9 ms·

Germs That Love Diet Soda

116 points by johnny313 9y ago

nategri 9y ago
This is a data point of one, and I am certainly not implying that there is only one kind diet that works for everyone, but: Every time I've lost a significant amount of weight (currently at -70 lbs from my peak) it's because I have drastically reduced sugar/carbohydrate content---while continuing to guzzle aspartame-based diet soda like water. So either: 1.) I'm an outlier, 2.) These results are only relevant to saccharine sweeteners, and not aspartame, 3.) These results are bunk, like so many other nutritional studies, or, 4.) Low carbohydrate intake offsets any negative effects
- soperj 9y ago
  This isn't a nutritional study?
- schoen 9y ago
  This article mostly doesn't claim that diet sodas inhibit weight loss. In fact the biggest focus of the article is research suggesting that some food additives (not necessarily those in diet sodas) have helped the pathogen clostridium difficile to evolve in a way that's more dangerous to people. Even where the article discusses diet sodas, it doesn't specifically say that they inhibit weight loss but that they might cause other kinds of harmful metabolic effects through their effect on the microbiome—and that this mechanism is suggested by research but not yet well-established. It also admits that some of those effects, if they exist, could vary widely between people. That might be one reason that evidence nutrition has seemed so hard to pin down: if many of the effects depend on people's microbiomes, then some studies might be almost impossible to replicate in a different population, or maybe even in a different generation of research subjects. It might be true that some large group of people did very well eating one way, and that a different group did very well eating very differently, even if it seems like the advice that you'd draw from these observations is directly contradictory.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Most of the things I’ve read about diet soda were more related to individuals with insulin resistance, and problems related to that. Soda is bad for other reasons too. The carbonic acid will rot your teeth.
  - refurb 9y ago
    Do you have a source on the carbonic acid rotting your teeth? I thought it was the phosphoric acid. Carbonic acid is an incredibly weak acid.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  I have had the exact same experience as you. FWIW.
aabajian 9y ago
Article opens with, "There are lots of reasons to avoid processed foods. They’re often packed with sugar, fat and salt, and they tend to lack certain nutrients critical to health, like fiber." Diet coke has no sugar, no fat, and less than 100 mg sodium. The specific results from Nature are about trehalose, a sugar not found in diet coke. I'm not aware of any diet soda that contains it, either. I realize it's an opinion piece, but pseudoscience and speculative articles should not be the domain of NYT. Of note, the zero-calorie definition of artificial sweeteners is based on the amount excreted in urine/stool: It should be very close to the ingested amount. I find it hard to believe the conclusion drawn by the authors that other sweeteners (sucralose and saccharin), are consumed by bacteria since the amount ingested matches the amount excreted.
- soperj 9y ago
  If you read the full article instead of just the opening, you get to it: The prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease has, it’s worth noting, sharply increased in recent decades. Then there are artificial sweeteners like sucralose and saccharin, which we consume in diet sodas and “sugar-free” snacks in hopes of cutting calories. Our bodies can’t directly digest most of them — they’re meant to pass right through — but it turns out that the microbes inhabiting our colons can metabolize the sweeteners, potentially to our detriment. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have found that, in mice, saccharin causes glucose intolerance, a marker of impending diabetes — and one disease that those who eat these sweeteners are probably trying to avoid. When the scientists transplanted microbes from mice fed saccharine to mice that hadn’t consumed the sweetener, the recipient animals developed glucose intolerance as well, suggesting that the microbiome that was warped by the sweetener, not the sweetener itself, was causing the problems.
  - ravenstine 9y ago
    What diet soda contains saccharin? Also, that study only looks at saccharin. What about sucralose?
    - amyjess 9y ago
dnhz 9y ago
