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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

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
    > What diet soda contains saccharin? The only one I can think of is Tab. I tried it once, and I couldn't finish a can.
  - zenophobia 9y ago
    The study investigates three non-caloric artificial sweeteners: saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame. "To determine the effects of NAS on glucose homeostasis, we addedcommercial formulations of saccharin, sucralose or aspartame to the drinking water of lean 10-week-old C57Bl/6 mice" "Notably, at week 11, the three mouse groups that consumed water, glucose and sucrose featured comparable glucose tolerance curves, whereas all three NAS-consuming mousegroups developed marked glucose intolerance (P , 0.001, Fig. 1a, b)." The article probably only talks about saccharin specifically because, as the study states: "...saccharin exerted the most pronounced effect, [so] we further studied its role as a prototype artificial sweetener."
  - Gregordinary 9y ago
    Besides Tab, Diet Coke from a fountain contains saccharin: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-Cola-wins-sweetener-legal-battle https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-Cola-w... (Trying to find another source, I believe Diet Pepsi from a fountain does as well, to extend shelf life.)
    - therein 9y ago
      Wow that blows my mind. No wonder soda from fountain tastes different, and I am not even talking about only the low-calorie ones. I thought it was merely due to some sort of imprecision in dispensing the concentrate.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Someone tried to rekindle the 1970’s saccharin scare in the early 90’s and a bunch of sodas and gums switched to aspartame. Which may be worse for you...
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Pink Sweet & Low sweetener (saccharine) packets are in almost every coffee or brunch place I've ever been to.
sp332 9y ago
Do you have a source for that last claim? I thought food calories were measured by burning the food in a calorimeter and multiplying by some fudge factors for bioavailability. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manuf...
tpm 9y ago
Your claim about artificial sweeteners not touched by digestion and metabolism is generally not true. Aspartame is broken down in the digestive tract, for example, as is neotame. Glycyrrhizin is broken down in the gut and then metabolized in the liver. I would expect it's the same for sugar alcohols, they are metabolized by gut bacteria and can cause bloating because of that.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

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
  > What diet soda contains saccharin? The only one I can think of is Tab. I tried it once, and I couldn't finish a can.
- zenophobia 9y ago
  The study investigates three non-caloric artificial sweeteners: saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame. "To determine the effects of NAS on glucose homeostasis, we addedcommercial formulations of saccharin, sucralose or aspartame to the drinking water of lean 10-week-old C57Bl/6 mice" "Notably, at week 11, the three mouse groups that consumed water, glucose and sucrose featured comparable glucose tolerance curves, whereas all three NAS-consuming mousegroups developed marked glucose intolerance (P , 0.001, Fig. 1a, b)." The article probably only talks about saccharin specifically because, as the study states: "...saccharin exerted the most pronounced effect, [so] we further studied its role as a prototype artificial sweetener."
- Gregordinary 9y ago
  Besides Tab, Diet Coke from a fountain contains saccharin: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-Cola-wins-sweetener-legal-battle https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2008/04/17/Coca-Cola-w... (Trying to find another source, I believe Diet Pepsi from a fountain does as well, to extend shelf life.)
  - therein 9y ago
    Wow that blows my mind. No wonder soda from fountain tastes different, and I am not even talking about only the low-calorie ones. I thought it was merely due to some sort of imprecision in dispensing the concentrate.
- hinkley 9y ago
  Someone tried to rekindle the 1970’s saccharin scare in the early 90’s and a bunch of sodas and gums switched to aspartame. Which may be worse for you...
- r00fus 9y ago
  Pink Sweet & Low sweetener (saccharine) packets are in almost every coffee or brunch place I've ever been to.

sp332 9y ago

Do you have a source for that last claim? I thought food calories were measured by burning the food in a calorimeter and multiplying by some fudge factors for bioavailability. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manuf...

tpm 9y ago

Your claim about artificial sweeteners not touched by digestion and metabolism is generally not true. Aspartame is broken down in the digestive tract, for example, as is neotame. Glycyrrhizin is broken down in the gut and then metabolized in the liver. I would expect it's the same for sugar alcohols, they are metabolized by gut bacteria and can cause bloating because of that.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]