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WHO advises against use of artificial sweeteners
- firstfewshells 3y agoI don't know what kind of an egregious organization the WHO is. First they let millions of people consume sugar alternatives for years, if not decades. Then they release a report saying those alternatives may lead to premature deaths. At this point, I feel like saying, F** it. I'm just gonna consume whatever the f** I feel like without ever reading about or listening to anything in the news.
- Fauntleroy 3y agoWere you paying attention to WHO guidelines in the first place?
- zouhair 3y agoIt is quite sad that even in Hacker News are people lacking basic knowledge on how science works.
- inversetelecine 3y agoIt's hard, because sometimes I'm told "The science is settled" then other times I'm told it's always changing.
- zouhair 3y ago"Settled" does not mean it cannot be tweaked by new information. It is best explained by Isaac Asimov in his small essay "The Relativity of Wrong"[0]. [0]: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
- whatscooking 3y agoOh we know how it works. Science was bought out by Big industry a long time ago and is as much of a religion as Christianity
- zouhair 3y agoI don't think this forum is suited to your kind of short sighted opinions. Life is more complicated than your black and white world view.
- whatscooking 3y agoExcept it’s not. Because that’s exactly what happened with sugar. Why are studies funded by Big Food 10x more likely to say sugar is ok? Coincidence, right? Science isn’t as objective as you think.
- longbrass 3y agoYour choice of language is interesting. Regarding the WHO, if they banned artificial sweeteners from the start would you have suppored this unilateral process? "They let" indicates that you beleive the WHO does or should include a degree of power over every-day life. There exists an International Sweeters Association, that has been against these efforts since it's inception 35 years ago: https://www.sweeteners.org/latest-science-post/the-who-recommendation-for-non-sugar-sweeteners-use-is-not-supported-by-the-collective-evidence/ https://www.sweeteners.org/latest-science-post/the-who-recom... https://www.sweeteners.org/about-isa/ https://www.sweeteners.org/about-isa/ Which shouldn't be a surprise given the Sugar Association is 80 years old: https://www.sugar.org/about/history/ https://www.sugar.org/about/history/ So sure, consume "whatever the f*: you feel like knowing that either way you will be receiving "sciene based" communications from interested parties supporting that behavior.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> "They let" indicates that you beleive the WHO does or should include a degree of power over every-day life. You know what they mean. "Let" can be "let us carry on doing this without informing us better". Bad-faith nit-picking is detrimental to conversation.
- jwally 3y agoSo people shouldn't use it not because its poisonous (like lead); but because people think it's part of an effect weight management strategy - which for most people it is not?
- heyparkerj 3y agoWhich blows my mind, because when all else in the diet holds equal, swapping two sugar'd sodas with two artificially sweetened sodas will save you (using my old vice Dr Pepper as an example) 54g sugar and 200 calories per day. It's just a little annoying that WHO (or this article, not sure who's most at fault) decided not to get into the nuance that people tend to make up those missing 200 calories in other ways.
- jwally 3y agoAgree. The lede "Don't consume artificial sweeteners" reads like "they're poison". They're not. The better title should have been "Artificial Sweetener Use Is Not A Long Term Weight Management Strategy". Not that anybody actually reads or pays attention to these things when they're wolfing down a bag of fritos; but still to the person at What-a-burger getting an 1100 calorie meal - they're probably better off opting for 400 fewer calories with a diet Coke than a fully loaded one.
- hinkley 3y agoWe now know that the intestines have 'taste buds' that can detect sweetness. There's a theory, and I don't know how tested it is at present, that the body uses these detectors to control the digestion process. Within this theory, the presence of the artificial sweeteners may encourage the body to work harder to scavenge calories from your digestive tract. The upshot of this model is that if you eat a burger with a glass of water, you absorb X calories. If you eat the burger with a diet Sprite, you might be absorbing X + Y calories instead. Remember, calorie counts for food are based on measures of caloric value of a unit of food minus the caloric value of what the average person excretes. If we were furnaces instead of meat we would get more calories from our food. And if you have odd digestive microbes you may be absorbing more or less calories from your food.
