7 ms·

What baffles me is that artificial sweeteners exist and yet there is enough (imo) unfounded FUD about them that leads people to instead choose Sugar or Nothing

What baffles me is that artificial sweeteners exist and yet there is enough (imo) unfounded FUD about them that leads people to instead choose Sugar or Nothing (which inevitably translates to Sugar because of the pseudo-addictiveness you mention.) Is wireheading bad? Maybe, but if I'm going to be doing it either way I'd rather reduce the harm.

theshrike79 5y ago
Artificial sweeteners in soda (Aspartame and Asesulfame K) make me fart out stuff that smells so bad that it should be banned by the Geneva convention. But weirdly it somehow depends on the ratio of the ingredients. Some brands I can handle, others I can never partake in (Pepsi MAX being the worst offender).
yellow_lead 5y ago
Well, they also taste pretty bad to some people.
- sjf 5y ago
  I am one of those people. If even sip something with stevia in it I am going to be trying to get the taste out of mouth for hours. It makes me want to scrap my tongue off. It was truly the worst thing I have ever consumed. It has only happened a couple of times, now I am literally traumatized and check the ingredients on anything that is likely to have it. For context, I am not a picky eater, there are things I don't like, but this is on a whole other level.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    There are many others on the market now besides stevia. If added sugar is important to you, try the others because they all taste a little different. There’s also just plain maple syrup which is better than using pure sugar.
    - phonypc 5y ago
      >There’s also just plain maple syrup which is better than using pure sugar. How do you figure? It's practically pure sucrose, just like table sugar.
      - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        Table sugar has a glycemic index of 65. Maple sugar's is 54. Not a huge difference but if sweeteners are important to you, maybe every bit counts.
        phonypc 5y ago
        The same reasoning would imply pure fructose is a better option. Or that eating a potato is worse.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        Depending on quantities, you are correct. Glycemic index and quantity tell you how the food affects your blood sugar levels. Whether or not you’re diabetic, keeping blood sugar levels low is important to health.
  - yellow_lead 5y ago
    It's pretty gross IMO too. Especially in carbonated waters or seltzers.
postalrat 5y ago
Do you avoid eating any sugar?
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  I'm not super strict about it but when given the choice yeah I go for the substitutes.
  - ogma 5y ago
    Insanity, carbohydrates are nothing to fear. Any serious athlete could tell you that. Just make fruits and vegetables the core of your diet... I even eat chocolate, palm / cane / brown sugar, pastries, etc. fairly often and I could easily pass for one of those guys on a Men's Health cover.
sandworm101 5y ago
The switch to sugar alternatives is already happening. https://www.marketingweek.com/diet-coke-sales-overtake- https://www.marketingweek.com/diet-coke-sales-overtake- classic-coca-cola/ "Compare this to the week before, when Diet Coke sales were at £10.4m and classic Coca-Cola £10.65m. The data shows Coca-Cola value sales were higher than Diet Coke every week for the past year until the brand overhaul and subsequent introduction of the sugar tax. Since then they have diverged with Diet Coke sales increasing at a faster rate than classic Coke." [2018]
- cbhl 5y ago
  Beverages are interesting because there are now financial incentives to switch off of sweetened beverages: sweetened beverages are taxed higher in some municipalities (e.g. SF) and even banned in some school districts (e.g. PepsiCo has been selling Dasani and Bubly in some in-school vending machines instead).
  - bcassedy 5y ago
    Those penalties must be really harsh if Pepsi is electing to sell Dasani, a Coca-Cola product.
hn8788 5y ago
I don't know how true it is, but one thing I've heard about artificial sweeteners is that your body thinks it's sugar, and will make your body feel hungrier because it expects it to have the same calories as regular sugar. I still prefer them because I hate the sticky feeling sugary products leave on my teeth, but I've talked to people who think artificial sweeteners are pointless from a calories-in/calories-out POV due to how your body reacts to them. For all I know that's completely made up though, they might have learned that from Dr. Oz or other daytime TV shows.
- caturopath 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure most of the "artificial sweeteners are evil" stuff is just moral panic to how they seem like cheating. It seems so unbelievable that any of them are especially bad for you or your habits, especially when compared to sugar.
  - nn3 5y ago
    So you're saying that all the papers on this made up their data?
