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Researchers love dunking on artificial sweeteners. It is one of the guaranteed methods of getting loads of press. Press yields prestige. Given that artificial s

Researchers love dunking on artificial sweeteners. It is one of the guaranteed methods of getting loads of press. Press yields prestige. Given that artificial sweeteners often correlate with people with weight / health problems like diabetes for very functional reasons, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Paradoxically this same data source (the Nurses' Health study, which is a continuous series of questionnaires) has had a prior paper claiming "sugar-sweetened soft drinks, refined grains, and red meat" led to depression. Now that "ultra-processed foods" and artificial sweeteners are the public demon, they take centre stage for the next round. I suspect with a bit of p-hacking one can contrive whatever aha result they desire out of it. Their argument regarding eliminating correlation seems suspect. They analyzed diet in period 1 against reported depression in period 1 and found a given correlation. They then analyzed diet in period 1 against reported depression in period 2 (apparently 4 years later) and claim to have found the same correlation, which is what he cites in defence. Yet they never state that depression in period 2 in those cases is worse than period 1, invalidating it. The Nurses' Health Study is a really fascinating exercise and certainly holds massive use, but it also has been a source of a lot of incredibly dubious nutritional "science". https://nurseshealthstudy.org/participants/questionnaires https://nurseshealthstudy.org/participants/questionnaires The NHS II surveys were the ones they used for this "get press" study, and looking at the actual surveys it seems doubtful that they yielded the results they did. Probably could build a lot of fun blog entries p-hacking the data from these surveys.

finite_depth 3y ago
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jcampbell1 3y ago
What if the deep subconscious keeps track of sweetness in the mouth and nutritional requirements (conscience hunger and cravings)? Artificial sweeteners would break the biological programming and cause all sorts of problems including depression and inappropriate hunger. Edit: I hadn’t fully thought this through, but in my experience sometimes looking at a clock causes the physical hunger sensation. I have also been painfully starving which immediately stopped after the first swallow of a chugging a coke. Artificial sweeteners would have thrown a monkey wrench in my biological machinery.
hedora 3y ago
There is a lot of evidence that artificial^W non-caloric sweeteners are terrible. There are correlation studies in humans showing many different health issues (weight gain, cancer, mental health issues, among others) that correct for all sorts of confounding factors. There are experimental studies in rodents that show all of the above across multiple products. They're known to interact poorly with certain drugs taken for mental illness, and can cause all sorts of brain-related problems in some people (such as migraines). They're also known to screw up your gut's microbial community, and that's shown to cause depression. (I'm not commenting on the quality of this particular study, to be clear.)
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  >There is a lot of evidence that artificial^W non-caloric sweeteners are terrible. There is shockingly little good evidence showing this, and these are many of the most studied substances in human history. There are a lot of very flawed studies that got enormous press and attention, however, yielding the "overwhelming proof" illusion.
  - hedora 3y ago
    This argument was made (practically verbatim) to defend tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels. It's easy to fund and publish a sloppy study that shows no correlation, and then claim the findings in the literature are "contradictory". The studies I'm referring to go back to the 1970's. I've seen many that show strong negative effects, and some that show no or inconclusive effects. None show positive effects. At this point, if the negative effect studies are statistical anomalies, then there should also be a roughly equal number of studies showing positive effects too.
    - llm_nerd 3y ago
      >This argument was made (practically verbatim) to defend tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels Sure it was. Indeed, your argument is practically verbatim the rhetoric of antivaxxers, flat Earthers and climate change deniers. As to your other point, what "positive effect" are you demanding? Controlling blood sugar and controlling calories both have an *enormous*, overwhelming volume of evidence. Sugar substitutes are just tangentially related to that effort.

finite_depth 3y ago

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jcampbell1 3y ago

What if the deep subconscious keeps track of sweetness in the mouth and nutritional requirements (conscience hunger and cravings)? Artificial sweeteners would break the biological programming and cause all sorts of problems including depression and inappropriate hunger. Edit: I hadn’t fully thought this through, but in my experience sometimes looking at a clock causes the physical hunger sensation. I have also been painfully starving which immediately stopped after the first swallow of a chugging a coke. Artificial sweeteners would have thrown a monkey wrench in my biological machinery.

hedora 3y ago

There is a lot of evidence that artificial^W non-caloric sweeteners are terrible. There are correlation studies in humans showing many different health issues (weight gain, cancer, mental health issues, among others) that correct for all sorts of confounding factors. There are experimental studies in rodents that show all of the above across multiple products. They're known to interact poorly with certain drugs taken for mental illness, and can cause all sorts of brain-related problems in some people (such as migraines). They're also known to screw up your gut's microbial community, and that's shown to cause depression. (I'm not commenting on the quality of this particular study, to be clear.)

llm_nerd 3y ago
>There is a lot of evidence that artificial^W non-caloric sweeteners are terrible. There is shockingly little good evidence showing this, and these are many of the most studied substances in human history. There are a lot of very flawed studies that got enormous press and attention, however, yielding the "overwhelming proof" illusion.
- hedora 3y ago
  This argument was made (practically verbatim) to defend tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels. It's easy to fund and publish a sloppy study that shows no correlation, and then claim the findings in the literature are "contradictory". The studies I'm referring to go back to the 1970's. I've seen many that show strong negative effects, and some that show no or inconclusive effects. None show positive effects. At this point, if the negative effect studies are statistical anomalies, then there should also be a roughly equal number of studies showing positive effects too.
  - llm_nerd 3y ago
    >This argument was made (practically verbatim) to defend tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels Sure it was. Indeed, your argument is practically verbatim the rhetoric of antivaxxers, flat Earthers and climate change deniers. As to your other point, what "positive effect" are you demanding? Controlling blood sugar and controlling calories both have an *enormous*, overwhelming volume of evidence. Sugar substitutes are just tangentially related to that effort.