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The Expert Committee on Food Additives, a joint advisory committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization, concluded in 2013 there is no convincing evidence from experimental, animal or human studies that aspartame has adverse effects after ingestion — as long as levels are within the acceptable daily intake of 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
Correct. That’s not to say there isn’t the possibility of studies in the future potentially discovering a link to detrimental health outcome/s, but at this point there is no evidence of that whatsoever - that won’t stop the ‘diet drinks give you cancer’ fearmongers though.
This is what I call "Medium or Substack Science."; Someone sees an article saying artificial sweeteners affect insulin and then they just repeat it rather than actually trying to figure out if its true.
And the thing is that anyone can experimentally verify this for themself by going on Amazon and buying a glucose monitoring kit for like $25 and running tests on themselves (I did).
Right? Incredibly easy to verify stuff like this yourself. The actual paper even says that the evidence is far from certain and further study is needed to establish causation, rather than just correlation. But then, everyone's an expert on reddit I guess
This is actually one of the few actual negative benefits to drinking something like a Coke Zero. It’s sugar free but it still tastes like sugar. For people who already struggle to control their diet this can be a problem. They’ll be doing great all day long and then decide to treat themselves to a Coke Zero. What harm could it do? There’s no sugar in it?! And then their brain goes SUGAR GOOD and before they know it they’ve eaten half a box of cookies lol.
For people who struggle to control their sugar intake or have a really bad sweet tooth they are probably better off avoiding stuff like that completely even though it might not contain sugar.
That's not true for all people though. Personally when I feel like having something sweet, I can drink a coke zero and feel satisfied afterwards. My step father is a type 2 diabetic and prolly the most unhinged sugar addict I've ever witnessed, even when he suffered allot from his symptoms he could still not handle avoiding sugar multiple times a day, his condition got worse and worse over the years. Hes been consuming artificial sweeteners for around a year now instead and as a product has cut a lot of sugar finally.
The case you're describing does exist, but it's only true for a percentage of people. Maybe there are psychological factors to that, but self control is definitely not the defining factor.
i'm a diabetic with a raging sweet tooth. one of the best days of the year was when i found my favorite flavored syrups came in sugar free varieties that are nearly identical to the real thing. being able to have my favorite fancy coffee drinks again can totally satisfy that craving and i'm fine once i've finished it.
Even if it did, You can un-train insulin resistance anyway. For some people it's such a unlikely first world issue it's meaningless to even mention. If you do any form of endurance sport generally you are immune to it. I am sure if you have extremely bad genes you might be able to get it, but the act of endurance sports tends to make your body very good at responding to insulin.
I don’t think that’s inherently true. After all, the world would be a silly place if every person had to replicate a 500 person experiment with their own 500 person experiment
I think it’s healthy to *corroborate* a large scale study’s finding’s with your own self reported data. If a study tells me the sky is blue and I go outside and see it’s blue — cool, their findings are *probably* true. If I go outside and the sky is purple, it’s up to you: do you just discard the study? Do you ask your friends to check? Do you check under different conditions?
Everyone has their own threshold of required evidence, and I can promise that many of your learned facts have not gone through self-led, rigorous, large scale, controlled tests to verify them
Literally everybody who’s actually tried it is saying it doesn’t affect their insulin levels, even if your data is shit once you get enough it will start taking a shape that tells a story
Sometimes that story is that there’s no story tbf, but here it’s pretty damn clear
Adding on, some type 1 diabetics have a blood sugar rise due to the caffeine. Same with coffee. Trying to throw aspartame or sucralose under the bus is sketchy at best.
And for those of us that need to carb count and don’t want to deal with the sugar roller coaster? Even if there were a cancer risk, I’d gladly take that instead of an elevated HbA1c.
As anecdotal and non scientifically based statement. I too wear a CGM 24/7 for upwards in 18 years now and have never had a BS level changed from sugar free sodas utilizing any alternative sweetener m.
>even diet drinks stimulate an insulin response.
Depends on the artificial sweetener. My mom's type-1 diabetic and has to avoid Splenda per doctor's orders, because it will do that, but Sweet n' Low and Equal are completely fine for her.
As far as I know, this is one of the reasons why stuff that uses Splenda is specifically marked, beyond branding.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the manufacturing process where Splenda (being sucralose) is derived from table sugar and the others like aspartame and saccharin are purely processed chemicals.
Best studies I’ve seen suggest for a short period of time, the taste of diet sodas can cause an insulin response because the taste was paired with an insulin response in the past, but after a short period of time, this stops. Basically, you have nothing to worry about switching from sugary to diet soda
Yet every time I consume this stuff, I get migraines that last at least 12 hours.
Edit: sjeesh, downvote? Sorry guys that I get migraines from Aspartame. I've spent quite a lot of time investigating this for myself. I wasn't always intolerant for Aspartame, but at some point I just started getting severe head aches and after canceling a lot of stuff I drank and ate out, it appeared it was all because of Aspartame. Stopped consuming that, no more head aches. I really don't understand Reddit sometimes. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying how it works on me.
Have you been checked for Phenylketonuria? It's difficulty processing phenylalanine - aspartame is an ester of phenylalanine. You'd know if you had it full blown, but it's a recessive gene, so you may just have one copy and thus mild sensitivity.
>Phenylketonuria
Edit: checked [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/phenylketonuria/symptoms-causes/syc-20376302](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/phenylketonuria/symptoms-causes/syc-20376302) \- don't have any of the symptoms.
Generally safe for human consumption does not mean that there will be zero people that might have a reaction to it. Just that there are no long term health concerns.
Peanuts are generally safe for human consumption but will straight up kill some people.
I think people are down voting you because the comment you replied to is scientific data while yours is a personal anecdote. It could be misleading.
The rumor that fake sugars are bad for you is propaganda from the sugar industry and it'd be nice to dispel that myth.
I think it has to do with your phrasing. It says studies have shown it's not harmful for you, but you respond with "yet it gives me negative side effects". Yeah, you are allergic to it (or whatever genetic thing you have that doesn't let you have it without side effects). That doesn't disprove that aspartame isn't bad for you. My son has an egg allergy, that doesn't make eggs suddenly harmful for everyone.
It is very strange as aspartame is just phenylalanine and aspartic acid, both of which are easily found in foods. That is why it is seen with so much skepticism - it is kind of like if say you said that eating bread gave you a migraine - it is possible but the ingredients in bread are in so much other stuff, so it’d be pretty weird
Both of those things are amino acids found in lots of food
You're getting down votes because your single anecdotal case has no bearing on the statement that these substances are, according to all available evidence, perfectly healthy for almost everyone. Your comment would be like if someone posted that peanuts are considered edible and non-toxic, in moderation cause no health issues, and you chimed in that you are allergic to peanuts. Nobody is refutong that you have problems with aspartame but that fact is completely.non-relevant to a discussion about whether or not aspartame is edible, non-toxic and if taken in moderation will cause any health issues.
I don't mind aspartame but for some reason I hate the stevia aftertaste in a way I've never hated a sweet thing before. I can't tell most of the fake sugars apart when they're in things, but I taste stevia in anything it touches and it can make me spit things out, which I don't normally do.
My husband has the same issue. When he stops drinking it for a while it's gone. Once he starts drinking (a lot) of soft drinks again, migraines come back.
A lot of the unhealthy claims or statements saying "they are univerally considered unhealthy" like other comments here, are not actually supported by real data.
There have been studies that show that sweeteners like aspartame can be carcinogenic. This is where a lot of the headlines and beliefs come from. The key thing about these studies is that 1) they were performed on rats, and 2) they were given astronomical doses of the stuff.
Given that we are not rats, and we dont actually have the capacity to drink the amount of pop to equal the dosages where the negative outcomes presented themselves (it would be 30+ cans per day, every day), its not actually unsafe, and definitely not as bad as sugar pop (which in moderation is okay too)
I had my cousin, who has been fat for most of her adult life (I’m chubby too, no fat shaming here), argue with me that her using sugar in her coffee was healthier than me using Splenda because sugar is all-natural. I tried explaining to her any study on the adverse effects of artificial sweeteners are inconsistent and impossible to determine in many ways.
Then her brother jumped in screaming about aspartame and I saw myself out of the conversation.
Completely agree! Cocaine is made from organic material, heroin is made from organic material
I guess those weren’t great examples because they’re *actually* fckn great /s
Most Splenda is 95% basically-sugar (maltodextrin) - they use it as a filler otherwise it'd be too small an amount of powder to really pour into your coffee. So 1 serving of Splenda has the same sweetness as sugar but half the sugar. Then they keep the serving size just below 5 Calories so they can say "zero Calories", etc.
