“In human terms, that would mean if two identical people ate the same diet with the same number of calories, except one person drank diet soda and the other drank water, the diet-soda drinker would take up more glucose from the diet than the water drinker.
“This likely explains why diet-soda drinkers don’t lose weight and often gain weight,” he said.
In the pancreas, scientists think, sweet receptors activate insulin secretion, Osborne said. Any sweetener that sets them off, whether real or fake, might affect the development of insulin resistance and diabetes.”
What does that even mean? There are all kinds of things that are sold that produce pleasure that don’t have significant trade-offs. Should people not listen to music? Avoid bubble baths? Cough drops?
And what do you mean by “addiction”? I eat a bowl of cottage cheese every single day. I fucking love my cottage cheese. It’s one of the bright spots of my day. I’d hate to have to give it up, and would pretty stridently resist doing so if pushed. It’s expensive enough that I have to forego other things to afford it. Am I “addicted”? Does the very fact that I love and look forward to my cottage cheese mean that I should cut it out?
The idea that anything pleasurable is suspect and to be avoided does tremendous damage to people: either you adopt a pleasure-free life style, or you go through your days feeling guilty. And there’s a real tendency to decide that you might as well go for the sheep: if you have to feel guilty and inadequate no matter what you do, you might as well go for max pleasure at the same time–so instead of a couple Coke Zeros, big macs and milkshakes all around.
monstro, you may find pleasure suspicious, due to the way your brain works, but the rest of us do not. It is common sense to most of us that some pleasure is worth the risk. It makes no sense to completely give up something that gives us pleasure.
I know that things are different for you, but surely there are things you do that give you pleasure. Like, for example, what if you found out that all your walking was bad for you? Would you be able to stop? Would you like it if people called you addicted to walking?
And if you argue that caffeine is truly addictive, I’ll point out that so are the endorphins produced on a long walk.
Please don’t give into Conspiracy Theory thinking, that we need to be suspicious of everything that gives us pleasure. Manda JO articulated why better than I would.
I can’t imagine any sane person giving up a pleasure because we might, in the future, discover that it’s bad for us. Any more than you would give up walking because someone may discover it’s causing you health problems.
Surely on the SDMB one would not need to point out that things we “all know” are often wrong.
In any case, there are a lot of conflicting studies on diet soda. I would say that indicates that it is probably not enormously harmful, but could have some small deleterious effects.
I don’t really care. I enjoy drinking a diet coke once in a while. I also do other things (like driving and eating cupcakes sometimes) that are much more demonstrably risky, so whatever.
Music isn’t ingested into the body. It’s not made of synthetic substances. Our species has evolved listening to music. Music is just organized sound.
Bubble bath is merely soap. Soap not only provides pleasure, but it is quite useful. You can quantifiably compare its benefits versus its costs. The use of soap is associated with good health and hygiene.
Cough drops. Doesn’t stoke the pleasure center of the brain as much as provide comfort for a dry throat.
I’m sure there is some crazy person out there who has a cough drop habit. A person who knocks back 200 cough drops every day. And you know what? If they asked me, with their overpowering eucalyptus breath, if their habit is harming them, I’d tell them the exact same thing I’m telling the OP. If you really care about your health, you won’t wait for FDA to make a special warning for your favorite brand of cough drops. You’ll assume that there are risks–some that we know, others that we don’t–and try to limit your consumption as much as possible. If 200 is as low as you can get, then I guess that’s good enough. Just don’t act like you know that’s a safe level. You don’t know. You’re assuming it is.
I have a gum-chewing habit. I know it’s not the most dangerous habit in the world, but I also know the shit isn’t without risk, both known and unknown. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon because I like chewing gum. But I’m also not going to tell other people there’s nothing wrong with chewing fifty sticks of Orbitz everyday. I don’t care how much everyone in the room THINKS they know. No one knows what goes into these products or what their long-term effects are. The “long-term” hasn’t come yet.
Regulatory policy is always slow compared to research. Why? Because it’s not scientists who make the final decision to issue warnings and advisories to the public. The people they answer to do this. These folks have campaigns to fund and lobbyists to please. Case in point: We know good and well what Bisphenol A does to humans. There have been some new regulations to control its use. But the shit is still in our food. The other day, I ate some when the cashier receipt landed on my french fries. Guess that’s what I get for going to McDonald’s.
sigh
You are an intelligent person. If I tell you I’m addicted to cigarettes, do you need to ask for a fucking definition? No, because you are an intelligent person.
