xylitol, even have some benefits, in addition to tasting better than Sucrolose or stevia, etc.) Personally, I would rather have my son drink an occasional diet soda than one containing 40g of sugar -- his mom thinks the opposite.

> gram for gram

I have no earthly idea if these are comparable gram for gram.

Exactly - there are plenty of things I will happily eat 500 grams of, and there are a great many things in this world I should never eat even a single milligram of.

This comparison is not even close to a given.

Comparing the maltodextrin content of granulated splenda to sugar is completely irrelevant to the question of whether nonnutritive sweeteners are themselves harmful.

Even if the claims in the article were correct, which they are not, the basic reasoning is still wrong.

The author says that we should drink diet sodas unless they are proven harmful. But the artificial sweeteners are a new artificial chemical. That means we should not drink diet sodas unless they are 1) proven safe and 2) proven to help in weight loss, neither of which even the author claims is the case.

Can’t see the article (pay wall). Does it speak to artificial sweeteners? How bad are the two splendas I put in my coffee everyday?

I've read repeatedly (but never dug into it) that contrary to intuition, replacing sugar by artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss. My own take is that I should consume less sugar, but if I'm going to commit that particular sin, I'll use sugar and not the funny tasting alternatives.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/17/5372621...

The intuition is correct and the article mentions it, purely taking a diet and replacing sugar with sweetener will help. It's just that in the real world people don't often make such pure diet changes, so what people are often asking is 'Does the average person who tries to consume artificial sweetener over sugar successfully lose weight?'. The answer to that appears to be: Not really.

Why? Is it to do with the sweetener itself? Or is it just with food labelling? Or marketing? Much harder question.

I think the biggest impact that diet soda has it the high salt content dehydrates you which makes you perform worse at the gym and creates this negative feedback cycle. Additionally, diet soda's cause you to retain water which will make you look softer and the scale weigh heavier. If the majority of your liquid intake is water, diet soda is just fine. I've been able to lose significant weight while drinking it. It's the carbs that kill you!

Article does nothing to debunk any of the "myths" just offers suggestions as to why you might not trust any scientific study.

remember folks most diet soda has no sugar but has phenylalanine to get body to produce more dopamine to want more soda..hence no weight loss

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