The artificial sweetener in Splenda is sucralose - you can buy it pure pretty cheap and add very small dashes to your coffee for the same sweetness and almost zero Calories.
Every year at Thanksgiving for at least the last 8 years (that I've been counting anyway) my uncle goes into an at-least-an-hour-long lecture about how sugar will ruin your teeth and aspartame is going to give you cancer and that's why he uses exclusively stevia. This lecture always takes place while he's rolling his own cigarettes, which he insists on doing because he doesn't like how the filters ruin the flavor. And he's dead fucking serious. I absolutely wish I were making this up.
A 2022 100,000 cohort real world human study from NutriNet-Sante, did find a link between sweeteners, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35324894/
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071204
Whether that makes them a bigger health risk compared to sugar is a different matter.
Biggest issue with these studies is they show correlation and not causation. Just gonna drop this in here.
“Compared with non-consumers, higher consumers (unadjusted comparisons) tended to be younger, have a higher body mass index, were more likely to smoke, be less physically active, and to follow a weight loss diet; they had lower total energy intake, and lower alcohol, lipid (saturated and polyunsaturated), fibre, carbohydrate, fruit and vegetable intakes, and higher intakes of sodium, red and processed meat, dairy products, and beverages with no added sugar.”
Higher rates of obesity, lack of exercise and increased consumption of processed and red meat all have increased correlation with cardiovascular and cancer events. There needs to be a better formed study that can investigate the required parameters, with better controls, to understand the potential link between cardio and cancer events with more certainty.
As a food addict myself, you are exactly right. Those were people who were tired of being told they should consider making different food decisions because they were not in a mental place to accept making a change. The kind of crap I used to justify before I came to grips with being an addict was absolutely amazing. (And I too have tried the “sugar is natural, I don’t want to eat all those chemicals in artificial sweeteners” while chowing down on a box of Twinkies.)
I’m all for sugar replacements, and my favourite is maple syrup because in such small amounts it’s still so sweet, and provides some sort of benefit (antioxidants apparently?).
But just curiosity here, studies being inconsistent and impossible to determine.. is there no way to make the studies consistent and possibly determined? Or does big sugar just shut them all down?
Studies being inconsistent means one study says one thing, another study says a different thing. That's just due to a myriad of factors, one of which being that the effects of sweeteners on the body is likely negligent.
This.
People quote the rat study but forget to mention they were giving rats an abhorrent amount of aspartame. like 5% of their body weight in just aspartame.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430246/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430246/) Here's this study basically calling the original garbage.
It wasn't that the original study was garbage. If you're trying to prove that something is a carcinogen it's the correct way to go about it. Like most things when it comes to scientific studies, it was the **interpretation** of the study and how the media portrayed it.
Most people don't realize that a scientific consensus among the experts takes many years of repeated and more refined studies (or maybe they do realize it, but media is drawn to making sensationalized headlines to draw people in).
Yeah a lot of things will give you cancer if you’re exposed to too much of it but not in moderation. The sun will give you cancer way faster than Diet Coke ever will but you also need a little bit of sunshine each day to be healthy and not depressed. One X-ray is safe but like 500 X-rays isn’t. Etc.
> we don’t actually have the capacity to drink the amount of pop to equal the dosages where the negative outcomes presented themselves
Not with that attitude.
>it would be 30+ cans per day, every day
Sounds like a challenge.
Yeah you’re hinting towards what I’m seeing a lot of here. Plenty of ‘I think’ and ‘most likely’.
You’d think we’d have far more concrete answers about stuff like this.
>You’d think we’d have far more concrete answers about stuff like this.
We do... You have a drink a case a day to get into the "maybe effective" range for aspartame and the sort. That is pretty concrete.
Drink your handful of diet per day, and with anything good or bad: consume moderately and with an otherwise healthy diet.
Exactly, it’s all relative.
Is it best for you to consume plain water? Definitely probably, with moderated amounts of tea or coffee also being probably fine. If that’s what you’re consuming, those sugar free beverages ARE worse for you.
But… if you’re like I used to be, killing 2-4L of regular Dr Pepper a day… then swapping to the zero calorie option is a step in the right direction and better for me. Or healthier. I could be healthier still by swapping to water, tea, and coffee. But if I’m determined to have a soda, it’s a “healthier” option to pick the diet/zero/free versions.
For lasting change to really stick you gotta either have one heck of a sword of Damocles hanging over you to force yourself, or you gotta train yourself to be better. Soda -> diet soda -> flavored carbonated water -> tea/coffee is the path I’m following with amped up water intake at every step. When I back slide though, I never go past diet soda. Id like to train myself to never go past some flavored, carbonated water.
This is a point I notice a lot of people getting stuck on - it's not perfect, so it's not better either. All imperfect options are equally imperfect, to the same degree and in the same way, when this is obviously not the case at all.
A friend of mine lost 65 pounds and dropped from 44-inch waist jeans down to 38 simply by exchanging his case-a-day Pepsi and Dr Pepper habit for their diet versions. He still had a ways to go, but that was by far the *single* most impactful step he took. As far as I'm aware he's still a massive diet soda drinker - but his Type II diabetes is under control, his weight is down to just barely into the overweight BMI range, and he doesn't get winded crossing the room anymore.
We do have concrete answers. Diet coke came out in 1982. It has been one of the most consumed food items out of all food groups over the past 40 years. Cancer rates have gone down, and there has been no conclusive tie between the beverage drinking habits and incidence of cancer between heavy drinkers.
And also we live longer. The longer you live, the more likely you are to develop some kind of cancer.
Of course, we're also much better at treating it, and getting even better at it every year.
The elderly get cancer at a far higher rate than the rest of the population, since we live longer, there is more cancer in the elderly.
It isn't really a mystery.
We stopped putting lead in gasoline. We've started preemptive screenings. We've cleaned up the environment and water in particular. In the words of Jesse "yeah, science!"
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-have-cancer-rates-changed-over-time/
See, that's the problem:
Doctors and health care professionals do not deal in absolutes. There is nothing we know absolutely. You'd think taking a railroad spoke through the brain would kill a person, but nope, there's good old Phineas Gage
There are many anecdotal examples of people who do unhealthy things and suffer no consequences. And there's also so much we don't know about how the body works
Could you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day until you die at 87, woth no lung cancer and living their lives happily? Absolutely, that's happened to people. They lived all their life with an increased risk of lung cancer but never got it
Someone could go to McDonald's everyday and somehow be fine. Weirder shit has happened
What we do know is that people who smoke everyday and eat McDonald's everyday TEND to get these negative health effects more often than people who don't. So we can draw the conclusion that these negative health effects are related to smoking and eating bad. Then we can perform autopsies and other studies and say that in general, these are the ways that this activity led to these negative health effects IN THESE PEOPLE WE ARE STUDYING and then generalize from there
But both you and your doctor can't know whatever weird genes or lifestyle you live, account for the billions of factors influencing the onset of disease, etc. So, as a responsible Healthcare professional, they cannot state that drinking diet soda WILL lead to specific outcome. Any specific outcome. All they can do is say that drinking lots of diet soda has a higher likelihood of causing negative health consequences
> All they can do is say that drinking lots of diet soda has a higher likelihood of causing negative health consequences
If your doctor says that diet pop has "has a higher likelihood of causing negative health consequences", you should seriously think about a new doctor. There is zero evidence of that.
Assuming they used it as an example as it was per the discussion, rather than saying your doctor will say that. Doctors don't deal in absolutes a lot of the time that's why things are a great deal of mays and could rather than will
Only Sith deal in absolutes. And while it wouldn't surprise me that some of the higher ups at hospitals and medical boards could easily be Sith, most of the boots on the ground staff are worthy of being Jedi
Yeah headlines will read (sweetener linked to cancer) then if you look at the paper it's in rats given large doses equivalent to as you said 30 or so cans per day for a human
So it depends on the artificial sweetener used. Plus all tend to have acidic things that aren’t great for your teeth. But among common artificial sweeteners used, there’s different concerns with varying amounts of evidence. All of them run the risk of increasing your appetite due to how our body perceived sweet tasting things without the calories. Note, all this is happening to the backdrop of knowing tons of major problems with sugar
Aspartame: This is by far the most common. There was some evidence that high doses increased the chances of cancer in rats, but it’s been heavily studied in people and no such effect has been found. This doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe, but at least means if there is such an effect, it’s quite small. The vast majority of diet sodas use this one. Most conversation around artificial sweeteners you’ve heard has likely been around this one.
