6 ms·

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

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.
- caturopath 5y ago
  'Formaldehyde' fearmongering addressed at (sorry) https://youtu.be/92r1oOul0kM?t=69 https://youtu.be/92r1oOul0kM?t=69
  - crdrost 5y ago
    No that's fine, unlike one commenter replied, I am really not fear mongering here but just trying to answer the question—are people just upset that they're getting something for free? It's just that the most common sweetener legit starts to taste awful after just a little while in the can.
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  This is the exact kind of FuD that I'm talking about. There is a whole world of low-calorie sweeteners, Aspartame isn't the only one by a long shot. As you pointed out It's uncanny potency means that the amount of metabolites you end up with is vanishingly small. For most people it does not cause any problems. Certainly fewer than the 100% of people who art consuming calories when they consume sugar. My suggestion is that for any food, read the ingredients! If you don't like Aspartame and won't trust anything made in a lab go with Stevia.
  - caturopath 5y ago
    Both aspartame and stevia have definite tastes. I don't mind either and I actually like aspartame in a lot of places. Sucralose and allulose have virtually no taste other than sweet.
  - crdrost 5y ago
    If you see me as FuD you might consider re-examining yourself? Aspartame may not be the only one but it's absolutely the most common. And it really isn't very shelf stable and it really does taste nasty when it decays. If that's “FuD” then you're at war with taste buds? Diet Pepsi switched to sucralose and had to switch back. Diet Coke sells a sucralose version but it's not at all popular. There are a couple smaller markets for offbeat sodas sweetened with stevia, but like someone else mentioned, stevia is a hella acquired taste, very soapy.
rteuionwiv 5y ago
What about xylitol? I use it all the time putting it into morning coffee. I'm avoiding table sugar as much as i can, and generally prefer stuff that is not sweet, but coffee is the only thing that needs to be sweetened a bit to kill bitterness.
- caturopath 5y ago
  There tends to be more fearmongering about non-nutritive sweeteners (like sucralose and aspartame) than sugar alcohols, for whatever reason. FWIW, in the last few years two new low-concentration sweeteners have grown a lot: erythritol and allulose. These tend to be tolerated gastrointestinally by more folks than traditional sugar alcohols. Erythritol is in some popular mass-produced food products like Vitamin Water Zero and Halo Top--it has a bit of a cooling sensation. Allulose tends to really just read 'sweet'. It's a little behind erythritol adoption, but I've started to see it in stores (Trader Joe's now carries it) and in random drinks (I've seen a couple smaller canned coldbrew coffees with it).

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.

caturopath 5y ago
'Formaldehyde' fearmongering addressed at (sorry) https://youtu.be/92r1oOul0kM?t=69 https://youtu.be/92r1oOul0kM?t=69
- crdrost 5y ago
  No that's fine, unlike one commenter replied, I am really not fear mongering here but just trying to answer the question—are people just upset that they're getting something for free? It's just that the most common sweetener legit starts to taste awful after just a little while in the can.
EamonnMR 5y ago
This is the exact kind of FuD that I'm talking about. There is a whole world of low-calorie sweeteners, Aspartame isn't the only one by a long shot. As you pointed out It's uncanny potency means that the amount of metabolites you end up with is vanishingly small. For most people it does not cause any problems. Certainly fewer than the 100% of people who art consuming calories when they consume sugar. My suggestion is that for any food, read the ingredients! If you don't like Aspartame and won't trust anything made in a lab go with Stevia.
- caturopath 5y ago
  Both aspartame and stevia have definite tastes. I don't mind either and I actually like aspartame in a lot of places. Sucralose and allulose have virtually no taste other than sweet.
- crdrost 5y ago
  If you see me as FuD you might consider re-examining yourself? Aspartame may not be the only one but it's absolutely the most common. And it really isn't very shelf stable and it really does taste nasty when it decays. If that's “FuD” then you're at war with taste buds? Diet Pepsi switched to sucralose and had to switch back. Diet Coke sells a sucralose version but it's not at all popular. There are a couple smaller markets for offbeat sodas sweetened with stevia, but like someone else mentioned, stevia is a hella acquired taste, very soapy.

rteuionwiv 5y ago

What about xylitol? I use it all the time putting it into morning coffee. I'm avoiding table sugar as much as i can, and generally prefer stuff that is not sweet, but coffee is the only thing that needs to be sweetened a bit to kill bitterness.

caturopath 5y ago
There tends to be more fearmongering about non-nutritive sweeteners (like sucralose and aspartame) than sugar alcohols, for whatever reason. FWIW, in the last few years two new low-concentration sweeteners have grown a lot: erythritol and allulose. These tend to be tolerated gastrointestinally by more folks than traditional sugar alcohols. Erythritol is in some popular mass-produced food products like Vitamin Water Zero and Halo Top--it has a bit of a cooling sensation. Allulose tends to really just read 'sweet'. It's a little behind erythritol adoption, but I've started to see it in stores (Trader Joe's now carries it) and in random drinks (I've seen a couple smaller canned coldbrew coffees with it).