    - caturopath 5y ago
      No, if there was a preponderance of scientific evidence, I'd accept it of course, but the alternative sweetener story isn't like that. There are papers out there on almost any topic with all sorts of results, many of which don't generalize, don't transfer, don't reproduce, or otherwise don't have the meaning they might point to if you guessed the implications.
  - crdrost 5y ago
    It's bigger than that. So first off, just about all of these artificial sweeteners are like 200x sweeter than sugar or higher. This kind of means that you have high amplification which comes with distortion—artificial sweeteners do not taste like the real thing. So those chemical aftertastes are probably the biggest contributors to skepticism. Second, the most common artificial sweetener right now is aspartame, and it is kinda nasty stuff. Don't take my word for it, drink a Diet Coke that's about 1 week before expiration and see if you can stomach it—it's foul. That foulness is the metabolites of aspartame, I want to say one of them is formaldehyde? They are pretty nasty and you do produce them after drinking a Diet Coke, they appear in urine afterwards. The aspartame also bears a cryptic warning for people with phenylketonuria, and it might legit make consumers feel worse, as in reduce their serotonin and dopamine and make them more irritable. The only silver lining on this cloud is that because this stuff is 200 times sweeter than sugar, you actually only get a very low dosage per each individual beverage. Because of that very low dosage, we are thankfully not seeing huge epidemiological problems from it yet. But yeah, a combination of nothing tasting right and the poster-child being awful is a decent recipe for conspiracy theories.
wpietri 5y ago
I used to be a regular Diet Coke consumer. I used to get frequent migraines. A doctor suggested that might be related. I quit drinking them and sure enough, the migraines became way less frequent. Seems like only 2% of people have this problem with aspartame [1], but some of the fear is definitely justified. Maybe that's the only neurological effect it has, but I can see why some people pick sugar or nothing. [1] https://www.uchealth.com/articles/sweeteners-headaches-and-the-unpredictability-of-triggers/ https://www.uchealth.com/articles/sweeteners-headaches-and-t...
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  There are many alternative sweeteners to aspartame fortunately. Sucralose is my go-to personally.
worik 5y ago
Artificial sweeteners are not getting to the root of the problem. What people expect their food to taste like. Why not dial back on the sweetness? Is it really that addictive? Why not drink water rather than cans of genuine or artificial sugar water. FUD, sure. Personally I am uneasy about tricking my body that it is getting sugar when it is not. I am not waiting for scientific evidence. The hippies were right. Eat food. Mostly plants. As close to raw as practical and tasty. If your great grand mother would not recognise it, it is not food.
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  I personally do drink water instead of soda usually and definitely endorse that idea.
MandieD 5y ago
After college, I started gaining weight (like many Americans), so I switched to using Splenda (sucralose/E955) in my coffee. Taste was fine, “after effects” were not. Pity, because I liked the taste a lot better than other artificial sweeteners.
chithanh 5y ago
> I'd rather reduce the harm The fact that artificial sweeteners are used as animal feed additive in order to increase body mass should give you enough to think what happens if we add it randomly to human food. Yes, artifical sweeteners can be a good replacement for sugar, but things that shouldn't contain sugar in the first place should probably not contain artificial sweeteners either.
inglor_cz 5y ago
I had many unpleasant experiences with zero calorie sodas, especially if I started to consume them regularly. Belching, farting, reflux etc. Those always went away when I stopped. (I do not drink sugary sodas at all.) So it wasn't as surprising for me to learn that there are suspicions that artificial sweeteners may alter gut biome. There isn't any consensus yet, but my N==1 seems to agree with the suspicion. I am generally fairly sensitive to gut biome changes, even a few weeks on a different probiotics might change e.g. my sensitivity to milk. https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228 https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/ https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13793 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13793

theshrike79 5y ago

Artificial sweeteners in soda (Aspartame and Asesulfame K) make me fart out stuff that smells so bad that it should be banned by the Geneva convention. But weirdly it somehow depends on the ratio of the ingredients. Some brands I can handle, others I can never partake in (Pepsi MAX being the worst offender).