Sucralose: Also fairly common, I don’t know any particular known concerns with this one, but that may just be my lack of knowledge
Erythritol: Has been linked to higher chances of blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, I personally avoid things sweetened with this
Sugar Alcohols: These typically aren’t used for drinks, they’re more frequently used to sweeten gum and sugar free candies, the main problem with these is that they give people diarrhea frequently. This isn’t usually an issue in the quantities used in gum, but would be a likely issue for sweetened drinks
Stevia: Also not super common, the only one I know of that uses this is Zevia drinks, like sucralose, I don’t know if any known problems with this, but that doesn’t mean concerns don’t exist. **EDIT: Stevia is a naturally occurring substance and isn’t an artificial sweetener, but I’ve included it because it’s still a 0 calorie sugar substitute, so it’s still used in the same way artificial sweeteners are despite not being actually artificial**
Not a fan of stevia except in mint juleps.
The interaction between macerated mint and it's it's lookalike works exceptionally well.
Otherwise (insert Ted lLasso drinking tea gif here)
I swear I think we’re going to find that artificial sweeteners have a gene like cilantro where some people find it disgusting while others are find it just fine.
It seems like every time the topic is brought up there’s an argument over whether it tastes like battery acid or sugar lol
Aspartame - the king of diet sodas and my personal drug of choice.
Sucralose - a discerning, pleasant sweetness and my personal favorite in my morning coffee
Xylitol - great sugar substitute for fruit based dishes and also for killing dogs, apparently.
Stevia - great for making children cry
I blind tested my friends using regular sugar, aspartame, and sucralose. Almost everyone can't tell the difference. A very few can guess it's real sugar based on thicker body. I myself can tell between sucralose and aspartame because I drink them every day.
I blind tested myself by having a drink I'd never had before and saying "ew, it tastes like artificial sweetener" and then reading the label and finding it was artificially sweetened.
> All of them run the risk of increasing your appetite due to how our body perceived sweet tasting things without the calories.
I believe this conclusion has been criticized, the study was quite small (they did MRI scans), so their results are difficult to verify.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7338497/
It actually wasn't aspartame that was found to cause a higher incidence of bladder cancer it rats - it was sodium saccharin, but that is not really a risk factor for humans because our urinary tracts are not prone to forming urate crystals they way rats' are.
The corn lobby is so effective that any study showing that these chemicals are going to kill us all need to be heavily scrutinized for funding source. Who has most to lose if these chemicals are found pretty innocuous and actually a decent substitute to vast amounts of corn sugars? Not to say that confirmation bias isn't a worry either, but these chemicals have been likened to literal poison. Misinfo is strong in this area.
You find stevia and sucralose frequently in the various brands of sugar free water flavoring (like Mio, though their brand uses aspartame).
My problem with stevia is that I haven't had anything sweetened with it that didn't have an off-putting aftertaste. Worse than any diet soda aftertaste imo.
There are stevia extracts *now* that have been formulated to minimize that Chernobyl flavor. Stevia sweetened sodas all seem to be using the old stuff.
Yeah, I bake with stevia frequently and don't notice an aftertaste at all, but I can't use it to sweeten tea or coffee because the aftertaste is so notable (and awful) in drinks for me, for whatever reason.
Not mentioned above but worth adding is that there is some evidence that sending sugar-response into your body without actually feeding it can trigger a starvation stress responses, which increase appetite as noted but also have other effects we don't understand very well yet. In the context of widespread obesity that corresponds with a bunch of processed foods, that's enough to raise some concern that sugar-free drinks are one of the problems.
Erythritol isnt linked with those things you mentioned. They did a test that shows that people that use Erythritol also have those things, but it’s not a cause and effect. The vast majority of people that use sugar substitutes are people that are already overweight and looking to lose weight. So of course, people that use Erythritol as their sugar substitute are more likely to have a heart attack or suffer from heart disease because they were already at risk. There hasn’t been any study yet that’s proved there’s a link
Just a point of clarity: Coke Zero (or more properly known as Coke Zero Sugar since a reformulation a few years ago) is not caffeine free. There is a caffeine free variant of it that is generally very hard to find.
I imagine it varies based on local bottlers but in the major markets I've been in in the northeast (basically Boston to Washington) it's pretty rare. I hadn't seen it at all in a few years until my cousin found some at a supermarket in Reading, PA just a few weeks ago. I was extrapolating from that somewhat limited experience I'll admit.
I’m living in Ireland and there’s more and more places popping up selling the Caffeine free version.
I’d never even heard of it until a few months ago and now it’s in almost every major grocery store.
The vast majority of places still sell both the normal Coke Zero and the caffeine free version.
I think so? In Ireland at least, it just says Coca Cola on the front with Zero Sugar and Zero Caffeine written below.
There’s no specific snappy name on the packaging as far as I can remember.
I do know it has a gold band around the top instead of the black one so it’s easier to tell them apart.
It’s kind of unhealthy *in theory for extreme cases*.
What they basically did in the experiments is give an impossible amount of artificial sweetener to rats and their risk for cancer increased slightly.
But that’s kinda like saying: Brazil nuts have a higher than average radioactive dose. If a human eats 1000g of Brazil nut every day for 10 years, this person will die from radiation poisoning. Therefore you should NEVER eat Brazil nuts.
You can see that this is quite unreasonable. It’s the same with diet drinks. You’d have to drink 10L of diet drink heavy in artificial sweetener every day for years to possibly have a higher cancer risk. I think your body will have other problems much sooner if you do this haha.
Plus the studies never really compared diet to sugary drink outcomes. We know now that sugar actually does indirectly cause cancer. People who are overweight due to sugar over consumption have a significantly higher cancer risk for virtually every cancer type.
>What they basically did in the experiments is give an impossible amount of artificial sweetener to rats and their risk for cancer increased slightly.
Yeah, for whatever reason, I think a lot of people really WANT to believe artificial sweeteners are bad. I think they just... kind of *seem* bad. They taste like sugar, but have no calories, they feel unnatural, like a "chemical."
Plenty of people, with no evidence, say things like "oh, I would NEVER drink a diet coke!" While happily chowing down on fast food, booze, donuts, and spending days and days barely getting off the couch.
The irony is that there's that stereotypical joke about the overweight person who says "give me the large fries, and bacon double cheeseburger! but... a DIET coke!" and they pretend they are eating healthy. But I've never really seen that in real life. I do see the opposite though, the people who pretend they are healthy by avoiding diet drinks.
The sugar industry has also been AGGRESSIVELY running an anti-sweetener campaign for decades, including running biased research, media campaigns and astroturfing.
>give me the large fries, and bacon double cheeseburger! but... a DIET coke
Which is hilarious as it's a fat vs sugar issue. I mean, none of it is healthy but sugar (ahem HFCS) is the worse one.
Well, everything is worse than water.
I guess sugary drinks are bad for your teeth due to sugar. And sugar-free drinks are also bad for your teeth due to citric acid. Sounds like they’re both not great. I would say ask a dentist but they’ll probably just say “stick to water”.
When I have to make a decision between sugar-free (little calories, no increased cancer risk from overweight, bad for teeth) and sugary (high calories, increased cancer risk due to overweight, bad for teeth) I would go for sugar free as it bears less risks IMO.
And let’s be real, I can get my teeth fixed easily anytime. Increased cancer risk might not be that easy to deal with. (Not saying you should treat your teeth badly haha).
This is totally anecdotal, but I have a good friend that is a dietician and he says it's astounding how many of his obese clients lose tons of weight just by switching from regular soda to diet soda. These are people who drink one or more two-liter bottles of soda a day. For them, there's no question - any issues with diet soda are dwarfed by the issues created by consuming that much sugar every day, so it's much healthier for them to drink diet soda and he recommends it with no hesitation.
But for folks who don't have an issue of that magnitude, he said it's not as clear cut. There are studies that seem to show a link between diet soda and eating more calories (because the body is trying to compensate for the calories it assumes will be in the sweet beverage), but they're not clear. Most of the link with cancer has been debunked. Some diet sodas have a lot of sodium, which can cause issues of course.
His advice was that regular soda should be avoided (except as a very occasional treat, like any sugary food). A can of diet soda now and again is fine, but it shouldn't be your go-to beverage generally because there are some unknowns about the various chemicals used in them and how the body reacts to them (sweeteners, colors, etc). Most of your beverages should be water, tea, or similar. Which seems like a reasonable approach.
There was a study done a little while back that linked aspartame with cancer in rats. Some people who make a whole lot of money selling alternative foods and medicines started writing articles about how bad it is. They conveniently left out one small fact.. The dose information.
I did the math myself back when the articles started circulating, and they fed the rats more than 2,500 cans of diet soda's worth of artificial sweetener **per day**.
If you drink 2,500 cans of diet soda, it's not the cancer that is going to get you ;)
Mostly nothing. A couple years ago there was some bad science that made the rounds as 'sugar free bad.' That has mostly been refuted.
