4 ms·

These articles are always divisive and lacking in substance. The science is usually exceedingly poor: I've only seen one posted to HN that actually looked at al

These articles are always divisive and lacking in substance. The science is usually exceedingly poor: I've only seen one posted to HN that actually looked at alternative sweeteners individually rather than assuming, say, xylitol and stevia do identical things to your body. And with it comes a strong prescription to change dietary habits yet again. Honestly, because these are thought pieces, because they seek to influence behavior, and because of the long history of the sugar lobby doing pernicious things to influence the public (even to the point of starting wars), I don't think they should be on HN unless the link is to a peer reviewed, reproducible, high-quality study. BL: Without a large-N variable-isolated longitudinal study that distinguishes between different sweeteners, articles like the OP are indistinguishable from sugar-lobby FUD.

barbariangrunge 4y ago
Which wars? Do you mean colonial era, or recent ones?
- torstenvl 4y ago
  Dutch West India Co. and colonial wars over Caribbean islands, mostly. There's also an argument to be made that, in addition to cotton, the sugar trade contributed to the intense economic incentive for American slavery, leading to the American Civil War; that argument is weaker, however, since sugar wasn't as important as cotton to the South at large and since (to my knowledge) there wasn't a large consolidated commercial enterprise like DWIC for sugar (or Chiquita for bananas and the banana wars).
jiggawatts 4y ago
(Disclaimer: what I'm about to say meets none of your requirements.) An explanation that I "like" for why all artificial sweeteners can be lumped in together is that the salient effect is the taste, not some unknown biochemical effect on gut bacteria or whatever. Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame had an interview where he vividly described the experience of going on a potato diet. The concept is that you eat nothing but potatoes (and multivitamins) for a month, and this "resets" your relationship with food and also resets your tastebuds in some sense. There are two effects here, so lets unpack them a bit. In terms of relationship with food, eating bland food makes you enjoy the process of eating less, which reduces the addictiveness. Fewer dopamine hits makes the whole process less enticing, so you don't snack as much (or whatever). I'm not sure about this one, so let's just ignore it for now. What I definitely can believe is that if you eat a lot of any strong taste, you'll get accustomed to it. Your body will seek homeostasis, downregulating the associated receptors. That's why chilli heads can eat a ton of super spicy foods, their taste receptors (or associated neurons) change over time to compensate for the level of capsaicin. My partner loves spicy food so I got used to it, but if I go travelling for work for a month and eat bland food, my tastebuds reset and her cooking becomes inedible... for a week or two and then I can eat it again. Similarly, I can drink tonic water neat, and beer tastes sweet to me. For most people those are intolerably bitter. This is not some inherent trait that I have, my tolerance of bitter flavours is because I drink tonic water regularly. When I stop for a while, I can't drink it undiluted either... for a week or two. Sweet is no different. If you overload your receptors with excessive amounts of any source of sweetness -- artificial or natural -- they'll adapt. You will taste things as less sweet, and add more sugar to compensate. You'll add more BBQ sauce, more honey, more syrup, etc... And therein lies the source of the weight gain. Penn describes going off the potato diet. His friend invited him to have a burger at their favourite burger place and Penn could not eat the burger because it tasted like overly sweet cake. That's what a burger is! The bun has sugar in it. The sauce has sugar in it. The meat patty is even grilled to caramelise the outside in a Maillard reaction! When I drink diet softdrinks regularly, burgers taste meaty to me. When I stop, I can't have burgers from most places because they taste sickly sweet. I've literally put down half-eaten burgers because they were just "too much". This could even be tested scientifically, and it wouldn't even be a difficult experiment. Run four groups: 1) Control. 2) Taking tasteless pills with 'x' amount of artificial sweetener in it. 3) Adding 'x' amount of sugary drinks, otherwise eating and drinking whatever the subject wants. 4) Adding 'x' amount of artificially sweetened diet drinks to the diet, otherwise eating and drinking whatever the subject wants Where 'x' is measured equivalent sweetness, not grams. Do this for a month or two and see if group 2 has any effect distinguishable from group 1. I bet there's no or minimal difference. Similarly, I bet both groups 3 and 4 gain weight relative to groups 1 and 2, but 3 ought to be the worst. I also bet that you could try different artificial sweeteners, and it wouldn't make much difference as long as the equivalent sweetness amounts were used.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  There was a diet show ages ago that had a family who used salt like it was ketchup. They did a baking sheet of fries in the oven and the mom literally put in a handful of salt on it. "Because it doesn't taste like anything otherwise". They also didn't eat any vegetables for the same reason, the whole family was accustomed to bonkers levels of salt in their food so nothing "natural" tasted like anything to them. The host had them do a similar thing like Penn's "potato diet" to reset their taste buds and it actually worked.
Hnrobert42 4y ago
But this article does describe a study of the sweeteners individually. It’s not a super large N nor longitudinal, but it does isolate aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, and stevia.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