yellow_lead 5y ago

Well, they also taste pretty bad to some people.

sjf 5y ago
I am one of those people. If even sip something with stevia in it I am going to be trying to get the taste out of mouth for hours. It makes me want to scrap my tongue off. It was truly the worst thing I have ever consumed. It has only happened a couple of times, now I am literally traumatized and check the ingredients on anything that is likely to have it. For context, I am not a picky eater, there are things I don't like, but this is on a whole other level.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  There are many others on the market now besides stevia. If added sugar is important to you, try the others because they all taste a little different. There’s also just plain maple syrup which is better than using pure sugar.
  - phonypc 5y ago
    >There’s also just plain maple syrup which is better than using pure sugar. How do you figure? It's practically pure sucrose, just like table sugar.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      Table sugar has a glycemic index of 65. Maple sugar's is 54. Not a huge difference but if sweeteners are important to you, maybe every bit counts.
      - phonypc 5y ago
        The same reasoning would imply pure fructose is a better option. Or that eating a potato is worse.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        Depending on quantities, you are correct. Glycemic index and quantity tell you how the food affects your blood sugar levels. Whether or not you’re diabetic, keeping blood sugar levels low is important to health.
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  It's pretty gross IMO too. Especially in carbonated waters or seltzers.

postalrat 5y ago

Do you avoid eating any sugar?

EamonnMR 5y ago
I'm not super strict about it but when given the choice yeah I go for the substitutes.
- ogma 5y ago
  Insanity, carbohydrates are nothing to fear. Any serious athlete could tell you that. Just make fruits and vegetables the core of your diet... I even eat chocolate, palm / cane / brown sugar, pastries, etc. fairly often and I could easily pass for one of those guys on a Men's Health cover.

sandworm101 5y ago

The switch to sugar alternatives is already happening. https://www.marketingweek.com/diet-coke-sales-overtake- https://www.marketingweek.com/diet-coke-sales-overtake- classic-coca-cola/ "Compare this to the week before, when Diet Coke sales were at £10.4m and classic Coca-Cola £10.65m. The data shows Coca-Cola value sales were higher than Diet Coke every week for the past year until the brand overhaul and subsequent introduction of the sugar tax. Since then they have diverged with Diet Coke sales increasing at a faster rate than classic Coke." [2018]

cbhl 5y ago
Beverages are interesting because there are now financial incentives to switch off of sweetened beverages: sweetened beverages are taxed higher in some municipalities (e.g. SF) and even banned in some school districts (e.g. PepsiCo has been selling Dasani and Bubly in some in-school vending machines instead).
- bcassedy 5y ago
  Those penalties must be really harsh if Pepsi is electing to sell Dasani, a Coca-Cola product.

hn8788 5y ago

I don't know how true it is, but one thing I've heard about artificial sweeteners is that your body thinks it's sugar, and will make your body feel hungrier because it expects it to have the same calories as regular sugar. I still prefer them because I hate the sticky feeling sugary products leave on my teeth, but I've talked to people who think artificial sweeteners are pointless from a calories-in/calories-out POV due to how your body reacts to them. For all I know that's completely made up though, they might have learned that from Dr. Oz or other daytime TV shows.