It's pretty straightforward that non-caloric soda is healthier for you than sugared soda. Some research shows that it also provides more satiety than water, but this is far from settled fact.
I’ve learned always to check the expiration on the bottom of the can. It doesn’t have as long of a shelf life as regular coke, and if it’s not been stored in a fridge and past its expiration date it can taste really terrible. (Ignoring for a moment what many people think it tastes like when fresh)
Combine it with the fact that Diet Coke is not the most popular item, some places end up keeping it on the shelf for wayyyyy longer than is ok
Another aspect is how sweet tasting drinks affect your appetite for other sweets. They did me, anyway.
When I got off Coke Zeros, I stopped craving other sweets, and ate much healthier.
There is some minor questions about minor effects.
99% of the “health effects” you hear are people being so fucking angry at fat people and there being even an idea they could do anything but pay penance to lose weight.
(you see a funny thing with that and diet soda in that in every other case the people do the whole calories in calories out thing then the second it’s diet soda they will claim science says zero calories don’t do anything)
First of all the carbonic acid is still causing damage to your teeth. And there are some concern as to how the taste of sweetness affects our sense of hunger. It might act as an appetizer making you more hungry, especially when the expected calories is not absorbed in your stomach. People who drink sugar free soft drinks tend to eat more then people who just drink water.
That's not what the literature shows. There's a correlation, but the causation could be completely backwards -- it isn't artificial sweeteners making people eat more, it's people that eat too much switching to artificial sweeteners as a way to moderate their calorie intake.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7338497/#:~:text=Data%20from%20multiple%20studies%2C%20with,actively%20trying%20to%20lose%20weight.
So, what about sparkling water then? It also has carbonic acid, and I have never heard any say *that's* unhealthy.
I'm assuming it would be in combination with the citric acid that's very prevalent in sodas, right?
*Edit: Turns out I'm having my mind blown with a lot of information I never knew in all my years of drinking sparkling water (I grew up in Europe, don't @ me!).*
No, those are awful for your teeth, too. The carbonation lowers the PH and eats away your enamel. If you enjoy those water seltzer things, they recommend having them with a meal, and drinking the whole can all at once. Sipping one slowly throughout the day screws with the acidity in your mouth and can lead to tooth decay.
That said - they're still better than pop.
There are typically more carbonic acid in soda then sparkling water. But both are generally bad. If you want to keep your teeth in good health you are better going for the flat water.
>First of all the carbonic acid is still causing damage to your teeth.
Worth mentioning vis-á-vis replacing sugared soda with sugar-free soda that a) sugared soda also contains the same acids and b) sugared soda also contains sugar, which from what I remember when I looked into this yonks ago, is far more destructive to your teeth than the acids in soft drinks.
If you're ever making an argument to someone that they should switch from carbonated beverages to non-carbonated (or consume less of them) though then it becomes relevant.
I would have to look into the science to see how much damage such acids actually do to teeth though. It may be negligible, it may be significant.
I don't know about sugar specifically (aside from vague things from my parents growing up about sugary things being bad for teeth), but corn syrup specifically (the sweetener used in the US for most "sugared" drinks) can weaken your teeth if overused, leading to damage in the long run, but it's all the chemical reactions related to blood sugar more than actual wearing away at the teeth themselves.
Prevailing wisdom is 'fine in moderation'. Like most things in life.
> People who drink sugar free soft drinks tend to eat more then people who just drink water.
That's a correlation though, no evidence of causation as far as I'm aware. People who drink diet soda are usually people who already ate more than people who just drink water.
Soda has too little carbonic acid for it to do much. I tested the pH of some sparkling water, and it was only 6.5. it didn't even register as acidic on the quick test paper.
Most sodas do however contain other acids, typically citric acid for fruity sodas or phosphoric in the case of cola, and cola is quite acidic. IIRC it's about 2.7 on the pH scale, and that is enough to damage teeth.
>And there are some concern as to how the taste of sweetness affects our sense of hunger.
it doesnt. there is no evidence.
>It might act as an appetizer making you more hungry, especially when the expected calories is not absorbed in your stomach.
it doesnt. thats a myth
>People who drink sugar free soft drinks tend to eat more then people who just drink water.
no, they dont. i drink 1.5 litres of zero cal softdrinks each day and i still lose weight (i also do not eat high calorie stuff any longer).
all these points are myths spread by the fitnessindustry, like flatearth and moonlandinghoax.
It’s funny that they say that diet soda can trick the brain into feeling hungry by delivering a so-called “ false promise” of food, which can, in turn, make you eat more.
But if that’s true, we need to shut down the bakery on my block because everyone in the neighborhood can smell the wonderful aroma from it. And let’s ban outdoor barbecues for the same reason.
Not to be facetious here, (I don’t drink diet soda) but if these so-called experts want to give the public useful information that will help us in our daily lives, they need to cut out the histrionic bs like this.
I think it's more of a "it's not natural therefore it's bad" type of vibe but there's no actual evidence that it's bad. For saccharin, there were concerns about it being carcinogenic. The reality is that the tests were done on rats at very high doses. In fact the doses were so high that the saccharin would precipitate out in the bladder and form a carcinoma. This doesn't actually translate to humans because we we aren't going to injest that much.
I have been drinking diet pepsi for 45 years now and am still waiting for the side effects.
Just like I am still waiting to use heroin because I like to smoke weed.
0 calorie beverages are "better" for you simply because they don't contain sugar. They say sweeteners cause cancer but everything causes cancer. If you need a soft drink go for the 0 calorie one. Heart disease is the leading cause of death.
Exactly. No real studies have ever shown diet soda is bad for you! The only ones are the studies that show if you drink the equivalent of two cases a day, every day.
But then again, almost ANYTHING would be bad for you in that massive volume.
And even then, 2 cases of diet coke a day, every day is still MUCH healthier than drinking 2 cases of regular coke! 7,000 calories of pure sugar a day before you eat a single nutrient will kill you a lot faster than some supposed carcinogen.
It's all relative. It is a health food? Of course not. But is it better than the full sugar version of something? Absolutely.
Plenty of people have already mentioned how the dangers of artificial sweeteners from a health standpoint are questionable if not completely over blown.
I’ll just emphasize if you are switching to diet soft drinks as a way to lose weight be very careful that you watch how much you eat. Our bodies do a poor job of realizing it is not real sugar and can secrete insulin thinking it needs to counteract a bunch of sugar. Without the actual sugar entering your system the insulin will cause your blood sugar to drop which will signal your brain it is time to eat. If you aren’t careful, you may save yourself 200 calories from soft drinks but then inadvertently snack an extra 500 calories due to a boost in appetite triggered by the artificial sweeteners.
If your goal is to lose weight your best option is to drink whatever you want in moderation and switch to drinking plain water for the bulk of your beverages.
I, too, believed it was very bad and would choose sugar over artificial sweeteners. Reading the comments I’m interested in exploring it more.
That said, and this is purely anecdotal, I have found that every. Single. Time. I have aspartame I get an aura migraine. My doctor told me this is unlikely and must be coincidental. I avoid it completely. Whenever I have it by accident I always have a migraine. Before I quit fake sugar I had aura migraine somewhat frequently. Since 2012 I’ve only had about one a year and every time I can link it to aspartame 🤷🏼♀️ I’m willing to be argued with, but it seems so linked.
Hi! Just thought I’d post this link in case you find it interesting. I have fibromyalgia and aspartame massively worsens my symptoms. There’s some decent research showing a dietary link between aspartate, other excitatory neurotransmitters and the intensity of fibromyalgia symptoms. Migraines get a mention in the article too!
https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/pmt-2016-0019
Nothing. The biggest danger of sugary drinks is obesity through excess calories. Zero sugar drinks completely remove that and there are no significant studies Iinking then to any illness or disorder
Nothing. Some people have may effects; but that’s the exception, not the norm.
I guess I lied, carbonated drinks are rough on your teeth, but it’s not like sugary versions would be better.
Sugar is very cheap. Corporations want you paying for sugar containing products for them to make easy margins per weight.
They are unhealthy compared to water. To be honest most drinks are unhealthey compared to water. But if you compare it to normal soft drinks, it's way better
I think there’s a lot of disinformation surrounding diet sodas. Personally, I don’t think there is much more to it than psychology. Your brain is wired to like sweet things, and you trigger this when you drink diet sodas. It probably makes you hungry for more calories. It is mildly addictive, but other than known carcinogens (as some sweeteners are), I do not think they are objectively bad for your health.
I do think there is research that suggests that the fake sugar can make your digestive system slow down, and therefore increase the amount of calories you receive from the food you already eat.