- marliechiller 3y agoSo if I have to choose between diet and normal coke, which one is objectively worse for my health now?
- raspyberr 3y agoThis article seems to recommend having water instead.
- michaelt 3y agoNormal coke it is, then!
- lesuorac 3y agoMore like a bud light!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoWell...the WHO did recommend water.
- probably_wrong 3y agoRight. But if I have to choose between diet and normal coke, which one is objectively worse for my health now?
- kapep 3y agoIf your goal is to lose weight, it seems like diet coke is the better choice short-term (because it has much less calories) and normal coke the better choice long-term (because according to studies, NSS don't help long term and to reduce their other long-term effects). So I guess if you drink a coke once in a while, diet coke is better and if you drink coke very often, you should stop drinking coke.
- 0zemp3c 3y ago> But if I have to choose between diet and normal coke no one has to make that choice
- WonderBuilder 3y agoIt feels to me that this advisory was not put out sensibly. WHO advises "against [artificial sweetener] use" because they "do not help control body mass or reduce the risk of weight-related illnesses" and because long term "[may increase the risk] of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease". But is that enough reason to give such a blanket statement disallowance? What if you want to have some sweetness from time to time but you are watching your sugar levels? Surely that's better than just taking sugar. What if you are weaning yourself off so much sugar? Surely that's better too. It seems to me that artificial sweeteners are a useful product for many people and is obviously not a panacea. I mean, honestly, hardly anything is good in excess! I feel this is so poorly communicated and almost guarantees people will take the wrong message from this.
- unshavedyak 3y ago> What if you want to have some sweetness from time to time but you are watching your sugar levels? Partly it seems the issue is that in many cases the reason for avoiding sugar and using a substitute does not actually avoid the negative consequences of sugar. I say this as someone who avoids sugar and has very little. I agree though i'm a bit confused by this WHO post. I have difficulty determining the severity of the issue. Based on what they're saying it sounds like you should avoid both sugar and substitutes. This post makes them sound basically the same, so why hyper focus on one?
- hedora 3y agoArtificial sweeteners have been shown to cause weight gain, since they make you hungrier, and also lower your metabolism. This was shown in follow up studies with humans, but with mice, they had three groups that each got a fixed amount of calorie counted food and a hamster wheel. They then added sugar to one group's water and artificial sweetener to another group's. The artificial sweetener groups gained the most weight and was the least physically active. If you're trying to watch your sugar levels (and are not diabetic) then artificial sweeteners are strictly harming your progress toward whatever goal you're trying to achieve. They also cause all sorts of other health issues (cancer, digestive problems, neurological problems), but those are mostly product specific. The above applies to all non-nutritional sweeteners that have been studied. I hope the WHO ruling includes "organic" artificial sweeteners too.
- raspyberr 3y agoThe article seems to be implying that you shouldn't use artificial sweetners as an alternative to sugar but instead should just have a healthy diet. There don't appear to be any sources for anything but I wonder if people who consume more artificial sweetners are also the ones who consume more sugar because they're used to a sweeter diet.
- Someone1234 3y agoThis was posted when it was published in May. To use an analogy their argument is: Vaping is bad for you, don't do it. While ignoring that a ton of people quit smoking using vapes and that they're letting the perfect be the enemy of good. Same thing with NSS. While NSS are a useful tool for sugar reduction, studies have shown that over the medium-long term, you'll want to reduce artificially sweat foods and even sweat food substitutes, to create a "new normal" or new baseline where an e.g. strawberry is sweat again. Which has been shown to be more sustainable. The WHO aren't wrong, but everyone jumps on this with their own agenda. They are claiming that switching to NSS isn't a sustainable way to reduce BMI (and associated negative health outcomes) over the long term, hard to find data that disagrees with that. That's all they're claiming.
- carabiner 3y agoWell, if you eat an actual ripe strawberry they're incredibly sweet. The ones at the grocery store with the bitter white center are not ripe. But I get your point.
- meindnoch 3y agoSweat food? Yuck!
