Comment by Zenst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zenst | Hacker News Reader

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It's interesting you mention diet coke, the whole artificial sugars are probably doing as much damage and your right to mention them as any artifical sugar substitute is designed to feed into that sugar addiction/stimulate taste buds and will effect how you taste and eat food.

I'm still on my transition phase, having moved from desert spoons to teas spoon in my coffee and diet softdrinks, though I do like a full fat cola with food. But have been interested in this berry they have which makes bitter/sour things taste sweeter. That is something that does seem to be a more palatable approach to quelling sugar addiction and could make for a rather nice cup of coffee, evern the cheaper stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum is the bean which I'm on about and you may of heard of it already in the name `miracle fruit`.

All that said, I don't think anybody can name a person that has regretted giving up sugar, though I'm happy to sit in the moderatly decling usage and wont deny it.

But we all blame the sweets as children, even though as children we have a bias towards sweet tasting foods. This is genetic and a health preserving one as well as sour/bitter foods are in general covers most posioness edibles and it is not until we get older do we loose that bias and aquire a more palatable acceptance to bitter/sour tasting foods and drinks. Our eyesight also is biased to the red spectrum when were younger and biases towards blue as we get older, again red being dangerous in nature.

So geneticly there are reasons we are all born sugar addicts, and given the reasons and the way civilisation is modernising forward then it is a trait that may eventualy drop from our genetic code, though that will still be a long way away due to the benifit it serves babies and small children who are still learning what and what they can and can not eat.

> the whole artificial sugars are probably doing as much damage

Wikipedia says:

> Aspartame has been found to be safe for human consumption by more than ninety countries worldwide, with FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut", but has been the subject of several controversies, hoaxes and health scares.

Do you have a reference for that assertion?

Historicaly artificial sweetners of some types have been proven to increase the chances of cancer and I have. I also said probably as nothing is fully proven until many many years later as we all know. In general it is one of those open debates that again only time proves. As for specifics there was no one report I have refered to or any one sweetner, again why I used the term probably. Not everybody has died from smoking a cigerrette or the effects of, everybody is different and all the FDA approval means that it is safe by there standards, based upon there results at that point in time and unless something comes along to prove otherwise to a unaceptable level then that won't change. I drink diet soda, its a acceptable risk in my book. That said natural alternatives have by definition been tested over a longer time with the effects upon humans as a rule and pretty much most people are much happier with that assurance over FDA approval. The thing is you can find assertions arguing both ways as it is still one of those nothing truely proven one way or another situations. I find the thought that any product I purchase in the UK that has it, has a warning label by law. But a fairer way to look at it would be are there are no references on that wiki page you refer to in that it is healther than sugar, so I will stand by my statement that it is probably doing as much damage.

Your first two sentences contradict each other. In addition to that, there's quite a few assertions and leaps of logic in the rest of the post, especially in the last sentence.

However, the point is, artificial sweeteners have been around for quite some time, and there haven't been any indications that sweeteners cause cancer. On top of that, there have been numerous studies by the FDA and other organizations in Europe, all coming to the same conclusion. So unless you are implying a lack of credibility in those institutions, I don't see how claiming "sweeteners probably increase chances of cancer" as anything but fear mongering.

Aren't most artificial sweeteners only 40-50 years old? Asbestos has been used for 4500 years but only in the past 100 have we realized its dangerous.

If you buy packaged food from stores, you're regularly consuming dozens of compounds that have been around for a comparable amount of time to sucralose and whose long term effects are comparably poorly known. If you drive a car more than 10 miles a day, your cost benefit analysis would be better spent on figuring out how to reduce that than on trying to mitigate the tiny odds that a randomly singled-out food additive might be causing some marginal health effect.

Also, you can't really compare the way things were vetted for safety over a century ago to how they are vetted today.

I think the point is that vetting is a ongoing process and the asbestos example is one were something has been approved for use over a period and then later in its life-cycle found to have enough negatives to make it not be use. We know more about the moon than the human brain so what truely effects it and how is something we still learn and in that down the line the prospect of things changing and the FDA changing there mind is something that has and does happen and in that we accept there judgment for our safty.

The comparision to vetting safty a centuary ago and now is valid as in 100 years time we will have even better vetting and products in common use today could possibly be banned by the standards in 100 years time. That is also within a humans lifetime (given how long we will be living by then, statisticaly speaking as a trend). So the comparision is whislt not a dierct comparision but one of highlighting how time effects oppinion based upon new data collected over that period. If atifical sweetners still approaved in 100 years time then great, but it is a bet I would not take.