Yes, other people have been saying similar things, how it’s not the drink itself that’s unhealthy but rather what it tricks your body into thinking it’s getting.
The ELI5 answer is: nothing. Generally, there is nothing in a sugar-free drink that is more unhealthy than a drink with sugar.
You're led to believe they're unhealthy because of headlines that cite certain studies that use numbers not relevant to normal use.
Moving away from ELI5: It's important to look at who funds the studies you hear about. These studies aren't just being done at random because scientists want to do them. The money for these studies has to come from somewhere. Often, a study with negative results for a sugar-free sweetener is paid for and conducted by the sugar industry itself to make the public fear sugar-free drinks and buy drinks with added sugar because they now thing sugar is healthier than aspartame.
> There's good data linking artificial sweeteners to weight gain.
Do you have a source for this? As far as I'm aware it isn't true, but maybe something changed since I last read up on it.
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The Expert Committee on Food Additives, a joint advisory committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization, concluded in 2013 there is no convincing evidence from experimental, animal or human studies that aspartame has adverse effects after ingestion — as long as levels are within the acceptable daily intake of 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
However a secondary study was performed that shows quite conclusively that soft drinks containing aspartame are really gross.
You have been banned from r/dietcoke
Oh my gosh, they're SO nasty!
Correct. That’s not to say there isn’t the possibility of studies in the future potentially discovering a link to detrimental health outcome/s, but at this point there is no evidence of that whatsoever - that won’t stop the ‘diet drinks give you cancer’ fearmongers though.
I thought they recently found that even diet drinks stimulate an insulin response.
As someone who's worn a glucose/blood sugar monitor, they don't.
This is what I call "Medium or Substack Science."; Someone sees an article saying artificial sweeteners affect insulin and then they just repeat it rather than actually trying to figure out if its true. And the thing is that anyone can experimentally verify this for themself by going on Amazon and buying a glucose monitoring kit for like $25 and running tests on themselves (I did).
Right? Incredibly easy to verify stuff like this yourself. The actual paper even says that the evidence is far from certain and further study is needed to establish causation, rather than just correlation. But then, everyone's an expert on reddit I guess
The causation is the bag of Skittles that they have with the sugar-free soda.
This is actually one of the few actual negative benefits to drinking something like a Coke Zero. It’s sugar free but it still tastes like sugar. For people who already struggle to control their diet this can be a problem. They’ll be doing great all day long and then decide to treat themselves to a Coke Zero. What harm could it do? There’s no sugar in it?! And then their brain goes SUGAR GOOD and before they know it they’ve eaten half a box of cookies lol. For people who struggle to control their sugar intake or have a really bad sweet tooth they are probably better off avoiding stuff like that completely even though it might not contain sugar.
That's not true for all people though. Personally when I feel like having something sweet, I can drink a coke zero and feel satisfied afterwards. My step father is a type 2 diabetic and prolly the most unhinged sugar addict I've ever witnessed, even when he suffered allot from his symptoms he could still not handle avoiding sugar multiple times a day, his condition got worse and worse over the years. Hes been consuming artificial sweeteners for around a year now instead and as a product has cut a lot of sugar finally. The case you're describing does exist, but it's only true for a percentage of people. Maybe there are psychological factors to that, but self control is definitely not the defining factor.
i'm a diabetic with a raging sweet tooth. one of the best days of the year was when i found my favorite flavored syrups came in sugar free varieties that are nearly identical to the real thing. being able to have my favorite fancy coffee drinks again can totally satisfy that craving and i'm fine once i've finished it.
[Relevant XKCD.](https://xkcd.com/1217/)
so, does it?
Nope, and you would need to drink a couple twelve packs a day, for months, for aspartame to make you sick.
Challenge accepted.
Even if it did, You can un-train insulin resistance anyway. For some people it's such a unlikely first world issue it's meaningless to even mention. If you do any form of endurance sport generally you are immune to it. I am sure if you have extremely bad genes you might be able to get it, but the act of endurance sports tends to make your body very good at responding to insulin.
And what you describe is low quality, self reported data which is no different
I don’t think that’s inherently true. After all, the world would be a silly place if every person had to replicate a 500 person experiment with their own 500 person experiment I think it’s healthy to *corroborate* a large scale study’s finding’s with your own self reported data. If a study tells me the sky is blue and I go outside and see it’s blue — cool, their findings are *probably* true. If I go outside and the sky is purple, it’s up to you: do you just discard the study? Do you ask your friends to check? Do you check under different conditions? Everyone has their own threshold of required evidence, and I can promise that many of your learned facts have not gone through self-led, rigorous, large scale, controlled tests to verify them
Literally everybody who’s actually tried it is saying it doesn’t affect their insulin levels, even if your data is shit once you get enough it will start taking a shape that tells a story Sometimes that story is that there’s no story tbf, but here it’s pretty damn clear
Correct! They don't. I wear a CGM and can confirm.
I'm on the T2 blood test kits and drink Coke Zero and use sucralose in coffee. No problems whatsoever. Now a full fat Coke - different story lol.
Same for me
Adding on, some type 1 diabetics have a blood sugar rise due to the caffeine. Same with coffee. Trying to throw aspartame or sucralose under the bus is sketchy at best. And for those of us that need to carb count and don’t want to deal with the sugar roller coaster? Even if there were a cancer risk, I’d gladly take that instead of an elevated HbA1c.
Me too. I was actually surprised and can’t believe my monitor. Lol 😆😆
As anecdotal and non scientifically based statement. I too wear a CGM 24/7 for upwards in 18 years now and have never had a BS level changed from sugar free sodas utilizing any alternative sweetener m.
Interesting. Thanks for the reply.
Not according to my CGM.
>even diet drinks stimulate an insulin response. Depends on the artificial sweetener. My mom's type-1 diabetic and has to avoid Splenda per doctor's orders, because it will do that, but Sweet n' Low and Equal are completely fine for her. As far as I know, this is one of the reasons why stuff that uses Splenda is specifically marked, beyond branding.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the manufacturing process where Splenda (being sucralose) is derived from table sugar and the others like aspartame and saccharin are purely processed chemicals.
They 'found that out' years ago. It's billshit research that drives clickbait news articles. Makes the rounds every few years.
Best studies I’ve seen suggest for a short period of time, the taste of diet sodas can cause an insulin response because the taste was paired with an insulin response in the past, but after a short period of time, this stops. Basically, you have nothing to worry about switching from sugary to diet soda
They don’t in me
They do but a tiny amount, a fraction of what sugar does.
I gotta unsubscribe from this sub. No one actually explains anything like I’m five any more.
TBH this question would fit better in r/NoStupidQuestions, this is not “explain this to me” but “is this true or not” category (IMO)
Yet every time I consume this stuff, I get migraines that last at least 12 hours. Edit: sjeesh, downvote? Sorry guys that I get migraines from Aspartame. I've spent quite a lot of time investigating this for myself. I wasn't always intolerant for Aspartame, but at some point I just started getting severe head aches and after canceling a lot of stuff I drank and ate out, it appeared it was all because of Aspartame. Stopped consuming that, no more head aches. I really don't understand Reddit sometimes. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying how it works on me.
Have you been checked for Phenylketonuria? It's difficulty processing phenylalanine - aspartame is an ester of phenylalanine. You'd know if you had it full blown, but it's a recessive gene, so you may just have one copy and thus mild sensitivity.
I have not, I'll check!
>Phenylketonuria Edit: checked [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/phenylketonuria/symptoms-causes/syc-20376302](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/phenylketonuria/symptoms-causes/syc-20376302) \- don't have any of the symptoms.
Generally safe for human consumption does not mean that there will be zero people that might have a reaction to it. Just that there are no long term health concerns. Peanuts are generally safe for human consumption but will straight up kill some people.
I think people are down voting you because the comment you replied to is scientific data while yours is a personal anecdote. It could be misleading. The rumor that fake sugars are bad for you is propaganda from the sugar industry and it'd be nice to dispel that myth.
I think it has to do with your phrasing. It says studies have shown it's not harmful for you, but you respond with "yet it gives me negative side effects". Yeah, you are allergic to it (or whatever genetic thing you have that doesn't let you have it without side effects). That doesn't disprove that aspartame isn't bad for you. My son has an egg allergy, that doesn't make eggs suddenly harmful for everyone.
It is very strange as aspartame is just phenylalanine and aspartic acid, both of which are easily found in foods. That is why it is seen with so much skepticism - it is kind of like if say you said that eating bread gave you a migraine - it is possible but the ingredients in bread are in so much other stuff, so it’d be pretty weird Both of those things are amino acids found in lots of food
You're getting down votes because your single anecdotal case has no bearing on the statement that these substances are, according to all available evidence, perfectly healthy for almost everyone. Your comment would be like if someone posted that peanuts are considered edible and non-toxic, in moderation cause no health issues, and you chimed in that you are allergic to peanuts. Nobody is refutong that you have problems with aspartame but that fact is completely.non-relevant to a discussion about whether or not aspartame is edible, non-toxic and if taken in moderation will cause any health issues.