- gattilorenz 3y agoHoneydew! Well, that’s actually worse than sweat…
- nashashmi 3y agoSweaty strawberries are amazing.
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoI have a few memories of picking blueberries with my mom as a kid - sweat dripped off my eyebrows, down the back of my neck and onto the strap that held the tray. She tried to get us out early, but there was a period around 10:00 just after the dew burned off when the humidity was still 100% and the sun was high enough to bake you. As a 7yo wishing I could stay home on my "hard-earned" summer vacation, most of the hardship was purely imagined. And maybe the flavor of those sweaty blueberries was imagined: I've not been able to replicate the taste for some time, even if I drag dragging my own boy to the U-Pick field. I wonder what they taste like to him.
- byteware 3y agothe article linked on the WHO's site is titled "WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control in newly released guideline", I mean why drop the "for weight control" part
- zouhair 3y agoWHO Guideline[0] for those interested. [0]: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073616 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073616
- cm2012 3y agoWHO also advises against steaks cooked rare. The kind of people who make pronouncements in big health orgs are the most cautious, neurotic people on the planet. You can safely ignore them.
- morkalork 3y agoCompanies need to stop using artificial sweeteners because they're just too sweet! If you ever do a low carb diet, it feels like your pallet is forever changed afterwards. Unmodified and unprocessed food taste naturally sweet on its own. Food with artificial sweeteners added tastes unbearably sweet.
- DrThunder 3y agoYep, when I've cut sugar I've noticed things like carrots and even bell peppers actually taste sweet.
- SirMaster 3y agoCarrots taste sweet to me and I eat lots of sugar and artificial sweeteners normally.
- Semaphor 3y agoI actually thought sweet stuff was sweet long before doing low-carb. I think a big difference is that here (Germany) we don’t put a ton of sugar and/or sweetener in pretty much everything. From what I’ve heard, that’s a thing in the US, and I know that it’s a thing in South Africa.
- martinsnow 3y agoI can attest to that, coming from Denmark but living in Germany now. My wife is Thai and the food in southern Thailand can be sickly sweet, but if you travel to northern Thailand they usually leave out the sugar in foods. Sugar and sweetners are insidious. Once you get used to sweet salads, you won't like normal salads anymore and then one start putting sweetners in every meal. It's surprising how unhealthy a salad can be.
- Semaphor 3y ago> Once you get used to sweet salads Ewww. I’m normally a regionalist, my state (SH) over the others. But sweet salad is a traditional thing here. I always make myself forget about that fact. It’s disgusting.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chx 3y agoAfter being diagnosed with diabetes T2 I have worn a CGM and decided which foodstuff I needed to drop. I dropped basically all starches, no potatoes, no rice, very careful with bread. Only desserts I eat are made with almond flour, no wheat flours. And, of course, NSS. I have wrestled my blood sugar level below diabetic levels without any drugs, this ought to be enough. This already has leeched a lot of pleasurable activities from my life -- before this, I used to love to travel to eat. Lyon , Florence, places. I simply refuse to do more. There's a point where you don't live longer, you just exist longer. What for? In much broader strokes, I was already not happy about how obsessed we became with prolonging life far beyond anything desirable. But even places where medically assisted death is accepted, you can't just go and say I am too old and infirm, help me end in dignity, no you need to suffer until your body and mind is gone. So says Lord Of The Rings > ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift
- smrk007 3y ago> The recommendation against the use of NSS applies to all people except individuals with pre-existing diabetes
- corpMaverick 3y agoTo be frank I do not know what to do. I have been trying to reduce my insulin resistance but most of the low carb protein powder seem to use some sort of artificial sweetener. Also this https://www.prevention.com/food-nutrition/a44156389/sucralose-artificial-sweeteners-splenda-may-cause-cancer-dna-damage-study/ https://www.prevention.com/food-nutrition/a44156389/sucralos... So which one is less bad ?
