Diet Soda: The Brain Knows Better | Hacker News Reader

Diet Soda: The Brain Knows Better

trueslant.com

51 pointschaostheory36 comments

Real world Anecdote: I'm a cube Monkey. Six months ago I switched from Coke to Coke-Zero (I can't stand the aspartame taste in Diet Coke, they managed to mask it somewhat in Coke-Zero). No other lifestyle changes whatsoever. I dropped from 195 pounds to 175 without really noticing and then stabilized.

So, for whatever reason, I'm a data point that tends to be contrary to the thesis put forward in the article. Sounds like a fairly easy thing to do a controlled study on though.

I think the point of the article means that you would drop another 20 pounds by switching from diet coke to water :-)

That's not an option. Now, switching to black coffee, that's an idea.

Another vote for black coffee. Once you get used to it, it's actually far more enjoyable than coffee with sugar and/or cream in it. You'll learn to be able to recognize the different tastes and types of coffee, which is pretty neat.

Unfortunately, it takes lots more time to prepare black coffee. Paradoxically. With instant, I just throw in saccharine and artificial creamer until it tastes okay. There is no instant coffee that's remotely drinkable black, in my opinion, so that means I'd have to spend time brewing.

A Bun drip coffee maker takes three minutes to brew a pot of coffee. Pour this pot into a thermal carafe, and you are set for the morning.

I suggest looking into a coffee press. Easy to clean, no filters to buy. You need to heat up water in your microwave and then let it sit for a few minutes. If you really are worried about time, pre-grind a bunch of beans over the weekend. You'll sacrifice a bit in taste, but it will make preparation faster. With an automatic coffee pot, just set it up the night before on a timer, and you'll have steaming hot coffee ready when your alarm goes off. We're really only talking about a difference of a few minutes. It will take you longer than that to get rid of the extra calories.

I use this thing: http://www.bodumusa.com/shop/line.asp?MD=1&GID=3&LID... along with a Japanese-style water boiler. I grind the coffee (with a burr grinder; very convenient) directly into the filter, then I put it on top of a cup, then I press a button to dispense the nearly-boiling water. It is not instant, but it does not take long, and you get real coffee.

I might need to invest in that, my coffee pot is too big for my average use case. Any recommendations on burr grinders? My blade grinder works fine, but was thinking about trying a burr grinder out.

I have this one: http://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-KPCG100NP-Coffee-Grinder-Ni...

Slightly pricey, and a cheaper one would probably work. But I can vouch for this one; it is quiet, easy to clean, and works very well.

I thought coke zero has 0 calories, other than the kidney stones you will get, it should not affect your weight due to calories no matter how much you drink, contrary to regular coke.

The point of the article is that drinking diet soda frequently messes with your internal connection between sweetness and being satisfied (full) in generally.

So in other words, people who drink diet soda will in general eat more and drink more of other sweet things in general and thus gain wait because their internal connections no long correspond to the real world.

That is why they would gain weight, not from the sodas directly.

Assuming of course that the hypothesis holds.

It's not a bad theory. Interestingly, there is evidence of inputs into the brain reward system that operate independently of sweetness and that perhaps directly encode metabolic value: Rodents that lack the ability to taste sweetness prefer caloric sweeteners such as sucrose to noncaloric sweeteners, such as sucralose[1]. Therefore the brain can detect calories more directly.

So in the context of this new study, it could be that the brain notices that a certain rate of eating/drinking is correlated with a decreased rate of satiety and concludes that the correct thing to do is to eat more.

1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.01.032

I believe people with kidney stones are advised to drink more, not less, to avoid time for the kidneys to build larger stones.

Caffeine is a diuretic, tho'.

This may explain my observation that people who drink diet sodas drink a LOT of diet sodas, while people that just drink soda do so occasionally.

I've observed exceptions, but this certainly seems to be the rule I've seen, too.