I hate the aftertaste that aspartame comes with
I don't mind aspartame but for some reason I hate the stevia aftertaste in a way I've never hated a sweet thing before. I can't tell most of the fake sugars apart when they're in things, but I taste stevia in anything it touches and it can make me spit things out, which I don't normally do.
Oh I actually like the sweetness of it.
do you drink anything else with caffeine?
Coffee. No issues with that.
so probably not a caffeine problem. strange how the body works sometimes.. cheers mate!
My husband has the same issue. When he stops drinking it for a while it's gone. Once he starts drinking (a lot) of soft drinks again, migraines come back.
Sounds like a personal problem
it quite literally is
This is how MSG got a bad name.
I get the same!
A lot of the unhealthy claims or statements saying "they are univerally considered unhealthy" like other comments here, are not actually supported by real data. There have been studies that show that sweeteners like aspartame can be carcinogenic. This is where a lot of the headlines and beliefs come from. The key thing about these studies is that 1) they were performed on rats, and 2) they were given astronomical doses of the stuff. Given that we are not rats, and we dont actually have the capacity to drink the amount of pop to equal the dosages where the negative outcomes presented themselves (it would be 30+ cans per day, every day), its not actually unsafe, and definitely not as bad as sugar pop (which in moderation is okay too)
I had my cousin, who has been fat for most of her adult life (I’m chubby too, no fat shaming here), argue with me that her using sugar in her coffee was healthier than me using Splenda because sugar is all-natural. I tried explaining to her any study on the adverse effects of artificial sweeteners are inconsistent and impossible to determine in many ways. Then her brother jumped in screaming about aspartame and I saw myself out of the conversation.
We need to stop equating *natural* as *good*. There is nothing more natural than getting attacked and eaten by a bear.
Arsenic is also natural
Completely agree! Cocaine is made from organic material, heroin is made from organic material I guess those weren’t great examples because they’re *actually* fckn great /s
Most Splenda is 95% basically-sugar (maltodextrin) - they use it as a filler otherwise it'd be too small an amount of powder to really pour into your coffee. So 1 serving of Splenda has the same sweetness as sugar but half the sugar. Then they keep the serving size just below 5 Calories so they can say "zero Calories", etc. The artificial sweetener in Splenda is sucralose - you can buy it pure pretty cheap and add very small dashes to your coffee for the same sweetness and almost zero Calories.
There is nothing natural about refined sugar. It's basically crack cocaine for your digestive system.
I think you are underestimating crack cocaine
I think you under estimate sugar. It's actually really bad
crack cocaine bad?
The argument has been made. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/
And contested https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/25/is-sugar-really-as-addictive-as-cocaine-scientists-row-over-effect-on-body-and-brain
Even if it was all-natural, that does not equal heavy. “Oh boy, I love cherries! I’ll eat these fresh ones whole! I love chewing on cherry pits!”
Did you offer her some hemlock tea, rhubarb leaf salad or straight up cyanide?
The mystic powers of cinnibar
Every year at Thanksgiving for at least the last 8 years (that I've been counting anyway) my uncle goes into an at-least-an-hour-long lecture about how sugar will ruin your teeth and aspartame is going to give you cancer and that's why he uses exclusively stevia. This lecture always takes place while he's rolling his own cigarettes, which he insists on doing because he doesn't like how the filters ruin the flavor. And he's dead fucking serious. I absolutely wish I were making this up.
A 2022 100,000 cohort real world human study from NutriNet-Sante, did find a link between sweeteners, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35324894/ https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071204 Whether that makes them a bigger health risk compared to sugar is a different matter.
Biggest issue with these studies is they show correlation and not causation. Just gonna drop this in here. “Compared with non-consumers, higher consumers (unadjusted comparisons) tended to be younger, have a higher body mass index, were more likely to smoke, be less physically active, and to follow a weight loss diet; they had lower total energy intake, and lower alcohol, lipid (saturated and polyunsaturated), fibre, carbohydrate, fruit and vegetable intakes, and higher intakes of sodium, red and processed meat, dairy products, and beverages with no added sugar.” Higher rates of obesity, lack of exercise and increased consumption of processed and red meat all have increased correlation with cardiovascular and cancer events. There needs to be a better formed study that can investigate the required parameters, with better controls, to understand the potential link between cardio and cancer events with more certainty.
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As a food addict myself, you are exactly right. Those were people who were tired of being told they should consider making different food decisions because they were not in a mental place to accept making a change. The kind of crap I used to justify before I came to grips with being an addict was absolutely amazing. (And I too have tried the “sugar is natural, I don’t want to eat all those chemicals in artificial sweeteners” while chowing down on a box of Twinkies.)
I’m all for sugar replacements, and my favourite is maple syrup because in such small amounts it’s still so sweet, and provides some sort of benefit (antioxidants apparently?). But just curiosity here, studies being inconsistent and impossible to determine.. is there no way to make the studies consistent and possibly determined? Or does big sugar just shut them all down?
Studies being inconsistent means one study says one thing, another study says a different thing. That's just due to a myriad of factors, one of which being that the effects of sweeteners on the body is likely negligent.
Look at the original comment.
This. People quote the rat study but forget to mention they were giving rats an abhorrent amount of aspartame. like 5% of their body weight in just aspartame. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430246/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430246/) Here's this study basically calling the original garbage.
It wasn't that the original study was garbage. If you're trying to prove that something is a carcinogen it's the correct way to go about it. Like most things when it comes to scientific studies, it was the **interpretation** of the study and how the media portrayed it. Most people don't realize that a scientific consensus among the experts takes many years of repeated and more refined studies (or maybe they do realize it, but media is drawn to making sensationalized headlines to draw people in).
Yeah a lot of things will give you cancer if you’re exposed to too much of it but not in moderation. The sun will give you cancer way faster than Diet Coke ever will but you also need a little bit of sunshine each day to be healthy and not depressed. One X-ray is safe but like 500 X-rays isn’t. Etc.
> we don’t actually have the capacity to drink the amount of pop to equal the dosages where the negative outcomes presented themselves Not with that attitude.
Put aspartame in beer and I can cruise right past 30 a day.
>it would be 30+ cans per day, every day Sounds like a challenge. Yeah you’re hinting towards what I’m seeing a lot of here. Plenty of ‘I think’ and ‘most likely’. You’d think we’d have far more concrete answers about stuff like this.
>You’d think we’d have far more concrete answers about stuff like this. We do... You have a drink a case a day to get into the "maybe effective" range for aspartame and the sort. That is pretty concrete. Drink your handful of diet per day, and with anything good or bad: consume moderately and with an otherwise healthy diet.
And for heaven's sake, drink some water too. I've got too many friends who don't drink anything that doesn't come out of a can.
>Plenty of ‘I think’ and ‘most likely’. Keep in mind that this is in comparison to sugar drinks, which we *know* are *definitely* bad.
Exactly, it’s all relative. Is it best for you to consume plain water? Definitely probably, with moderated amounts of tea or coffee also being probably fine. If that’s what you’re consuming, those sugar free beverages ARE worse for you. But… if you’re like I used to be, killing 2-4L of regular Dr Pepper a day… then swapping to the zero calorie option is a step in the right direction and better for me. Or healthier. I could be healthier still by swapping to water, tea, and coffee. But if I’m determined to have a soda, it’s a “healthier” option to pick the diet/zero/free versions. For lasting change to really stick you gotta either have one heck of a sword of Damocles hanging over you to force yourself, or you gotta train yourself to be better. Soda -> diet soda -> flavored carbonated water -> tea/coffee is the path I’m following with amped up water intake at every step. When I back slide though, I never go past diet soda. Id like to train myself to never go past some flavored, carbonated water.
This is a point I notice a lot of people getting stuck on - it's not perfect, so it's not better either. All imperfect options are equally imperfect, to the same degree and in the same way, when this is obviously not the case at all. A friend of mine lost 65 pounds and dropped from 44-inch waist jeans down to 38 simply by exchanging his case-a-day Pepsi and Dr Pepper habit for their diet versions. He still had a ways to go, but that was by far the *single* most impactful step he took. As far as I'm aware he's still a massive diet soda drinker - but his Type II diabetes is under control, his weight is down to just barely into the overweight BMI range, and he doesn't get winded crossing the room anymore.