Diet soda is either on the same level of harm as seltzer, or is worse. But I believe both to be healthier than any sugared soda. Different diet sodas use different artificial sweeteners, so diet soda cannot be treated as a single group. Diet Coke uses only aspartame as sweetener; Coke Zero combines aspartame and acesulfame K to create a more realistic taste. I readily believe that any diet soda sweetened purely with aspartame is harmless. The chemical structure of aspartame is such that stomach acids should break it down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol, the first two being ordinary amino acids. Methanol sounds threatening, but very little aspartame is needed to sweeten a beverage. I thus have no problem drinking diet coke. What's more unclear is whether the sugar-like taste of artificial sweeteners affect the body's blood sugar regulation.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  >diet soda sweetened purely with aspartame is harmless You also have to consider other additives in the soda, such as acids that can damage your teeth, and the caffeine in diet coke.
  - salvar 9y ago
    True, and even if you've removed everything and are left with water, you have to consider the possibility of drinking too much water.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  > stomach acids should break it down "should", but it's really hard to find reliable information as to what actually happens since the internet is filled with FUD websites claiming aspartame gave their brother/grandma/cat/chair cancer. > Methanol sounds threatening, but very little aspartame is needed to sweeten a beverage Methanol is very toxic to humans, so that's a good thing. > What's more unclear is whether the sugar-like taste of artificial sweeteners affect the body's blood sugar regulation. Why would it?
  - selectodude 9y ago
    The only legitimate health risk I can ever find from criticisms of diet soda is that due to it being sweet and delicious it might make you eat more and then you’ll get fat. Which is a legitimate issue but more of a personal problem than a problem with diet soda in and of itself.
scottie_m 9y ago
Soylent used to contain 12g of trehalose per serving, and I’m wondering if that might have some impact? Based on this research it seems likely. I’m not sure if they switched out the trehalose for isomaltulose, and I don’t know if isomaltulose would have similar effects on the GI tract. I find this portion of the Soylent Wikipedia page interesting though: Later versions of the product lowered the amount of fiber content, but this did not stop the reports of gastrointestinal problems.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Soluble fiber usually produces more bloating, maybe that's what they're referring to?
kbutler 9y ago
Clickbait title. The only germs loving diet soda would be the potential shifts in gut biome as a result of saccharine consumption, which would only apply to Tab. "The scientists also fed a small group of healthy people saccharin-sweetened drinks for a week. In a subset of volunteers, microbial shifts occurred, accompanied by mounting glucose intolerance. So for some people, diet sodas may not be any healthier than regular sodas." The Nature study has a better title: "Dietary trehalose enhances virulence of epidemic Clostridium difficile" https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178.epdf
- mythBustan 9y ago
  Tab? Are you joking? The point isn’t about one specific chemical, but rather the principal that the prevalence of non-nutritious, edible chemicals seriously augments the dark, warm controlled environments of our guts. Nutrient capture as a whole, shifts in a way that, at the bottom of the tract, there are chemicals that humans leave unused, but which are still useful to certain opportunistic organisms. If only those chemicals are available, and normal food is absent, every member of the environment is forced to deal with scarcity, and the strongest survive, and fill the void if they can. If those organisms are forced to opperate with greater efficiency, then their capacity to deal with adversity offers them an advantage as an invasive species, and they will prevail in general, everywhere, not just in the adverse scenario.
  - kbutler 9y ago
    Yes, Tab. Exactly. Which other diet sodas were identified as having "germs that love diet soda"? The studies show effects for trehalose and saccharine. No diet soda contains trehalose, only Tab contains saccharine. Any effect from the non-nutritive sweeteners in other diet sodas did not appear in the studies, so they focused on saccharine. There may be more subtle effects from those sweeteners, or future effects from those sweeteners, but we haven't found them yet, extrapolation from a general principle not withstanding. "Germs that love Tab" wouldn't draw as many clicks as the current title.
    - 9y ago
viburnum 9y ago
This article is an amazing test of reading comprehension.
raverbashing 9y ago
Funny how the narrative goes from "microbiome helps you adapt to new foods" except when it doesn't and it then becomes this super sensitive thing that breaks down when approached by any foreign substance. In every test done with a different substance the question needs to be, how much was it given to the subjects? (g/kg body weight). A lot of tests are done with excessive amounts (which are fine for testing purposes, but doesn't mean the effect will be as pronounced in smaller amounts) I'll get the sugar-free soda as opposed to something that is the definition of high glycemic index empty calories. Or even better, just water.