>I think the point is that vetting is a ongoing process and the asbestos example is one were something has been approved for use over a period and then later in its life-cycle found to have enough negatives to make it not be use.

And again, there's just no comparison between the state of science today and the state of science a century ago. For a point of reference, the idea of blinded and randomized trials was a new concept when asbestos first came under suspicion.

The implication that the efficacy of science will improve in the next 100 years comparably to how it did in the last 100 years is spurious. Scientific understanding is being continually refined, but it is not a linear progression. Take the difference between our understanding of the shape of the earth in 800BC vs. 600BC; the model went from a flat earth to a spherical earth. That's a giant leap in 200 years. Then in the next 350 years they nailed down the size of the earth to within about 20% of the true value. An impressive advance, but surely a lesser one. Then, over the next 2250 years, we've gotten a more accurate measurement of the size of the planet, and noticed that it's a bit oblate rather than a perfect sphere. As science advances, the rate of progress slows; that's just how it works.

"sweeteners probably increase chances of cancer" you said that, I didn't. I said "sweetners are probably as bad for you" in the context of a comparision with sugar.

Fact the FDA has banned unbanned and rebanned and unbanned so many of these artificial seetners that even they over time you can see why people are so unsure becasue historicaly that is how they have been themselfs. I also stated I drink diet soft drinks which contain them, my choice so you can see that fear mongering is realy my main agenda, clearly.

Now if a institution changes it's mind more than once, I'm sure some aspect of there crdibility is in question. I live in the UK said products have warning and given that, I have resonable doubts about them being 100% safe in every aspect of use, but it is an acceptable risk and may or may not even be a risk at all, we just don't know.

I'm not saying there bad, I'm not saying there good, there have been some that currently appear to do no harm and some that are stilll banned or withdrawn from market historicaly, there are many types of artificial sweetners, some are currently banned some are currently allowed and in that when I say they are probably just as bad as sugar then that is exactly what I mean, there is no 100% prove either way that they are not are that they are, they could be less bad than sugar and they could be alot worse, sorry I didn't quantify it with exact brands but if anybody knew the exact answear then great, but they don't so I excersise resonable doubts.

Until somebody can clearly state that artificial sweetners are safer than sugar overall with regards to health then the debate will always carry on.

Aspartame is perfectly safe physically. It does affect how you perceive taste of course. Your brain links the sweetness of the aspartame with the caffeine high. But remember caffeine alone is addictive anyway so I don't think this is anything to worry about.

Oh I totaly agree the level of risk from unknown factors later on is less impacting than the effects of worrying about it. Suppose in some ways artificial sweetners are like methadone.

There's some evidence that sweeteners harm gut flora. Here's a random study I found on splenda affecting the gut flora of rats:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18800291

A panel of experts from multiple universities (including Duke, where the study originated) smacked that study down pretty hard: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19567260

I personally have taken the stance that there is negative campaigning going on from both sides, dirtying the science. This is why you keep seeing people cry out that the sweeteners cause cancer - it's one of those easy, believable, fear-inducing lies that is also difficult to either prove or dismiss.

The best words I have to say in favor of artificial sweeteners are - you aren't seeing high-profile lawsuits claiming health damages. Lots of FUD, no money. On the other hand, real sugar has a few easily discovered examples, generally derived from the sugar being used in products with "nutritious" or "healthy" labelling:

http://www.inquisitr.com/226431/nutella-settles-lawsuit-for-...

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-204_162-2926923.html

Just as an aside, that "miracle fruit" (available as tablets made from dried fruit from ThinkGeek if you can't find a local source) is an absolute lifesaver for people suffering from serious illnesses that put them off their feed.

My own experience leads me to think that the body goes through a process that runs something like this: "I don't know what's happening, but I feel like crap. Maybe it's something I ate? Let's crank up the anti-poisoning safeguards, just to be safe." Unfortunately, since both bitter and sour can be indicators of unsafe foods, with the safeguards cranked up, everything that has even a hint of tartness or bite tastes like absolute crap. Suppressing the gag reflex is difficult, and reverse peristalsis after healthy meals is not uncommon. Turning off the tongue's ability to detect bitter and sour makes almost all healthy foodstuffs palatable (although you should probably expect to undergo a little bit of cognitive dissonance -- Brussels sprouts aren't supposed to taste like almost-overripe plums, they just do after sucking on one of these little pills).

They won't give you back your appetite, but they sure make eating feel a lot less like a punishment for unspecified crimes in a previous life or some such.

Thank you, glad to hear that it not only works but has other possibilities with regards to health. Oh and doube thanks about that brussel sprout insight, you may of very well saved christmas/thanksgiving dinner from many a argument.

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