- dominick-cc 3y agoOne of the best things you could do is get unflavored whey isolate and just mix it with something you trust, like a bit of juice. Unflavored isolate is pretty expensive for me, and I often find good proteins on sale (I like ISO100 from Dymatize and buy it whenever it's cheap) but for me, it is sickeningly sweet (and artificial as well). So I've been using 50% flavored protein with 50% unflavored isolate to really reduce the overall sweetness. Add in a spoon of fat-free yogurt, maybe a splash of skim milk, water, it's a good time.
- jwally 3y agoIf I'm reading the article by the WHO correctly; its not saying stop using Artificial Sweeteners because they are poisonous - they're saying that Artificial-Sweeteners aren't part of a long term weight management strategy. If your protein powders have them - no factor. I feel like the headline is 10x more inflammatory than it needs to be.
- gizmo686 3y agoThe recommendations explicitly do not apply to people trying to manage existing diabetes.
- bequanna 3y agoIf you can, start to lay off all sweets. Your taste will change, but you need to be patient. The end result is less desire for sweets. Totally worth it. Pea protein with no flavor takes some getting used to but is quite healthy and filling. You can mix with some sugar free almond milk to help the taste. Overall my suggestion is to start viewing food as fuel. Of course you should enjoy some meals but don’t allow yourself to be picky or give into cravings. Again, once your mind and body start to correlate eating good foods with feeling good you’ve got it made. You won’t even want to drink alcohol, eat sugar or seed oils. You’ll shutter at the thought because you know they will make you feel like crap.
- nonrepeating 3y agoUpon reading the headline, I assumed this was related to the recent research suggesting that sucralose damages DNA. As someone who was drinking a sugar free energy drink every day, that was enough to get me to quit. The pure somatic horror of “DNA damage” far outweighs whatever enjoyment and lift I get from a can of [brand name].
- croes 3y agoBut the Taurine in the energy drinks prolongs your life https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36271868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36271868
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoYou wear sunscreen everytime you go outside yeah? The DNA damage from the sun is a way bigger concern.
- epolanski 3y agoI have highly reduced my sugar intake in the latest years going for the "light", with NSS, version of products like Coca Cola, etc. Now I read this still poses risks for me to develop diabetes and cardiovascular factors, how so?
- easytiger 3y agoWHO provides no value whatsoever at this point. It's clearly halfway between a joke and a self serving bureaucracy with a parallel structure of anti west social purpose thrown in for good measure.
- Veen 3y agoSplendid news. I can ditch the artificial sweeteners and return to putting three sugar lumps in my tea, since, somewhat counter-intuitively, using sweeteners instead of sugar doesn't help with weight control.
- bojo 3y agoBasically. There's some evidence that artificial sweeteners spike insulin as well, so a net gain of nothing in some cases.
- martinsnow 3y agoThe evidence is poor for those studies. Since in human trials it is still unclear if artificial sweetners can raise insulin levels. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-blood-sugar-insulin https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-b...
- mberning 3y agoI’m not giving up my Coke Zero. It’s an indulgence that I can live with long term. Unlike alcohol, donuts, pizza, and all the other shit that I enjoy but have to severely restrict.
- gukov 3y agoIt's probably the caffeine in Coke that keeps you going back. By the way: the newly reformulated Pepsi Zero has a lot more of it.
- omnicognate 3y agoNobody's going to make you give up your Coke Zero. The sweetener epidemic has, however, deprived me of things I enjoy. Coke, fortunately, remains available in "Classic" form, but here in the UK many drinks are no longer available without sweeteners: Vimto, Irn Bru, Tango, Lilt, Ribena, Robinson's Barley Water, Schweppes Tonic Water - all are now full of aspartame and saccharin in their non-"diet" variants. As a person with a healthy weight and the self-discipline to maintain it long term, with no diabetes or risk of it, who is not and never has been addicted to sugary drinks but who enjoys them (greatly) as an infrequent, calorie-counted treat, the loss of these childhood tastes is saddening, especially since there is very little evidence of any actual public health benefit. If I were magically transported back to the 1980s the first thing I'd do is buy a bottle of Corona Cherryade.