It sounds like the OP is addicted to Coke Zero. I say this because he/she admits they just can’t stop drinking it.
I like cheese too. But I’m not addicted to it because I don’t eat it all the time. When I’m not eating it, I’m not feigning for it. I don’t go through cheese withdrawal. If you can’t say this about cottage cheese, then hell yes, you are addicted. And maybe this doesn’t alarm you. But it would alarm me if it happened to me. What, I’m wrong for being skeeved out by addiction now?
I’m not anti-pleasure. I’m anti-blind consumerism. I’m all about finding happiness where one can find it, even if there are associated risks. But I’m not a fan in believing in hype and spreading the word about it. If I tell someone that something’s harmless and it later turns out that I’m wrong, then I’ll feel like a giant ass. Especially if I had no good reason to believe I was right in the first place.
Just because a product is on the shelf does not make it safe. Just because FDA hasn’t issued an advisory on a substance does not mean it is safe. Just because the science is mixed does not mean a product is safe. Just because everyone is consuming a product, does not make it safe.
I’m not advocating paranoia, just reasonable caution. Drinking 4 cans of anything besides plain water, tea, and coffee doesn’t strike me as wise. I like pleasure, but I like making wise choices too. I don’t go swimming in rivers right after it rains. I don’t eat fish that have been caught from the Anacostia River. And I don’t drink a liter of soda every day. I don’t know all the risks I’m avoiding by doing all of these things, but they just make basic sense. I don’t need someone on high to inform these decisions.
Do I really sound THAT unreasonable? I have triple-read what I have written, and the only controversial remark I think I made was asking why the OP wants to be Coca-Cola’s bitch. That is harsh, true. But IMHO it’s accurate given how much money the OP turns over to Coke every time he goes to the grocery store.
The amount of caffeine the OP is drinking is equivalent to a little more than a single cup of coffee per day. Maybe one and a third. The amount he is turning over to coke per day, assuming he buys cans at the grocery store, is about $1.25. Probably less, since the stuff is always on sale.
We also have a better idea about the long-term effects of artificial sweeteners than you think. Aspartame was discovered in the early 60s, has been tested pretty regularly since then, and has been approved for use in this country by the FDA for over 30 years. Saccarin has been around and investigated thoroughly for over a century. I’d call that long-term.
You can use terms like “merely soap”, and I can counter that Coke Zero is merely a drink.
If you have evidence that something isn’t safe, then I’m sure we’d all like to see it. Otherwise, the “we just don’t know” portion of your post rings hollow. You don’t know if the OP’s rather unremarkable habit is harming him.
Two liters a day above and beyond the moisture content you get from food is more than anybody who isn’t a marathon runner needs. The fact that this person is consuming so much fluid voluntarily indicates there is some kind of consumption compulsion at the root of the problem. What’s the cause of this? In this particular case, who knows? However, it is obviously of no small strength.
In my experience, both the physical ability and the tendency for a person to consume large amounts of fluids goes hand-in-hand with a tendency to binge-eat–and in some cases, people with binge-eating problems are able to replace food binges with non-caloric fluid binges. (Gum can also be used in this way.) If that’s what’s happening here, that’s probably not a bad thing. Even if diet soda is not so great for you, it will almost certainly not be anywhere near as harmful in the long term as the habit that it replaces. You pick your battles, you know?
Wow, so we’re back to this? I thought the whole 8 glasses of water a day thing had been debunked, and we were supposedly getting plenty of fluid from our fruits and foods, so didn’t need that many glasses of liquid. I was sure that was the deal.
They say it varies per person, based on activity level, temperature, etc. 2 liters a day for someone who works outdoors all day in Australia doesn’t seem out of line to me.
ETA: Nzinga, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve had that conversation. The only one I can think of is the thread about the mouse.
The mythical aspect about the “drink 8 glasses of water a day” was twofold. One, it was based on no evidence, it just seemed to have sprung out of nowhere and then repeated as some kind of well-known fact. And two, people thought it was 8 glasses of water in addition to what they normally drink, when they should’ve accommodated for everything they consumed throughout the day, which would’ve meant maybe only two glasses of water would’ve been enough.
In the end, though, it’s generally recommended that you drink when you’re thirsty.