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Comment by Eelongate | Hacker News Reader

> diet soda (what if people chug the stuff and it makes the obesity epidemic worse?).

Isn't that one true though? Anecdotally, since the introduction of the stuff Americans have only gotten fatter. It makes intuitive sense to me that artificial sugars also contribute to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of diabetes. And while for any X you can pretty easily find nutrition studies that say "X kills you" and "X makes you live longer", it's not too hard to find studies linking diet soda to obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498394/

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Do people get fat because they drink diet soda or do they drink diet soda because they’re fat? (Or both)

I'd guess both, and my guess is part of the problem is fat people who think diet soda is an alternative to actually dieting. Which seems like the sort of risk compensation the article is talking about.

I tend to consider reality TV to be fake, but I think people like this really do exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIAFe7zaCRU

> "Our mom told us when we were younger, if we ate a sugar you drink a diet coke afterwards and it will cancel out the sugar"

> Do you believe that to be true?

> "I did when I was a kid."

There are studies done about this.

People who drink diet soda gain no more weight than people who drink regular soda.

It is true, however, that people who drink diet soda or regular soda gain more weight than those who don’t drink soda at all.

Turns out diet soda does not make things better from a weight loss perspective, but it doesn’t make thing a worse either, which negates risk compensation as a theory.

> and my guess is part of the problem is fat people who think diet soda is an alternative to actually dieting

Reality TV is essentially fake. Even the real parts, since by its nature it focuses on the strange, absurd, bizarre and unusual. It's not that these things don't exist, but if they were common, normal, or usual, they wouldn't be featured on reality TV.

The reasoning should be like this: "I found support for the idea that fat people think diet soda is a good alternative to dieting on reality TV, so this idea is probably uncommon, unusual and strange."

This seems like a case where things can be correlated without being causal.

In other words, you can choose to drink soda, and make other decisions that lead to obesity - the cause of both might be the same. (You might be hinting at that by saying they "drink soda because they are overweight" but I'd suggest that's inaccurate. As in, being overweight doesn't cause soda consumption!)

It's complicated and relatively understudied in depth over the long term in humans:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817779/

I forget where I read it, but the reasoning I heard for it is that your body still thinks the zero calorie sweeteners are sugar, so it will store more calories from the food you're eating because your body is compensating for the lack of calories in the "sugar". I've also heard that the causation is reversed though, and that obese people are more likely to drink diet soda because it's a low effort way to try and lose weight. I don't know which is true though, so I just try to stick to water or fruit/vegetable juice if I want some more flavor.

Insulin is the mechanism through which body fat is stored, and you are implying that zero calorie sweeteners trigger an insulin response, but this is not true. The mechanism is more related to too little time between meals and excessive volume of food intake per meal, both of which help maintain high insulin levels and subsequent weight gain. Zero calorie sweeteners seem to reinforce the desire to eat for pleasure.

Perhaps, but some research indicates that artificial sweeteners could be causing metabolic disorders. It's not clear yet whether there's a real causative effect.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310909

If diet soda induced an insulin response, then anyone on a ketogenic diet or fasting who drank a lot of them could end up with hypoglycemia. I have never heard of this happening. I personally drink diet soda and energy drinks while fasting, including a few two week fasts, and have never had anything like hypoglycemia as a result.

I agree. I am asserting that they don't cause an insulin response, and something else must be responsible, perhaps a reinforced addiction to short times between meals.

Availability (and presumably consumption) of calories increased significantly since 1960.

Of course we don't know what people eat and what they discard.

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