116 points by johnny313 9y ago

This is a data point of one, and I am certainly not implying that there is only one kind diet that works for everyone, but: Every time I've lost a significant amount of weight (currently at -70 lbs from my peak) it's because I have drastically reduced sugar/carbohydrate content---while continuing to guzzle aspartame-based diet soda like water. So either: 1.) I'm an outlier, 2.) These results are only relevant to saccharine sweeteners, and not aspartame, 3.) These results are bunk, like so many other nutritional studies, or, 4.) Low carbohydrate intake offsets any negative effects

soperj 9y ago
This isn't a nutritional study?
schoen 9y ago
This article mostly doesn't claim that diet sodas inhibit weight loss. In fact the biggest focus of the article is research suggesting that some food additives (not necessarily those in diet sodas) have helped the pathogen clostridium difficile to evolve in a way that's more dangerous to people. Even where the article discusses diet sodas, it doesn't specifically say that they inhibit weight loss but that they might cause other kinds of harmful metabolic effects through their effect on the microbiome—and that this mechanism is suggested by research but not yet well-established. It also admits that some of those effects, if they exist, could vary widely between people. That might be one reason that evidence nutrition has seemed so hard to pin down: if many of the effects depend on people's microbiomes, then some studies might be almost impossible to replicate in a different population, or maybe even in a different generation of research subjects. It might be true that some large group of people did very well eating one way, and that a different group did very well eating very differently, even if it seems like the advice that you'd draw from these observations is directly contradictory.
Spooky23 9y ago
Most of the things I’ve read about diet soda were more related to individuals with insulin resistance, and problems related to that. Soda is bad for other reasons too. The carbonic acid will rot your teeth.
- refurb 9y ago
  Do you have a source on the carbonic acid rotting your teeth? I thought it was the phosphoric acid. Carbonic acid is an incredibly weak acid.
Baeocystin 9y ago
I have had the exact same experience as you. FWIW.

aabajian 9y ago

Article opens with, "There are lots of reasons to avoid processed foods. They’re often packed with sugar, fat and salt, and they tend to lack certain nutrients critical to health, like fiber." Diet coke has no sugar, no fat, and less than 100 mg sodium. The specific results from Nature are about trehalose, a sugar not found in diet coke. I'm not aware of any diet soda that contains it, either. I realize it's an opinion piece, but pseudoscience and speculative articles should not be the domain of NYT. Of note, the zero-calorie definition of artificial sweeteners is based on the amount excreted in urine/stool: It should be very close to the ingested amount. I find it hard to believe the conclusion drawn by the authors that other sweeteners (sucralose and saccharin), are consumed by bacteria since the amount ingested matches the amount excreted.

soperj 9y ago
If you read the full article instead of just the opening, you get to it: The prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease has, it’s worth noting, sharply increased in recent decades. Then there are artificial sweeteners like sucralose and saccharin, which we consume in diet sodas and “sugar-free” snacks in hopes of cutting calories. Our bodies can’t directly digest most of them — they’re meant to pass right through — but it turns out that the microbes inhabiting our colons can metabolize the sweeteners, potentially to our detriment. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have found that, in mice, saccharin causes glucose intolerance, a marker of impending diabetes — and one disease that those who eat these sweeteners are probably trying to avoid. When the scientists transplanted microbes from mice fed saccharine to mice that hadn’t consumed the sweetener, the recipient animals developed glucose intolerance as well, suggesting that the microbiome that was warped by the sweetener, not the sweetener itself, was causing the problems.
- ravenstine 9y ago
  What diet soda contains saccharin? Also, that study only looks at saccharin. What about sucralose?
  - amyjess 9y ago

dnhz 9y ago

Diet soda is either on the same level of harm as seltzer, or is worse. But I believe both to be healthier than any sugared soda. Different diet sodas use different artificial sweeteners, so diet soda cannot be treated as a single group. Diet Coke uses only aspartame as sweetener; Coke Zero combines aspartame and acesulfame K to create a more realistic taste. I readily believe that any diet soda sweetened purely with aspartame is harmless. The chemical structure of aspartame is such that stomach acids should break it down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol, the first two being ordinary amino acids. Methanol sounds threatening, but very little aspartame is needed to sweeten a beverage. I thus have no problem drinking diet coke. What's more unclear is whether the sugar-like taste of artificial sweeteners affect the body's blood sugar regulation.

