Could be. I can’t find it now, but the last population study I saw implied that 2 cans of diet soda a day cause as much increase in death rate as 1 can of sugar soda a day.
The honest truth if you are trying to decide between sugar or artificial sweetener, the only safe answer is neither.
So the study only included 13 people over a period of two weeks? Unless I’m missing something here this is not so much a study but an glorified lab experiment.
Actual study link - https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131(20)30057-7
Summary
There is a general consensus that overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to the prevalence of obesity and related comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes (T2D). Whether a similar relationship exists for no- or low-calorie “diet” drinks is a subject of intensive debate and controversy. Here, we demonstrate that consuming seven sucralose-sweetened beverages with, but not without, a carbohydrate over 10 days decreases insulin sensitivity in healthy human participants, an effect that correlates with reductions in midbrain, insular, and cingulate responses to sweet, but not sour, salty, or savory, taste as assessed with fMRI. Taste perception was unaltered and consuming the carbohydrate alone had no effect. These findings indicate that consumption of sucralose in the presence of a carbohydrate rapidly impairs glucose metabolism and results in longer-term decreases in brain, but not perceptual sensitivity to sweet taste, suggesting dysregulation of gut-brain control of glucose metabolism
So the obvious answers are yes, it is a legitimate study, yes it seems to have been published in a reputable journal (Cell Metabolism - Wikipedia) and no you should not suddenly reexamine everything you know about beverage consumption on the basis of a single study.
So what I am reading is that if you drink diet soda and eat potato chips you may have a problem with you insulin sensitivity, Earth shattering it is not.
The study is behind a paywall so it can’t really be reviewed here. The Calorie Control Council points out some things that raise doubts about the study that we would have to trust their judgment on, but they appear to have an interest in the diet soda is OK camp.
I’m in the nothing to see here camp.
There are plenty of questions with the study just in the link in the OP.
- A small sample size of 13 people in the experimental group.
- Took place over a short period of two weeks.
- Nutrition data was self-reported and collected only at baseline, leaving room for other components of the diet and diet-related behavior to play a role in the findings.
- While the authors report a statistically significant difference between the groups for insulin response, no group differences were found in glucose response. It is unclear whether these findings are clinically relevant, as one would expect to see similar effects in glucose response.
- Lacked a washout period, which would demonstrate whether the effects were reversible and distinguish between short- and long-term effects that may ultimately lead to disease…
Maybe future studies will have more relevant data.
Did they include a control group that consumed the carbohydrate without the artificial sweetener? Possibly the carbohydrate consumed was the entire problem. In any case, I would require more evidence than this to change my use of sucralose (although I have switched to a stevia product in my tea at home).
Population studies are flawed, in my view, because there is no way to tell if the results are from causation or correlation. They have always seemed to me to be operating on a post hoc fallacy. And there is never a fully safe answer, there is nothing you consume that can’t hurt you.
And small studies like this are also flawed. Lack of diversity of individuals is a huge problem because the results might only apply to whatever sub population the subjects were drawn from. And the short time span means you don’t really know if that immediate effect has long term effects or not.
Population studies are the only practical way to get data that avoids some of these problems. And correlation in this case is useful data in itself. It’s only a fallacy if you go too far in drawing your conclusions.
I feel like responding to “nothing you consume can’t hurt you” would take me too far from the topic, so I’ll hold that for another time.
See the link in the OP.
Which is the trouble with airing such studies to the public without the necessary disclaimers, something that seems to happen all the time.
(When you decide to discuss my statement that “there is never a fully safe answer, there is nothing you consume that can’t hurt you” remember that it was specifically in response to scarbrow’s statement that “if you are trying to decide between sugar or artificial sweetener, the only safe answer is neither.”)
Yeah, 13 sample size doesn’t install confidence but should Yale know what they are doing? All the reputation?
They’re an artificial sweetener industry group. Obviously, they have a direct interest but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate their objections.
Are there any scientists, especially medical scientists or statisticians replying?
So drinking diet soda is way better than drinking sugared soda, right? Or else the effect is so small you might as well drink either.
I can’t find the original study, and it’s a little hard to interpret from the media coverage. Here’s one example: Diet Soda and Sugary Drinks May Affect Lifespan Study Finds | CardioSmart – American College of Cardiology
This article claims that 2 diet sodas a day is worse for you than 1 sugared soda. The way it’s phrased implies that 1 diet soda is safer than 1 sugared soda, but I’m not sure if the data shows that.
It’s also really hard to separate the effect of diet soda from the effect of why you chose to drink diet soda in the first place. So it’s possible diet soda is even safer, but mostly people with worst health overall drink it.
Seems to be saying that diet sodas are 3 times worse than sugared sodas. That article is just a summary that doesn’t qualify it’s numbers though.
It’s not “Yale” doing the study; it’s researchers who happen to work there. Nobody there (other than the authors) is vetting the work.
Australia had an ongoing dispute for a couple of years between a university researcher who published pro-sugar research, and a bunch of other researchers who pointed out that he was just pulling the conclusions out of his arse, as he was paid to do by the sugar industry**, and the university, who claimed that policy and tradition prevented them from censoring researchers, no matter how much other people disagreed with them. *
*Unless, of course, it’s an important university funding body that disagrees, or has been called racist or sexist or un-Australian or looks bad on facebook.
**We still have sugar cola. Around here, it’s the sugar industry, not the corn-syrup industry
This is the biggest criticism I’ve seen of these studies. The people most motivated to drink diet soda are likely the ones worse off going into it. You really can’t get good results from self-reported food studies in the first place. If you’re really concerned about the effects of diet/non-diet soda, remember that you don’t have to drink any soda. There are plenty of alternatives that are better for you and your wallet in the first place. You can even get used to the taste of the sparkling flavored waters pretty quickly if that’s all you’ve got.
See Marion Nestle’s books for a clear if sometimes tedious description of food industry-funded research, conflicts of interest, how industry research questions are framed within a, say, pro-Coca-Cola agenda, and the difficulty of publishing independent findings that buck industry trends.