I’ve heard this more and more these days: something about the various sugar substitutes being unhealthy, not by causing cancer or halitosis or boogie-woogie flu, but the latest knock on them, that they are counterproductive for sugar control.
Back when I think “they” said that it was a psychosomatic thing (in the true sense of the word), in that the sensation of sugar/sweet made your pancreas think the real stuff was there, or something.
Which I could believe as a research result somewhere, but so much as to actually be deleterious?
And thanks especially for the paper from the American Council on Science and Health.
ETA: So it turns out that “they” was one dingbat article that started it all (and remained it).
I read somewhere that it isn’t the artificial sweetener itself, the skinny of it was the fact that it tricks your brain/body into thinking you had sugar when it did not, confuses your body and you wind up consuming or not consuming your controlled amount because of this. Carefully monitoring what you eat and your insulin levels are key from what I know. The artificial stuff doesn’t apparently directly cause any issues.
Was this whole thing really stared by an opinion piece without any actual research? I find that incredible. Has there been any actual research since 2013? Is there any legitimate reason to avoid artificial sweeteners (especially in diet sodas–ignoring caffeine, which is a separate and separable issue).
I thought the “drawback” to aspartame was chiefly a psychological one in that it made people eat more food, even more than they would without the diet soda, because they mistakenly believe they’ve “saved” calories and can splurge elsewhere.
When I was in school, they told me you produce insulin if you think about eating (about 10% of what you would when actually having a meal), so maybe this is something similar.
But I saw no evidence that you produce more insulin when you think about eating or drinking something sugary (whether or not it’s “real” sugar).
I have a huge sweet tooth but I found out the hard way that sucralose makes me want to throw up. Even without that experience I do not like artificial food. (Refined, yes, but not blatantly artificial.)
Again, just throwing it out there: a friend of mine states emphatically that Splenda should be avoided because the manufacturing process uses fluorine which, I assume, he believes is still in the finished product. :dubious:
Didn’t mean to be snarky, I just really want to know if there is any actual research that’s been done. I’ve thought about asking this question here myself.
Not so fast. Here is what I read and, no I don’t know a cite although someone with more google-fu than me might find one.
First, to everyone’s surprise, it turns out there are taste buds in the intestines. They are fooled in the same way that the ones in the tongue by artificial sweeteners. Possibly not by the same ones, but that would be the default assumption. When they detect sweetness (which could, after all, be the result of digestion of starch, which might be an explanation of why a backup system of taste buds is needed), they signal the brain to crank up the production of insulin. Then cells, repeatedly finding insulin, but not glucose, become resistant to insulin. This insulin resistance is the main step on the way to type 2 diabetes.
They all taste nasty :p. That’s the most legitimate reason I can think of. As far as the direct effects on your health, if you have PKU you need to avoid aspartame, and that’s about it. From my personal observations the weight gain associated with artificial sweeteners is probably due to the “I’ll have a double bacon cheeseburger, super sized fries, and a Diet Coke” style of eating.
I don’t feel like you should be repeating this without some sort of credible cite. There are some studies that show taste receptors in the intestines but to my knowledge only conjecture concerning the insulin release at this point.
As a side note, some of the same people flogging the artificial-sweeteners-cause-diabetes theory also claim that these sweeteners (especially aspartame) are “toxic” and “poisonous” based on similarly misunderstood and invented physiology.
Do a search on aspartame “toxicity” and you’ll find a cornucopia of crazy, including its description as “Donald Rumsfeld’s bioweapon legacy” and frantic warnings about how its metabolism produces formaldehyde and methanol.*
*both of these substances are produced in similarly small quantities as part of normal human metabolism; for example methanol results from the biochemical breakdown of fruits, vegetables and ethanol. So maybe we should eliminate them from our diet too, because TOXINS!
Bottom line: be careful about your sources, and be aware that “reliable” mainstream media likes to to tout headlines about the latest studies, while not analyzing their relevance and how they fit into our overall knowledge base.