People who drink lots of diet soda probably drink more because they are used to the taste and it has no direct influence on weight gain.

Given the choice between a diet soda and water? I'll take the soda, thanks, unless I'm really thirsty. Better taste, without excess calories.

Maintaining a healthy diet isn't rocket science; drinking diet soda rather than water won't influence your weight unless you alter your diet in other ways.

That's what self-control is for. Rats don't have much of that.

That's what self-control is for. Rats don't have much of that.

Neither do humans. That's why rats are such good test subjects.

The point of the study is that your brain gets the pleasure, but no caloric intake to go along with it, so you feel more motivated to get more calories than you would have otherwise.

There are 3500 calories in a pound. Each can of soda has 170 calories. Switching to diet soda makes a difference. Even if you have only one can of soda a day (it's usually more), you'll lose 1.45 pounds a month. Now, if you all of a sudden substitute those 170 calories with some other junk, you just ruined it all. Eliminate the stupid calories and be smart. It's a science. It works. I lost 35 pounds in 60 days doing this. Other than that, this article is completely silly and complicates what is otherwise a simple formula. Reduce calories, increase exercise,and stay dedicated. Anything else is a distraction.

Actually, the entire point of the article is that you _won't_ eliminate the stupid calories by drinking Diet-beverages, but instead will consume more of them _because_ you are drinking Diet-Beverage. They have some data to back it up:

"We found that reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity"

I find their thesis entirely believable, and it would be a fairly easy thing to do a controlled study on.

Why people believe that they can somehow control what they eat through "willpower" or "dedication" is something I continue to find interesting - doesn't this type of control come from the brain? This article shows that with an fMRI, your brain will actually be able to determine caloric intake of an artificially sweetened beverage - the implication being that you will then be directed to increase your caloric intake, and, as a result of consuming artificially sweetened beverages, you will consume _more_ calories than you would have if you hadn't consumed that artificially sweetened beverage.

Presumably for each persons metabolism their is something that tricks the brain into believing _more_ calories have been consumed, and causes you to consume fewer calories as a result.

I think the foundation of diets like Atkins/Zone, is that by consuming high(er) Fat/Protein diets, you are hacking your brain into thinking it has eaten more than if you hadn't eaten those foods.

I'm guessing it depends on the kind of diet. If you want to loose weight short term and you watch what you eat or you follow a program, then the calorie gain from drinking diet sodas is great. Even more, you can have the occasional sweet thing without ruining the diet.

If you want a long term, mostly maintaining diet, then yes, the side-effects can become important.

And to answer your willpower question: yes, it comes from the brain. But we have many "brains". And the one you use in a strict, short-term weight loss diet has very little in common with the every day "I feel like having a snack and it's ok" brain.

I think this nails it. If you're part of a conscious diet and watching calories, diet soda can be a good choice, because you're _explicitly_ controlling for the effect the study is about - the false sweet causing cravings and ultimately more calorie consumption. It might follow, though, that the diet soda makes the rest of the diet more difficult.

If you're just subbing in diet soda for regular and not paying particular attention to overall diet, though, this study argues that you'll overall lose, as the diet soda increases your cravings for sweet and, left unchecked, you'll gain weight. Seems plausible.

(I don't worry too much personally, since I'm part of the population to which artificial sweeteners are not palatable. I'd rather drink water, and I do quite often.)

Their thesis, that it increases cravings in certain ways, is reasonable. The implication that people behave like rats with absolutely no ability to reflect upon or control those cravings, however, is not.

I'm also one of those people that lost weight (a small amount in my case, but I didn't have that much to lose) by switching to drinking diet soda. It allowed me to satisfy a certain type of craving (to drink something with taste other than water and to satisfy some need for something sweet) without adding calories to my diet; it's possible it instilled other cravings in me for sweet things, but I've found those far easier to ignore.

Not all cravings/desires/impulses are created equally.