caturopath 5y ago
I'm pretty sure most of the "artificial sweeteners are evil" stuff is just moral panic to how they seem like cheating. It seems so unbelievable that any of them are especially bad for you or your habits, especially when compared to sugar.
- nn3 5y ago
  So you're saying that all the papers on this made up their data?
  - caturopath 5y ago
    No, if there was a preponderance of scientific evidence, I'd accept it of course, but the alternative sweetener story isn't like that. There are papers out there on almost any topic with all sorts of results, many of which don't generalize, don't transfer, don't reproduce, or otherwise don't have the meaning they might point to if you guessed the implications.
- crdrost 5y ago
  It's bigger than that. So first off, just about all of these artificial sweeteners are like 200x sweeter than sugar or higher. This kind of means that you have high amplification which comes with distortion—artificial sweeteners do not taste like the real thing. So those chemical aftertastes are probably the biggest contributors to skepticism. Second, the most common artificial sweetener right now is aspartame, and it is kinda nasty stuff. Don't take my word for it, drink a Diet Coke that's about 1 week before expiration and see if you can stomach it—it's foul. That foulness is the metabolites of aspartame, I want to say one of them is formaldehyde? They are pretty nasty and you do produce them after drinking a Diet Coke, they appear in urine afterwards. The aspartame also bears a cryptic warning for people with phenylketonuria, and it might legit make consumers feel worse, as in reduce their serotonin and dopamine and make them more irritable. The only silver lining on this cloud is that because this stuff is 200 times sweeter than sugar, you actually only get a very low dosage per each individual beverage. Because of that very low dosage, we are thankfully not seeing huge epidemiological problems from it yet. But yeah, a combination of nothing tasting right and the poster-child being awful is a decent recipe for conspiracy theories.

wpietri 5y ago

I used to be a regular Diet Coke consumer. I used to get frequent migraines. A doctor suggested that might be related. I quit drinking them and sure enough, the migraines became way less frequent. Seems like only 2% of people have this problem with aspartame [1], but some of the fear is definitely justified. Maybe that's the only neurological effect it has, but I can see why some people pick sugar or nothing. [1] https://www.uchealth.com/articles/sweeteners-headaches-and-the-unpredictability-of-triggers/ https://www.uchealth.com/articles/sweeteners-headaches-and-t...

EamonnMR 5y ago
There are many alternative sweeteners to aspartame fortunately. Sucralose is my go-to personally.

worik 5y ago

Artificial sweeteners are not getting to the root of the problem. What people expect their food to taste like. Why not dial back on the sweetness? Is it really that addictive? Why not drink water rather than cans of genuine or artificial sugar water. FUD, sure. Personally I am uneasy about tricking my body that it is getting sugar when it is not. I am not waiting for scientific evidence. The hippies were right. Eat food. Mostly plants. As close to raw as practical and tasty. If your great grand mother would not recognise it, it is not food.

EamonnMR 5y ago
I personally do drink water instead of soda usually and definitely endorse that idea.

MandieD 5y ago

After college, I started gaining weight (like many Americans), so I switched to using Splenda (sucralose/E955) in my coffee. Taste was fine, “after effects” were not. Pity, because I liked the taste a lot better than other artificial sweeteners.

chithanh 5y ago

> I'd rather reduce the harm The fact that artificial sweeteners are used as animal feed additive in order to increase body mass should give you enough to think what happens if we add it randomly to human food. Yes, artifical sweeteners can be a good replacement for sugar, but things that shouldn't contain sugar in the first place should probably not contain artificial sweeteners either.

inglor_cz 5y ago

I had many unpleasant experiences with zero calorie sodas, especially if I started to consume them regularly. Belching, farting, reflux etc. Those always went away when I stopped. (I do not drink sugary sodas at all.) So it wasn't as surprising for me to learn that there are suspicions that artificial sweeteners may alter gut biome. There isn't any consensus yet, but my N==1 seems to agree with the suspicion. I am generally fairly sensitive to gut biome changes, even a few weeks on a different probiotics might change e.g. my sensitivity to milk. https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228 https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/ https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13793 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13793