Yes, in fact, many, if not the majority, of the people in this thread have said so.
Oh, also, my rough estimate is that 85% of the female drinkers of regular soda that I know of are skinny. And the fat people I know (including myself) almost ALWAYS drink diet.
I prefer ice water, nice and cold as my favorite drink. Second favorite would be hot or iced tea, just a little lemon [or a bit of milk in chai] and I sweeten if any with splenda. No splenda and it absolutely has to be sweet I will grudgingly use sugar. Third favorite drink, now that I can not tolerate the amount of caffeine in as much coffee as I used to drink would be milk. I might do 6 sodas a year, usually ginger ale for an upset stomach.
Im so fat when I sit around the house, I sits around the house
badaboom:D
I do know one person who has reactions to fake sugars. She is skinny as a bean. I am a lardass and don’t seem to react to fake sugars at all. Mind you, I don’t like them, but I don’t have an allergy reaction to them and have never claimed to do so. And I have allergies to lots of stuff.
It may be possible that the OP is saying this to avoid something s/he doesn’t like. It also may be possible that Gruntled is overstating his case when he says that almost every fat person he has ever known claims this allergy. But then, maybe he doesn’t know very many fat people.
I’ve been using stevia as a sweetener for a while now in teas and what coffee I can get away with these days, but I was brought up on diet soda-tab was mom’s fave.
I just pretty much won’t drink soda anymore. Why? I read that the carbonation binds to vitamins and make them inert, so you just end up excreting them. I spend good money on both eating an almost junk-free, produce-laden, vegan diet and beaucoup supplementation(yes-I log protein-yes, I get enough).
I would prefer not to end up with expensive pee.
I have read somewhere that artificial sweetener causes you to gain weight, but I forget why that is. I don’t think it applies to stevia, which is an herb. I’ve read that stevia actually stabilizes blood sugar. But it also may make the liver work harder. Considering my whole family’s propensity to type 2 diabetes, I’m using it.
(Natural does not always = safe. Arsenic’s natural.)
Hey, that’s my line!
Most people wanting to lose weight will try diet soda drinks at some point.
Unfortunately theres a lot of stuff about them having bad effects, so a ‘nocebo’ reaction is fairly likely, which is the opposite of a placebo - you expect negative effects so you have them or attribute anything you have afterwards to them, eg a headache gets caused by the drink rather than just a hard day at work or whatever. The blisters above are a great example. Edit: As in I suspect this explains many peoples ‘allergies’ but social reasons are also bound to be part of the mix.
Also they can taste horrible and take some time to get used to. But when you do, you dont like normal sugar drinks any more, so when the diet gets dropped its often the case that the person keeps drinking it, ie its not necessarily about ‘reducing calories’ when you see them having it with 2 burgers, its just what they’ve become used to tastewise.
Otara
Really? I don’t think I know anyone who drinks anything BUT diet sodas. They’re all I drink, and though I’m not tiny, I’m certainly not fat (and my Doc agrees, he told me today at my bi-yearly appointment that my weight was just fine.)
Full sugar soda is just not worth it to me, or most people I know. It doesn’t taste good enough to warrant the calories.
My mother has a reaction to artificial sweeteners; aspartame, I think. She experienced what she described as ‘electrical shocks up and down her limbs’ until her doctor figured out the cause. Once she stopped drinking diet sodas, the tingling jolts went away.
Her doctor was explicit that this was not an allergy – by which he apparently meant, it wasn’t a histamine reaction. But she still refuses diet sodas.
And she’s not fat, at all.
I have no doubt that some people are sensitive to aspartame. People have different levels of sensitivities to all kinds of things, including “natural” substances. I wouldn’t be surprised that, because of the distribution of BMI in the US population, you’re more likely to encounter a fat person who’s sensitive to aspartame than a skinny person. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of skinny people who refrain from artificial sweeteners because of “allergies.” I don’t care for diet drinks one bit just because of the taste, and I’m skinny. Perhaps if the taste didn’t drive me away, I too would find out that I am allergic. Maybe a lot of us would. I dunno.
I know a fat woman who claims ALL artificial sweeteners make her sick. I’m not a food chemist, so I don’t know how similar artificial sugars are on a molecular level, but I tend to think part of this person’s aversion is psychological. She’s on this big “no processed food” kick right now that is extremely annoying. It wouldn’t be annoying if she were a typical person, someone who kept expressions of their food preferences to a minimum. But no. She has to make a big announcement about how “processed foods kill” every time someone eats something that has “chemicals” in them. Today she kept repeating over and over that Twinkies kill. I responded, “Yes, look at all the dying children out there, murdered by the evil snack cake. And l grew up on Twinkies and I’m dead, so that must mean you’re right. Twinkies do kill.” She often doesn’t get my sense of humor.
HOWEVER, as far as I know, she doesn’t eat a lot of natural sugars either. She doesn’t drink soda and she eats sweets just as frequently as I do, which is to say not very often. I actually don’t know why she’s so overweight, other than the fact that she’s sedentary. She doesn’t seem to eat that much. But I only know what she does at work. She could be Miss Eat-A-Lot at home, for all I know.
