7 ms·
Diet Drinks are not killing you
- tabeth 9y agofunny how there's so much controversy to whether or not diet-poison is a lot worse than poison. fact is, virtually all beverages you can drink, except tea (barring a few variants) and a few types of black coffee are significantly worse than water. drink water. trust me, i get it, sugar is good. but really, just drink water. your health will thank me.
- copperx 9y agoI get it. I know it. The kidneys rejoice when they get a stream of water. But I can't stand drinking just plain water all day; I need a strong flavor: soda, lemonade, Crystal Light, tea, coffee, beer, anything but tasteless water. What can I do? force myself to avoid all of that? perhaps. I've tried but I always go back to flavored drinks.
- nol13 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZmSeBI6Bp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZmSeBI6Bp4
- placeybordeaux 9y agoI personally have two different types of drinking: one for flavor and one for hydration. If I feel dehydrated then I don't want anything but water, if I am not dehydrated but want to drink something to complement a meal or just as something to do then I choose other drinks.
- valuearb 9y agoI still quit, and am happier for it.
- zenonu 9y agoMy 3pm headaches that'd come on because I was drinking 2 diet drinks a day completely disappeared when I quit. I still crave the bitter sweet taste of a Diet Coke, but fuck those headaches. The occasional regular soda drink is that much more satisfying instead as well.
- mahyarm 9y agoHow much of it was sodium or caffeine?
- cholantesh 9y agoExactly. There are plenty of other ingredients in a soda, why home in on the sweetener?
- nottorp 9y agoFunny, I thought Diet Coke tastes like plastic. I'd rather drink less of the normal than experience the 'diet' taste.
- bkjelden 9y ago+1. Quitting diet soda has allowed me to regain control of my appetite.
- sundvor 9y agoDitto. Just water for me now, and coffee (black without sugar), in the non-alcoholic fluid intake category. :-)
- paulcole 9y agoThis is what makes the internet so great. It's trivially easy to find an article that affirms whatever you want to believe about nutrition. Want to drink soy sludge and live forever? Have I got a site for you! Looking to skip breakfast and lunch in the name of science, here you go! Eat no meat? Eat all meat? Both work!
- Neliquat 9y agoAs someone who eats mainly keto/paleo as a prefrence/habit, and has vegan friends, the huge variaty of acceptable diet for humans is amazing. I even know people who eat food from bags and boxes, where the source caloric material is indecipherable, even with an ingredient list. Yet we all live well.
- Baeocystin 9y agoAn awfully large % of the genetic difference between us and our nearest relatives are genes that relate to the gut. Being a true omnivore has its advantages!
- hprotagonist 9y agomy personal favorite is this paper. The reason you can always find evidence for your favorite is not just internet tribalism, it's that the problem is under defined and has many valid answers. dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182351 > The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches. Efforts to improve public health through diet are forestalled not for want of knowledge about the optimal feeding of Homo sapiens but for distractions associated with exaggerated claims, and our failure to convert what we reliably know into what we routinely do. Knowledge in this case is not, as of yet, power; would that it were so.
- cholantesh 9y agoWhat's even better is that it's trivially easy to find rubrics for assessing the quality of information available to you. That there is a site that espouses your beliefs doesn't equate to all beliefs being equally valid.
- placeybordeaux 9y agoThe technique that the researches performed is really suspect, however simply saying that they ran 100 tests neglects the fact the the only statistically significant results were found in the same grouping (artificially sweetened drinks & stroke). Questioning the research is great, and pointing out that they used a scatter gun approach is totally valid, but I feel like the author lost a lot of position when they said: "There’s only one small snag in this story; it isn’t true. Diet drinks aren’t that bad for you at all." That's completely unsubstantiated. You've pointed out some potential problems, but not brought it home.
- hueving 9y agoThe onus for evidence is on people making the claim that diet drinks are bad for you. Until there is some proof of that, it's safe to say that there is no evidence that diet drinks cause bad effects.
- placeybordeaux 9y agoThe claim that diet drinks aren't bad for you w.r.t. stroke appears to be as unproved as the claim that diet drinks are bad for you w.r.t. stroke. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
- URSpider94 9y agoStripping away his sensationalist headline, the author is 100% right that this study proves basically nothing. The author does not control for either diabetes or BMI, two factors that are well known to increase risk for stroke, heart disease and dementia. Also, one might reasonably expect that someone who is obese or diabetic might in fact drink more diet soda than the general population. So, in fact, the results are well-explained by simple correlation, not causation. That said, the fact that this study doesn't prove a significant connection between diet soda and these diseases, doesn't mean there isn't one. It's really hard to prove a negative. The best we can do is keep looking for a negative impact -- the longer we look and don't find one, the more likely that there isn't one.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoPeople have already spent a _lot_ of time and money looking, at least in the case of Aspartame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy > FDA officials describe aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut."
- spangry 9y agoWhy the downvotes? This is true to an almost absurd degree. The following food / health standards agencies have found aspartame to be safe for human consumption: - World Health Organisation - US FDA - British Food Standards Agency - European Food Safety Authority - Health Canada - Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Authority - And a whole bunch of peer reviewed, double-blind RCTs Although, I should disclose that the Aspartame Illuminati pay me a commission whenever I make a positive mention of the additive :)
- tmnvix 9y agoNot sure about the rest, but doesn't the Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Authority just adopt the USFDA stance where appropriate? Are you saying that they did their own research in this case?
