Comment by mountain_peak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mountain_peak | Hacker News Reader

I'll impart my n=1 experience, since I've been using powdered Aspartame (in combination with Stevia) in drinks and baking for almost 20 years, and I've tried almost all available sugar substitutes over the years.

We already know from glycemic index charts that almost all sugar substitutes impact blood glucose to a certain degree, and there are only a few that have no impact. When sucralose became widely available, I bought some to try to bake with, but the carrier was maltodextrin - a starch, which prevented me from using it. Undeterred, I purchased pure sucralose drops in a neutral liquid. The sickly-sweet mouth feel after consuming sucralose is a bit tough to take [0], but that wasn't the worst of it. It actually impacted my blood glucose, and when I read more of the research, sucralose actually did cause an insulin reaction in many people who consumed it ("Several studies have shown that sucralose is not physiologically innocuous").[1]

Then I read how sucralose is produced; literally thousands of pounds of sugar is used and converted to produce a few pounds of sucralose. It's being pushed hard by the industry, and I can only think of the 'vilification' of cheaper sweeteners such as Aspartame by industry, much in the same way that saccharin was vilified by flawed [2] studies in the 1970s - just as Aspartame was being developed as a commercial product.

Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen, and sugar causes irreparable damage to millions of people around the world. I find it somewhat odd how people react to what appears to be a flawed and dubious Aspartame study, when there are much larger elephants in the room.

[0] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/after-sales-plummet-diet...

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7155288/

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3185898/

> It actually impacted my blood glucose, and when I read more of the research, sucralose actually did cause an insulin reaction in many people who consumed it

Yeah the research has been pointing this out for a while now: even if it doesn't contain digestible sugars, the body, once again, is not a furnace and might activate similar pathways when ingesting something that tastes sweet.

Sweeteners are the biological equivalent of bait-and-switch. Taste the sweet, prepare the body to accept glucose by increasing insulin response, but then there's no glucose coming in in the blood stream. The downstream effect of this is that all that insulin with no sugar causes a minor glucose drop in the blood. In fact, due to this phenomenon, other research indicates that sweeteners causes people to be hungrier/eat more food than if they had simply consumed non-sugar-free food.

As always, there is no such thing as (sugar) free lunch.

This is an article of faith on the Internet, but I haven't seen a credible cite to back up a material, meaningful insulin response to the mere taste of sweetness. Worth remembering: insulin response to aspartame has always been a major research focus, like a day-one concern; it was tested fasted, unfasted, in great quantities and small, with food and in beverages.

From personal experience (sorry, n=1), I can eat pure Aspartame powder and have zero reaction - no increase in glucose, no "anticipatory" response - nothing.

When I have other sweeteners such as taking a swig of a stevia-laden diet iced tea, I have a reaction. I used to be able to drink the exact same iced tea when they used Aspartame with no effect. I don't think your body is "fooled" by sweet tastes - it only reacts when there is actually something to process.

The fact sucralose is being added into all kinds of products has removed many choices for me, which is unfortunate as the selection was quite small to begin with.

Edit: should have read: "sucralose-laden diet iced tea". Stevia-only drinks don't taste all that good to me, but they don't affect my blood glucose.

I'm pretty sure that the minor glycemic spikes after sweeteners (artificial, zero calorie) is because they're sweet it's a combination of some glucose mobilization and insulin response that shapes the results after use of artificial sweeteners. You're carrying a fair amount of glucose in the kidneys which is quickly available and glycogen the muscles that can be activated nearly as quickly. The impact from this on those that consume a lot of sweetened beverages over the course of a day may not be such a good thing and may even contribute to insulin resistance.

Aspartame is really inexpensive compared to real sugars... the sugar industry really doesn't like it and that was well before sucralose was an option.

My personal take is it's probably best to limit sweetened drinks to with meals, and to limit meals to 2-3 a day in a relatively narrow window of 6-10 hours.

What sweeteners are you leaning toward these days? I try to stick to stevia/monk fruit/allulose, but if you're not preparing food yourself, it's hard to find things that aren't using the sugar alcohols, maltodextrin, etc

Those are excellent choices; pure monk fruit drops are great, but they cost a small fortune compared to others, and the affordable version is usually mixed with erythitol, which increase blood glucose, so that's a non-starter. Amazon and local health food stores sell a "tub" of stevia for a decent price, and that's my main go-to, but the bitter aftertaste is off-putting, hence Aspartame.

Prepared food is pretty much a no-go; there's only a single energy bar I purchase that uses stevia only, but I make my bars from whey protein isolate, cocoa powder, and peanut butter powder, plus roasted flax, almond flour, almond milk, and sweeteners. I did skip sweeteners completely for some time, thinking that I'd "get used to it", but I really didn't - we're programmed for something sweet!

Still, why would you willingly manually add aspartame to your diet?

Especially since stevia exists I see no reason to put my health at risk with these. Personally I avoid sucralose and aspartame at all costs, regular sugar is much preferred in moderation.

The sweetness in stevia is very different from sugar/hfcs... it has a flavor of its' own and is somewhat off-putting if you aren't used to it. Using a mix of sweeteners is often better overall flavor than any single sweetener (stevia, aspartame, ace-k, etc) on its' own.

I really wish Coke Life had better marketing and was more popular... It was a much smaller amount of real sugar combined with stevia for sweetness. It was lower calorie, but not zero, and probably a much better option than either full sugar or zero sugar.

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