- 3y ago
- notfed 3y agoHi, WHO. Are you okay? Did big sugar threaten you? Offer you money? Are some governments/sponsors making you say these ridiculous things? This is an extraordinary claim that defies common sense. And your evidence is, what? Oh right, let me quote from the paper: > The recommendation is based on evidence of low certainty overall
- gilmore606 3y agoNot big sugar, big semaglutide. The timing of this anti-fake-sugar push with the release of a new patented weight loss drug isn't a coincidence.
- user_7832 3y agoIn case anyone's looking for the direct paper, it's available at https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429. Page 29 of the PDF is where the cardiovascular issues start (which is what I think is the most interesting.)
- TurkishPoptart 3y agoThe word "sweat" appears in these comments 9 times so far, when it should be "sweet". The words may well be opposites. Get it right, people!
- hospitalJail 3y agoEver since I found out WHO is fine with doing anti-science things like having a 'panel of experts' make health proclamations without evidence; I'm not sure who uses the WHO. (A panel of 'experts' said if a 1 month old watched tv for 1 second, they would have detrimental effects. No science to cite, 0, but like 9 names of random old people were cited.) If the WHO says something, you need to go through all the work of checking their sources, and in this case, there was no source: >The recommendation from the World Health Organization (WHO) is based on a review of available evidence which suggests that artificial sweeteners do not help control body mass or reduce the risk of weight-related illnesses. I'm a bit offended that I pay taxes to such a prominent anti-science organization. I don't mind the idea of a world health organization, but to be so brazenly anti-science and pro-authority is the last thing I want.
- codexb 3y agoYeah, I realized WHO was completely anti-science when they started publishing World Healthcare Rankings where 60% of the score was based purely on how socialist a country's healthcare system was and only 40% was based on the actual quality or results of the healthcare.
- simplyinfinity 3y agoIf no one can afford it, does it matter if it can cure everything? On an individual scale it matters. On a massive scale like a country, more affordable but less good is overall better for the whole country,but not for the individual. As an example, in the US you pay thousands for an ambulance call, get to hospital, pay hundreds of thousands, insurance (for which you pay thousands more per year) covers most of it, except they're trying to cheat you out of as much as possible so they pay less, and in the end, all amerikans are one incident away from bankruptcy. In most if not all of Europe, you pay health taxes, but not in the upper thousands, get good doctors, and don't end up bankrupt for breaking your arm or hip. And the ambulance is free (as in your taxes pay for it).
- jimmygrapes 3y ago
- dtx1 3y agoI was (and technically still am) pretty addicted to sugary drinks and energy drinks. Switching to diet soda and sugar free energy drinks helped me lose a lot of weight and got me an easier way to start regulating my weight and nutritional input. I would not have considered starting without the availability of these substitutes and I am glad I did. To condemn them without the context of the individual that may be like in my case substituting liters of sugar water and energy drinks a day seems rather short sighted
- AHOHA 3y agoIn all honesty, after and during Covid19, I find it hard to trust WHO or anything coming from hospitals’ doctors, integrity was lost, or maybe clear it was gone long ago.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThe reality is, this stuff is hard to get right, especially in the middle of something - someone is unlikely to be right 100% of the time. Who are you following that's getting everything right? Or getting more things right than The WHO?
- mortify 3y agoWhen COVID hit, the WHO had a pandemic plan in place (written in 2016). Organizations often do this so that when an emergency happens, they can use the decisions made with cooler heads rather than trying to react to a rapidly changing landscape... at least until new, solid evidence emerges. The WHO did the opposite of its pandemic plan. They failed to follow best practices and did so without any evidence for it. The best evidence that the current WHO is not to be trusted... is the old WHO.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThis is an impressively reductionist view.
- jjice 3y agoAs someone who knows nothing about either side (and I assume many other readers are in the same boat), can you explain why it's reductionist? Genuinely curious about both sides.