Which wars? Do you mean colonial era, or recent ones?

torstenvl 4y ago
Dutch West India Co. and colonial wars over Caribbean islands, mostly. There's also an argument to be made that, in addition to cotton, the sugar trade contributed to the intense economic incentive for American slavery, leading to the American Civil War; that argument is weaker, however, since sugar wasn't as important as cotton to the South at large and since (to my knowledge) there wasn't a large consolidated commercial enterprise like DWIC for sugar (or Chiquita for bananas and the banana wars).

jiggawatts 4y ago

(Disclaimer: what I'm about to say meets none of your requirements.) An explanation that I "like" for why all artificial sweeteners can be lumped in together is that the salient effect is the taste, not some unknown biochemical effect on gut bacteria or whatever. Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame had an interview where he vividly described the experience of going on a potato diet. The concept is that you eat nothing but potatoes (and multivitamins) for a month, and this "resets" your relationship with food and also resets your tastebuds in some sense. There are two effects here, so lets unpack them a bit. In terms of relationship with food, eating bland food makes you enjoy the process of eating less, which reduces the addictiveness. Fewer dopamine hits makes the whole process less enticing, so you don't snack as much (or whatever). I'm not sure about this one, so let's just ignore it for now. What I definitely can believe is that if you eat a lot of any strong taste, you'll get accustomed to it. Your body will seek homeostasis, downregulating the associated receptors. That's why chilli heads can eat a ton of super spicy foods, their taste receptors (or associated neurons) change over time to compensate for the level of capsaicin. My partner loves spicy food so I got used to it, but if I go travelling for work for a month and eat bland food, my tastebuds reset and her cooking becomes inedible... for a week or two and then I can eat it again. Similarly, I can drink tonic water neat, and beer tastes sweet to me. For most people those are intolerably bitter. This is not some inherent trait that I have, my tolerance of bitter flavours is because I drink tonic water regularly. When I stop for a while, I can't drink it undiluted either... for a week or two. Sweet is no different. If you overload your receptors with excessive amounts of any source of sweetness -- artificial or natural -- they'll adapt. You will taste things as less sweet, and add more sugar to compensate. You'll add more BBQ sauce, more honey, more syrup, etc... And therein lies the source of the weight gain. Penn describes going off the potato diet. His friend invited him to have a burger at their favourite burger place and Penn could not eat the burger because it tasted like overly sweet cake. That's what a burger is! The bun has sugar in it. The sauce has sugar in it. The meat patty is even grilled to caramelise the outside in a Maillard reaction! When I drink diet softdrinks regularly, burgers taste meaty to me. When I stop, I can't have burgers from most places because they taste sickly sweet. I've literally put down half-eaten burgers because they were just "too much". This could even be tested scientifically, and it wouldn't even be a difficult experiment. Run four groups: 1) Control. 2) Taking tasteless pills with 'x' amount of artificial sweetener in it. 3) Adding 'x' amount of sugary drinks, otherwise eating and drinking whatever the subject wants. 4) Adding 'x' amount of artificially sweetened diet drinks to the diet, otherwise eating and drinking whatever the subject wants Where 'x' is measured equivalent sweetness, not grams. Do this for a month or two and see if group 2 has any effect distinguishable from group 1. I bet there's no or minimal difference. Similarly, I bet both groups 3 and 4 gain weight relative to groups 1 and 2, but 3 ought to be the worst. I also bet that you could try different artificial sweeteners, and it wouldn't make much difference as long as the equivalent sweetness amounts were used.

theshrike79 4y ago
There was a diet show ages ago that had a family who used salt like it was ketchup. They did a baking sheet of fries in the oven and the mom literally put in a handful of salt on it. "Because it doesn't taste like anything otherwise". They also didn't eat any vegetables for the same reason, the whole family was accustomed to bonkers levels of salt in their food so nothing "natural" tasted like anything to them. The host had them do a similar thing like Penn's "potato diet" to reset their taste buds and it actually worked.

Hnrobert42 4y ago

But this article does describe a study of the sweeteners individually. It’s not a super large N nor longitudinal, but it does isolate aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, and stevia.