The implication that people behave like rats with absolutely no ability to reflect upon or control those cravings, however, is not.

The implication that all people behave that way is clearly false.

The implication that a substantial percentage behvae as if they have no ability to reflect upon or control those cravings is probably true.

Compared to what and by what amounts? Is the increase in caloric intake bigger than the amount of calories you save by not drinking the non-diet version of the soda? I would guess not. This sounds similar to the fears of being dehydrated by coffee...

This doesn't make intuitive sense to me: like almost everyone I know who drinks Diet Coke / Coke Zero, regular Coke --- the kind I'm supposed to have extra cravings for because the Coke Zero has jumbled up my pleasure wiring --- tastes completely disgusting to me now.

Am I supposed to be getting these sweet-calories from some other source? Because it's not as if diet soda has suddenly got me eating huge bags of M&Ms, either.

Maybe your tastes adjusted to the different sweetener and you just don't like the taste of regular Coke? There are flavors of Jarritos that I can't stand (lime, eugh) regardless of their sugar content.

What I took from the article was that artificial sweeteners don't drive you into sugar binges but exaggerate desire for sweet foods, making you more likely to choose to eat something sweet at a given moment. And that's the thing - your brain craves sugar, but recognizes it through (and thus seeks out) sweetness. So a likely result is that you'll compound the effect with more diet soda. This sounds easy to resist, but the innocuity of another soda can be disarming. I suspect I would find a way to rationalize it.

I agree - I'm also a diet coke junkie and that's basically the only sweet thing I consume. I don't like cake, don't really eat any confectionery, don't even put sugar in my tea. I also cannot stand the taste of regular coke.

So yeah, I also question the article. I'm much more worried about the long-term effects of the caffeine, the chemicals used as sweetener, and the acidity of the drink...

I noticed that once I got used to drinking diet sodas, the regular stuff started feeling too syrupy and tasted way too sweet.

And although this may just be me, but I haven't noticed any correlation between the frequency and strength of my sugar cravings based on whether or not I've been drinking diet soda.

Funny - the diet stuff always seemed too sickly sweet to me.

Of course, I've switched to seltzer with lime and black coffee :)

Haven't had a craving for "sweets" in quite some time.. no candy, no soda. And I feel much better for it. I don't know how it happened, or when.. but I just don't want sweet stuff anymore. The cravings left before I cut them out of my life.

I think it might have to do with the fact that the last five years of my life have been much more sedentary than the previous five (bad ankle injury). Not exercising as much = not needing as much calories, and since I hadn't tricked my brain with diet soda, I just don't crave sugar anymore. Of course, now that I've started exercising again maybe they'll come back.. we'll see!

One thing I find interesting is that the rats lived in an environment where either sweetness always meant additional calories, or sweetness never did (assuming I'm reading the paper right). Which does lead me to wonder:

1. What would happen if sometimes the yogurt was sweetened with sugar, and other times with artificial sweetener? Perhaps at some point the calorie reduction from using artificial sweeteners would balance out the additional calories caused by eating more.

2. And what if the rats started out with regular yogurt, then switched to diet? I imagine there would be an immediate decrease in weight gain - if so, would it stick?

I think the quantities we consume of soda are frightening. It's so unlike anything we are evolved to consume that it was the first thing I eliminated from my diet when I started trying to eat healthier.

Like with most things in the world, if you have no self-control or ability to control your impulses, then life is going to be very difficult for you.

Many diets seem to be based on temporarily fooling the mind.

e.g. a meal that fills the stomach to capacity but with little calorific content

Initially the dieter loses some weight. After a while, he notices that he isn't deriving pleasure from the diet.

But because it seemed initially to work, word of the new diet spreads.

I had switched to water only from diet soda because I thought it would help clear up my acne. It didn't do anything for the acne but I did notice that I was eating a lot less or rather less hungry. So I was kind of wondering if there wasn't some kind of connection. Interesting to know.

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