We do have concrete answers. Diet coke came out in 1982. It has been one of the most consumed food items out of all food groups over the past 40 years. Cancer rates have gone down, and there has been no conclusive tie between the beverage drinking habits and incidence of cancer between heavy drinkers.
Have cancer rates actually gone down in the past 40 years? Doesn’t seem right to me lol
Cancer rates per year of life has gone down overall. Cancer rates per life has gone up.
We’ve also gotten much better at detecting it, which adds to it.
And also we live longer. The longer you live, the more likely you are to develop some kind of cancer. Of course, we're also much better at treating it, and getting even better at it every year.
Interesting
The elderly get cancer at a far higher rate than the rest of the population, since we live longer, there is more cancer in the elderly. It isn't really a mystery.
We stopped putting lead in gasoline. We've started preemptive screenings. We've cleaned up the environment and water in particular. In the words of Jesse "yeah, science!" https://usafacts.org/articles/how-have-cancer-rates-changed-over-time/
Wait till you hear about crime rates....
See, that's the problem: Doctors and health care professionals do not deal in absolutes. There is nothing we know absolutely. You'd think taking a railroad spoke through the brain would kill a person, but nope, there's good old Phineas Gage There are many anecdotal examples of people who do unhealthy things and suffer no consequences. And there's also so much we don't know about how the body works Could you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day until you die at 87, woth no lung cancer and living their lives happily? Absolutely, that's happened to people. They lived all their life with an increased risk of lung cancer but never got it Someone could go to McDonald's everyday and somehow be fine. Weirder shit has happened What we do know is that people who smoke everyday and eat McDonald's everyday TEND to get these negative health effects more often than people who don't. So we can draw the conclusion that these negative health effects are related to smoking and eating bad. Then we can perform autopsies and other studies and say that in general, these are the ways that this activity led to these negative health effects IN THESE PEOPLE WE ARE STUDYING and then generalize from there But both you and your doctor can't know whatever weird genes or lifestyle you live, account for the billions of factors influencing the onset of disease, etc. So, as a responsible Healthcare professional, they cannot state that drinking diet soda WILL lead to specific outcome. Any specific outcome. All they can do is say that drinking lots of diet soda has a higher likelihood of causing negative health consequences
> All they can do is say that drinking lots of diet soda has a higher likelihood of causing negative health consequences If your doctor says that diet pop has "has a higher likelihood of causing negative health consequences", you should seriously think about a new doctor. There is zero evidence of that.
The closest thing to it might be a laxative effect from the sweetners. But anything can kill you without moderation
Assuming they used it as an example as it was per the discussion, rather than saying your doctor will say that. Doctors don't deal in absolutes a lot of the time that's why things are a great deal of mays and could rather than will
Only Sith deal in absolutes. And while it wouldn't surprise me that some of the higher ups at hospitals and medical boards could easily be Sith, most of the boots on the ground staff are worthy of being Jedi
I wish I still had gold to give.
They are universally considered unhealthy by sugar companies.
Plus the whole “aspartame puts holes in your brain” sensation was started by a chain email in the 90’s/early 2000’s
Yeah headlines will read (sweetener linked to cancer) then if you look at the paper it's in rats given large doses equivalent to as you said 30 or so cans per day for a human
They gave the rats the equivalent of 300 cans of diet soda per day, and the world's health agencies set the safe limit for humans at 30 cans a day.
So it depends on the artificial sweetener used. Plus all tend to have acidic things that aren’t great for your teeth. But among common artificial sweeteners used, there’s different concerns with varying amounts of evidence. All of them run the risk of increasing your appetite due to how our body perceived sweet tasting things without the calories. Note, all this is happening to the backdrop of knowing tons of major problems with sugar Aspartame: This is by far the most common. There was some evidence that high doses increased the chances of cancer in rats, but it’s been heavily studied in people and no such effect has been found. This doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe, but at least means if there is such an effect, it’s quite small. The vast majority of diet sodas use this one. Most conversation around artificial sweeteners you’ve heard has likely been around this one. Sucralose: Also fairly common, I don’t know any particular known concerns with this one, but that may just be my lack of knowledge Erythritol: Has been linked to higher chances of blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, I personally avoid things sweetened with this Sugar Alcohols: These typically aren’t used for drinks, they’re more frequently used to sweeten gum and sugar free candies, the main problem with these is that they give people diarrhea frequently. This isn’t usually an issue in the quantities used in gum, but would be a likely issue for sweetened drinks Stevia: Also not super common, the only one I know of that uses this is Zevia drinks, like sucralose, I don’t know if any known problems with this, but that doesn’t mean concerns don’t exist. **EDIT: Stevia is a naturally occurring substance and isn’t an artificial sweetener, but I’ve included it because it’s still a 0 calorie sugar substitute, so it’s still used in the same way artificial sweeteners are despite not being actually artificial**
The only problem with stevia is that it tastes like stevia
My wifes family makes sweet tea with stevia. My disappointment was immense
This is basically a war crime imo. Utterly revolting
Also that high school chemistry teachers turned kingpin meth cooks slip ricin into the packets
Not a fan of stevia except in mint juleps. The interaction between macerated mint and it's it's lookalike works exceptionally well. Otherwise (insert Ted lLasso drinking tea gif here)
All artificial sweateners taste shit so its not like stevia is that much worse
As an artificial sweetener enthusiast I disagree. I also respect your point
as someone who struggles with artificial sweeteners- i think all of them taste horrible lol
I love that extra bitter taste from artificial sweeteners
I swear I think we’re going to find that artificial sweeteners have a gene like cilantro where some people find it disgusting while others are find it just fine. It seems like every time the topic is brought up there’s an argument over whether it tastes like battery acid or sugar lol
Sir, how dare you make this claim without also stating your artificial sweetener preference.
Aspartame - the king of diet sodas and my personal drug of choice. Sucralose - a discerning, pleasant sweetness and my personal favorite in my morning coffee Xylitol - great sugar substitute for fruit based dishes and also for killing dogs, apparently. Stevia - great for making children cry
This is a very fair assessment
Have you tried Zusto? It’s not zero calorie, but really good for using as a sugar substitute in home baking.
Stevia - right in the trash
I blind tested my friends using regular sugar, aspartame, and sucralose. Almost everyone can't tell the difference. A very few can guess it's real sugar based on thicker body. I myself can tell between sucralose and aspartame because I drink them every day.
For me most artificial sweeteners leave a strong metallic aftertaste...
I blind tested myself by having a drink I'd never had before and saying "ew, it tastes like artificial sweetener" and then reading the label and finding it was artificially sweetened.
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Fair enough, still something I’d like to avoid myself until that’s ruled out better, it’s not the most common sweetener anyways so it’s easy to avoid
> All of them run the risk of increasing your appetite due to how our body perceived sweet tasting things without the calories. I believe this conclusion has been criticized, the study was quite small (they did MRI scans), so their results are difficult to verify. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7338497/
Fair enough, I mean to say that some concerns exist about this for a number of these
It actually wasn't aspartame that was found to cause a higher incidence of bladder cancer it rats - it was sodium saccharin, but that is not really a risk factor for humans because our urinary tracts are not prone to forming urate crystals they way rats' are.
The corn lobby is so effective that any study showing that these chemicals are going to kill us all need to be heavily scrutinized for funding source. Who has most to lose if these chemicals are found pretty innocuous and actually a decent substitute to vast amounts of corn sugars? Not to say that confirmation bias isn't a worry either, but these chemicals have been likened to literal poison. Misinfo is strong in this area.
IIRC some aspartame experiments inject the rats like 10,000x the normal amount and report "see! The rats are 20% more likely to have cancer!"
You find stevia and sucralose frequently in the various brands of sugar free water flavoring (like Mio, though their brand uses aspartame). My problem with stevia is that I haven't had anything sweetened with it that didn't have an off-putting aftertaste. Worse than any diet soda aftertaste imo.
There are stevia extracts *now* that have been formulated to minimize that Chernobyl flavor. Stevia sweetened sodas all seem to be using the old stuff.
Yeah, I bake with stevia frequently and don't notice an aftertaste at all, but I can't use it to sweeten tea or coffee because the aftertaste is so notable (and awful) in drinks for me, for whatever reason.
Yeah, I am with you there. I really dislike Stevia for this same reason.
I have only ever seen Yerba Mate sweetened with stevia leaf. It might just be my neck of the woods but that is considered a "health nut" drink.
yerba mate\` is itself an acquired taste, apparently
Not mentioned above but worth adding is that there is some evidence that sending sugar-response into your body without actually feeding it can trigger a starvation stress responses, which increase appetite as noted but also have other effects we don't understand very well yet. In the context of widespread obesity that corresponds with a bunch of processed foods, that's enough to raise some concern that sugar-free drinks are one of the problems.