(Note – I’m not fat, so I don’t know if I should count)
I don’t mind aspartame (or Nutra Sweet, as it used to be called), but I LOATHE Splenda. I think it tastes like ass. I’ve always been able to drink diet pop – and a lot of pop I like only comes in diet. (Caffeine-free Dr. Pepper, for example, or before I had to cut out caffeine, Pepsi Jazz.)
But any time I’ve tried to eat or drink ANYTHING that has Splenda, it makes me gag. It’s so freaking nasty.
However, it’s never given me any ill effects, other than taste.
I’m not fat (BMI 22) and I do have an intolerance to some brands of sweeteners, because lots of them contain lactose and I’m somewhat lactose intolerant; I carry my own sweeteners with me in my bag for when I buy a coffee outside. Often when people say ‘allergic’ they’re actually referring to an intolerance.
Reading up on aspartame informs me that the reason for the lactose is that aspartame breaks down at high temperatures, and encasing it in fat can stop that. This’ll be why I haven’t noticed any lactose in diet soft drinks but nearly always do in the sachets at coffee bars.
I’m also now informed that aspartame is pronounced to rhyme with ‘name,’ which sounds completely wrong in my head.
I never claimed I was allergic to artificial sweeteners. I just hated the taste, especially the aftertaste. But for me, Splenda is good enough that I don’t miss sugar.
I do know one person who claims to be allergic to artificial sweeteners. She’s normal weight, though.
Aspertame triggered migraines when I was younger. I wasn’t fat then though.
Now that I’m older and considerably fatter I am okay with it but I prefer sucralose or erithrytol/stevia blends. Especially liquid sucralose.
I know two people who claim adverse reactions to Splenda/sucralose. One is my sister, a rail-thin woman, says she had to go to the ER for hives, which started after she’d begun drinking a new flavored drink mix; the mix contained Splenda (her first experience with the sweetener). Within days of starting she developed some minor blotches/hives, and later the same week on a day when she drunk a lot of the drink mix, she had such a bad allergic-type reaction (major hives, I forget what else) that she went to the ER.
My husband, somewhat overweight, says he becomes somewhat congested after consuming anything with Splenda in it. He’s drunk beverages, gotten congested, then checked the label and discovered he accidentally drank the stuff.
I suppose in both cases it could have been other ingredients, more certainly in the first instance since it was the same beverage throughout rather than different types (as in the second kind), but neither has experienced similar symptoms outside of those times.
These are very specific sweeteners, though, not all artificial ones. Most of the complaints I’ve heard about all artificial sweeteners are either that they taste bad (AceK+aspartame is awesome, IMO) or that they’re “poison”/“bad for you”/“chemicals”, and I hear those from all shapes of people.
Um, where did you read that and why do you believe it?
As opposed to “bad money”?
How much do you spend on supplements per year?
Expensive pee? 
What?
Where did you read that and why do you believe it?
The basic argument is your brain gets confused by eating sweet things with no calories in them.
eg Artificial Sweeteners Linked To Weight Gain -- ScienceDaily
I wouldnt say its ‘settled’ though.
Otara
Oh goodie. Another gruntled thread in which he tries to point out that fat people are inferior to, well, himself, anyway. Lessee; he starts out with a faulty big brush statement in the OP, showing heavy bias against fat people on his part. Then he gets proven wrong for two pages. Then he picks out the one person he thinks does prove his point and starts grilling that person in the most agressive, derogatory and stubborn way possible.
And yet, he always finds someone willing to put up with it. He ought to start a tread: are fat people more willing to put up with being fault finded and denigrated? Now that would be an interesting thread, gruntled.
Maastricht, not fat anymore, usually drinks and drank tap water.
This is something that irritates me. WHY can’t people accept the fact that other people might not want to have alcohol, or caffeine, or whatever? I’m not allergic to shellfish, I don’t have bad physical reactions to it, but I think that most shellfish tastes horrid. Really, I do. I don’t care how nice the cocktail sauce is, I’m NOT going to love your shrimp cocktail, because it involves shrimp.
I have irritable or inflammatory bowel disease/syndrome. If I eat certain things, I WILL have extreme adverse reactions to it. And some people can’t accept that I really don’t want to eat anything with black pepper on it or in it, because I’ll spend the next three days in the bathroom, in pain. I’ve had people say, “Oh, come on, a little taste won’t kill you” while putting a bit of food on my lips, and I’ve shoved their hands away. I’ve been told that I’m rude. Yes, it won’t KILL me, but I might very well wish that I were dead in the near future, and I think that literally pushing food on someone is rude.
Grrrr.
I’m a recovering fattie and I’ve never made that claim, nor have I ever heard my fat friends do so.
I have dramatically resisted low fat foods in a similar manner, though. I don’t think he actually meant he was allergic and he wooshed you.