- horsawlarway 3y agoWell - simple thought: You are reading a random comment that has made a claim: Claim: A plan was in place in 2016 that would have been effective for covid, but was not followed. But right now they have absolutely zero evidence to back that claim up - where is the plan? Who decided it would work in 2019? Did the plan need to be changed for reasons not foreseen (ex: expected or real supply shortages, unclear statistics/data, dissenting opinion from other groups, etc) Did the WHO even have the ability to implement this plan? (ex: political meddling is a real thing) --- Basically - I'll start with question #1: Show me the plan, because googling for a 2016 World health organization pandemic plan comes up essentially blank outside of some general influenza prep that was absolutely not usable for a pandemic of the scale of covid. If this is so obvious, and this plan was so readily available... I would think a 10 minute google search would turn something up - but I have not found it (not claiming it does not exist - just that the rest of the conversation is fucking pointless without it).
- christkv 3y agoI would love to try allulose. Anybody had any experience baking with it ?
- Pomfers 3y agoLow quality article. The only takeaway is that NSS does not result in long term weight loss by itself. That's it. NSS does not spike insulin response in humans. Stop reading studies involving rats when the same studies involving humans exist. There is a correlation between NSS consumption and negative health outcomes, this is true. However, read how this article states this: >WHO also noted that “potential undesirable effects from long-term use” of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The results of the review also suggest that there may be other dangerous consequences such as the increased risk of premature death among adults. A layman will obviously read this as a statement that NSS is a direct cause of harm, not as the correlation that it actually is. The correlation is simply explained: NSS is heavily consumed by people who have diabetes and/or who are obese. These people are naturally going to have far more health issues than non-diabetics, and non-obese people. They even acknowledge this in the article: >the connection between consuming NSS and disease outcomes might be subjectively determined due to “baseline characteristics” of those taking part in the study If you have a choice of drinking regular soda and diet, the diet is without a doubt leagues better for you. I think the most convincing evidence that NSS is safe is this: It's obvious that diabetics and obese people consume NSS significantly more than the general population. Diabetics and obese people are naturally prone to high levels of health issues. Yet why is it that they never just filter these people out to get a good baseline? What are the chances that these university educated people can't filter out obese/diabetics, or that they did not anticipate needing to do this and thus did not collect sufficient data? That they didn't read decades of prior studies who failed to do this, including the studies that specifically mentioned the dirty baseline issue? Is our higher education system this bad? Are researchers just this stupid? Not likely. The more likely explanations are these: 1 The study was funded by corn growers that are threatened by NSS (a huge number of the studies I read through fall into this category). 2 The researchers have a bias for "natural" products. 3 The researchers dislike the taste of NSS and are afraid that NSS proliferation will reduce the supply of the flavors that they enjoy. They've tried to prove NSS is harmful for way too long. Sure, that's not proof that NSS is completely safe, but if it is harmful, it must be so minimally harmful that 4+ decades of intense research can't definitively prove it.
- Havoc 3y agoI've been sticking to sugar version all along on a admittedly simplistic "devil you know" rationale
- basq 3y agoAfter a long period of stalled weight loss, I switched to a low carb diet (to reduce my feelings of hunger and aid in eating less), and with that came a plethora of keto-friendly protein bars. For a while I thought that 4/5 BMs being straight liquid was just my body acclimating to the diet, but after reading about how erythritol can cause diarrhea, I decided to hit the breaks on those bars and everything has gone back to normal overnight. I may have one occasionally but definitely not going back to eating them every other day.
- ericathegreat 3y agoThere's a huge difference between: - Don't use this, it's harmful to you, and - Don't use this, it won't make things actively better. Study after study has shown that it is extremely, almost absurdly difficult to lose weight and keep it that way in the long term. If "not actively causing long term weight loss" is the only criteria for advising against something, then we should be advising against a heck of a lot more things that are perfectly fine. It's phrasing like this that causes people to go on crusades against random foods, rather than actually using moderation in all things.
- danjin250 3y agoThe article states reasons for its recommendations in addition to not being effective for long-term weight loss: "WHO also noted that “potential undesirable effects from long-term use” of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The results of the review also suggest that there may be other dangerous consequences such as the increased risk of premature death among adults."
- itsTyrion 3y agoI prefer getting cancer from artificial sweetener at age 70 to getting diabetes or gaining weight now idk