- danblick 9y agoPerhaps I'm just eccentric, but I avoid artificial sweeteners because I think they support behaviors that will ultimately lead to weight gain. (In particular I suspect we may subconsciously learn that sweet foods do not provide energy.) On a related note... Science has led to many amazing things, but that doesn't mean it can realistically answer all questions. I think we should remember to be a bit humble and honest about which questions can be answered scientifically and which can't. Unfortunately, individual researchers and journalists both have incentives to make the most out of any result.
- untangle 9y ago> In particular I suspect we may subconsciously learn that sweet foods do not provide energy. What do you mean by this?
- vmarsy 9y agoI think the parent is referring to this: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36772303 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36772303 > Artificial sweeteners can boost appetite by activating hunger pathways in the body, scientists have found in animals. > In fruit flies and mice, the mismatch between sweet taste and fewer calories sends the body into "feed me" mode, the journal Cell Metabolism reports. But UK nutritionists say this does not mean the same is true in humans.
- nostalgiac 9y agoWith all the artificial flavoring, there can end up being very little nutrients in the food. So if you're always having sweet but very low nutritional/caloric foods, there's a chance your body will subconsciously learn this.
- danblick 9y agoSomething like this: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20130710/could-artificial-sweeteners-cause-weight-gain http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20130710/could-artifi... "After a while, Swithers said, it's like the mouth keeps crying wolf, and the brain and gut stop listening. As a result, when real sugar and real calories come along, the body doesn't respond to them as strongly as it normally might. Calories don't end up making you feel as full as they should. They aren't as rewarding. So you don't get the signals that might stop you from eating when you should."
- GIFtheory 9y agoThere is still plenty of evidence that diet drinks are killing you, or at least making you fat: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161122193100.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161122193100.h....
- cholantesh 9y agoOne study of a small number of male mice is really not significant evidence. This is at best a pilot study.
- littleweep 9y agoAnecdotal counter point: I have never seen a skinny person that regularly drinks diet cola
- ClassyJacket 9y agoI have - myself.
- HelloMcFly 9y agoAnecdotal counter-point: I've seen many, am one myself, as is my wife and multiple close friends. What a contribution to the discussion I've made.
- vmarsy 9y agoBill gates is a famous example, with many cans per day : https://www.inverse.com/article/22652-bill-gates-diet-coke-sugar https://www.inverse.com/article/22652-bill-gates-diet-coke-s...
- littleweep 9y agoFrom the article you posted, a counterpoint that's not a medium article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/
- lngnmn 9y agoCrappy food produced for sale and quick profit. To paraphrase - Processed Crap Is Killing You.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- apatters 9y agoIt took me a long time to realize that most of the media's science reporting is scaremongering BS, and I know people who have gone their whole lives without realizing it. It's stuff like this which makes me wonder if we really need the media in its current form. I'm inclined to say no and that's why I have no qualms about using an ad blocker. Maybe society would be better off if we just funded whatever shreds of that dinosaur industry are still valuable directly -- Glenn Greenwald could surely make a fine living with a Patreon account. Outside of very specific cases I would prefer my media outlet to be an aggregator of primary sources, perhaps with summaries. I do not want the mainstream press to publish any more bad science articles.
- addicted 9y agoMaybe I am not understanding it correctly, but it seems to me that an initial analysis does show a correlation between dementia and consumption of diet drinks, but once you adjust for factors that could cause dementia (such as diabetes) that correlation disappears. But doesn't that imply a correlation. Eteeen diet drinks and diabetes? So maybe diet drinks don't cause dementia, but they do lead to diabetes, which then increases the odds of dementia. How do you conclude "drink away" from that? That would also fit other studies that have shown that drinking diet soda instead of sugar soda leads to no weight loss, likely because people compensate by getting their sugars elsewhere. Which would match well with the idea that diet soda consumption correlates with diabetes.
- szemet 9y agoA causal relation definitely exists in the other way around: people with diabetes are encouraged to consume less sugar... This may explain large part of the correlation.
- URSpider94 9y agoThat's an interesting idea, but there is no proof for this in the data, and in fact that's a common logical fallacy. Let's assume a population that lives on an island that sits on the equator. One side of the island is polluted with radiation. It also features a kind of purple fruit that doesn't grow anywhere else and is not exported. Now let's assume that the fruit contains a cumulative toxin that causes people to die very young of brain cancer. A study without adequate controls might conclude: -- Living near the equator causes brain cancer -- living on this island causes brain cancer -- radiation causes brain cancer -- eating purple fruit causes brain cancer -- radiation causes people to eat more purple fruit Only one of these is true, but one could certainly invent reasons to explain nearly all of these correlations as causal. In the case of this study, an alternate explanation that makes sense is: -- diabetes causes dementia -- diabetics are strongly encouraged to drink sugar-free soda to avoid sugar intake -- therefore, diet soda intake and dementia are linked only through their common root cause, diabetes