cpncrunch 9y ago
>diet soda sweetened purely with aspartame is harmless You also have to consider other additives in the soda, such as acids that can damage your teeth, and the caffeine in diet coke.
- salvar 9y ago
  True, and even if you've removed everything and are left with water, you have to consider the possibility of drinking too much water.
craftyguy 9y ago
> stomach acids should break it down "should", but it's really hard to find reliable information as to what actually happens since the internet is filled with FUD websites claiming aspartame gave their brother/grandma/cat/chair cancer. > Methanol sounds threatening, but very little aspartame is needed to sweeten a beverage Methanol is very toxic to humans, so that's a good thing. > What's more unclear is whether the sugar-like taste of artificial sweeteners affect the body's blood sugar regulation. Why would it?
- selectodude 9y ago
  The only legitimate health risk I can ever find from criticisms of diet soda is that due to it being sweet and delicious it might make you eat more and then you’ll get fat. Which is a legitimate issue but more of a personal problem than a problem with diet soda in and of itself.

scottie_m 9y ago

Soylent used to contain 12g of trehalose per serving, and I’m wondering if that might have some impact? Based on this research it seems likely. I’m not sure if they switched out the trehalose for isomaltulose, and I don’t know if isomaltulose would have similar effects on the GI tract. I find this portion of the Soylent Wikipedia page interesting though: Later versions of the product lowered the amount of fiber content, but this did not stop the reports of gastrointestinal problems.

raverbashing 9y ago
Soluble fiber usually produces more bloating, maybe that's what they're referring to?

kbutler 9y ago

Clickbait title. The only germs loving diet soda would be the potential shifts in gut biome as a result of saccharine consumption, which would only apply to Tab. "The scientists also fed a small group of healthy people saccharin-sweetened drinks for a week. In a subset of volunteers, microbial shifts occurred, accompanied by mounting glucose intolerance. So for some people, diet sodas may not be any healthier than regular sodas." The Nature study has a better title: "Dietary trehalose enhances virulence of epidemic Clostridium difficile" https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178.epdf

mythBustan 9y ago
Tab? Are you joking? The point isn’t about one specific chemical, but rather the principal that the prevalence of non-nutritious, edible chemicals seriously augments the dark, warm controlled environments of our guts. Nutrient capture as a whole, shifts in a way that, at the bottom of the tract, there are chemicals that humans leave unused, but which are still useful to certain opportunistic organisms. If only those chemicals are available, and normal food is absent, every member of the environment is forced to deal with scarcity, and the strongest survive, and fill the void if they can. If those organisms are forced to opperate with greater efficiency, then their capacity to deal with adversity offers them an advantage as an invasive species, and they will prevail in general, everywhere, not just in the adverse scenario.
- kbutler 9y ago
  Yes, Tab. Exactly. Which other diet sodas were identified as having "germs that love diet soda"? The studies show effects for trehalose and saccharine. No diet soda contains trehalose, only Tab contains saccharine. Any effect from the non-nutritive sweeteners in other diet sodas did not appear in the studies, so they focused on saccharine. There may be more subtle effects from those sweeteners, or future effects from those sweeteners, but we haven't found them yet, extrapolation from a general principle not withstanding. "Germs that love Tab" wouldn't draw as many clicks as the current title.
  - 9y ago

viburnum 9y ago

This article is an amazing test of reading comprehension.

raverbashing 9y ago

Funny how the narrative goes from "microbiome helps you adapt to new foods" except when it doesn't and it then becomes this super sensitive thing that breaks down when approached by any foreign substance. In every test done with a different substance the question needs to be, how much was it given to the subjects? (g/kg body weight). A lot of tests are done with excessive amounts (which are fine for testing purposes, but doesn't mean the effect will be as pronounced in smaller amounts) I'll get the sugar-free soda as opposed to something that is the definition of high glycemic index empty calories. Or even better, just water.