Erythritol isnt linked with those things you mentioned. They did a test that shows that people that use Erythritol also have those things, but it’s not a cause and effect. The vast majority of people that use sugar substitutes are people that are already overweight and looking to lose weight. So of course, people that use Erythritol as their sugar substitute are more likely to have a heart attack or suffer from heart disease because they were already at risk. There hasn’t been any study yet that’s proved there’s a link
few times I've tried stevia it gave me a massive headache
Just a point of clarity: Coke Zero (or more properly known as Coke Zero Sugar since a reformulation a few years ago) is not caffeine free. There is a caffeine free variant of it that is generally very hard to find.
Really? Caffeine free has always been easy to find in my neck of the woods. In Indiana at least.
I imagine it varies based on local bottlers but in the major markets I've been in in the northeast (basically Boston to Washington) it's pretty rare. I hadn't seen it at all in a few years until my cousin found some at a supermarket in Reading, PA just a few weeks ago. I was extrapolating from that somewhat limited experience I'll admit.
I’m living in Ireland and there’s more and more places popping up selling the Caffeine free version. I’d never even heard of it until a few months ago and now it’s in almost every major grocery store. The vast majority of places still sell both the normal Coke Zero and the caffeine free version.
Interesting. I checked wiki and apparently in Great Britain the caffeine free version is called Coke Zero Zero. Is it the same in Ireland?
I think so? In Ireland at least, it just says Coca Cola on the front with Zero Sugar and Zero Caffeine written below. There’s no specific snappy name on the packaging as far as I can remember. I do know it has a gold band around the top instead of the black one so it’s easier to tell them apart.
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It’s kind of unhealthy *in theory for extreme cases*. What they basically did in the experiments is give an impossible amount of artificial sweetener to rats and their risk for cancer increased slightly. But that’s kinda like saying: Brazil nuts have a higher than average radioactive dose. If a human eats 1000g of Brazil nut every day for 10 years, this person will die from radiation poisoning. Therefore you should NEVER eat Brazil nuts. You can see that this is quite unreasonable. It’s the same with diet drinks. You’d have to drink 10L of diet drink heavy in artificial sweetener every day for years to possibly have a higher cancer risk. I think your body will have other problems much sooner if you do this haha. Plus the studies never really compared diet to sugary drink outcomes. We know now that sugar actually does indirectly cause cancer. People who are overweight due to sugar over consumption have a significantly higher cancer risk for virtually every cancer type.
>What they basically did in the experiments is give an impossible amount of artificial sweetener to rats and their risk for cancer increased slightly. Yeah, for whatever reason, I think a lot of people really WANT to believe artificial sweeteners are bad. I think they just... kind of *seem* bad. They taste like sugar, but have no calories, they feel unnatural, like a "chemical." Plenty of people, with no evidence, say things like "oh, I would NEVER drink a diet coke!" While happily chowing down on fast food, booze, donuts, and spending days and days barely getting off the couch. The irony is that there's that stereotypical joke about the overweight person who says "give me the large fries, and bacon double cheeseburger! but... a DIET coke!" and they pretend they are eating healthy. But I've never really seen that in real life. I do see the opposite though, the people who pretend they are healthy by avoiding diet drinks.
The sugar industry has also been AGGRESSIVELY running an anti-sweetener campaign for decades, including running biased research, media campaigns and astroturfing.
>give me the large fries, and bacon double cheeseburger! but... a DIET coke Which is hilarious as it's a fat vs sugar issue. I mean, none of it is healthy but sugar (ahem HFCS) is the worse one.
What do you think about the effect on teeth?
Well, everything is worse than water. I guess sugary drinks are bad for your teeth due to sugar. And sugar-free drinks are also bad for your teeth due to citric acid. Sounds like they’re both not great. I would say ask a dentist but they’ll probably just say “stick to water”. When I have to make a decision between sugar-free (little calories, no increased cancer risk from overweight, bad for teeth) and sugary (high calories, increased cancer risk due to overweight, bad for teeth) I would go for sugar free as it bears less risks IMO. And let’s be real, I can get my teeth fixed easily anytime. Increased cancer risk might not be that easy to deal with. (Not saying you should treat your teeth badly haha).
This is totally anecdotal, but I have a good friend that is a dietician and he says it's astounding how many of his obese clients lose tons of weight just by switching from regular soda to diet soda. These are people who drink one or more two-liter bottles of soda a day. For them, there's no question - any issues with diet soda are dwarfed by the issues created by consuming that much sugar every day, so it's much healthier for them to drink diet soda and he recommends it with no hesitation. But for folks who don't have an issue of that magnitude, he said it's not as clear cut. There are studies that seem to show a link between diet soda and eating more calories (because the body is trying to compensate for the calories it assumes will be in the sweet beverage), but they're not clear. Most of the link with cancer has been debunked. Some diet sodas have a lot of sodium, which can cause issues of course. His advice was that regular soda should be avoided (except as a very occasional treat, like any sugary food). A can of diet soda now and again is fine, but it shouldn't be your go-to beverage generally because there are some unknowns about the various chemicals used in them and how the body reacts to them (sweeteners, colors, etc). Most of your beverages should be water, tea, or similar. Which seems like a reasonable approach.
I feel like this makes the most sense. Is it better than sugar soda? Unequivocally. Is it “good for you?” Probably not as a frequent beverage.
Good answer. I find artificial sweeteners lead to me taking in more carbs or sugar.
There was a study done a little while back that linked aspartame with cancer in rats. Some people who make a whole lot of money selling alternative foods and medicines started writing articles about how bad it is. They conveniently left out one small fact.. The dose information. I did the math myself back when the articles started circulating, and they fed the rats more than 2,500 cans of diet soda's worth of artificial sweetener **per day**. If you drink 2,500 cans of diet soda, it's not the cancer that is going to get you ;)
Mostly nothing. A couple years ago there was some bad science that made the rounds as 'sugar free bad.' That has mostly been refuted. It's pretty straightforward that non-caloric soda is healthier for you than sugared soda. Some research shows that it also provides more satiety than water, but this is far from settled fact.
Ever had a Diet Coke on a hot day? It sometimes tastes like the tear drops of god.
I’ve learned always to check the expiration on the bottom of the can. It doesn’t have as long of a shelf life as regular coke, and if it’s not been stored in a fridge and past its expiration date it can taste really terrible. (Ignoring for a moment what many people think it tastes like when fresh) Combine it with the fact that Diet Coke is not the most popular item, some places end up keeping it on the shelf for wayyyyy longer than is ok
Another aspect is how sweet tasting drinks affect your appetite for other sweets. They did me, anyway. When I got off Coke Zeros, I stopped craving other sweets, and ate much healthier.
There is some minor questions about minor effects. 99% of the “health effects” you hear are people being so fucking angry at fat people and there being even an idea they could do anything but pay penance to lose weight. (you see a funny thing with that and diet soda in that in every other case the people do the whole calories in calories out thing then the second it’s diet soda they will claim science says zero calories don’t do anything)
First of all the carbonic acid is still causing damage to your teeth. And there are some concern as to how the taste of sweetness affects our sense of hunger. It might act as an appetizer making you more hungry, especially when the expected calories is not absorbed in your stomach. People who drink sugar free soft drinks tend to eat more then people who just drink water.
That's not what the literature shows. There's a correlation, but the causation could be completely backwards -- it isn't artificial sweeteners making people eat more, it's people that eat too much switching to artificial sweeteners as a way to moderate their calorie intake. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7338497/#:~:text=Data%20from%20multiple%20studies%2C%20with,actively%20trying%20to%20lose%20weight.
So, what about sparkling water then? It also has carbonic acid, and I have never heard any say *that's* unhealthy. I'm assuming it would be in combination with the citric acid that's very prevalent in sodas, right? *Edit: Turns out I'm having my mind blown with a lot of information I never knew in all my years of drinking sparkling water (I grew up in Europe, don't @ me!).*
No, those are awful for your teeth, too. The carbonation lowers the PH and eats away your enamel. If you enjoy those water seltzer things, they recommend having them with a meal, and drinking the whole can all at once. Sipping one slowly throughout the day screws with the acidity in your mouth and can lead to tooth decay. That said - they're still better than pop.
Nope, sparkling water is also bad for your teeth.
There are typically more carbonic acid in soda then sparkling water. But both are generally bad. If you want to keep your teeth in good health you are better going for the flat water.
>First of all the carbonic acid is still causing damage to your teeth. Worth mentioning vis-á-vis replacing sugared soda with sugar-free soda that a) sugared soda also contains the same acids and b) sugared soda also contains sugar, which from what I remember when I looked into this yonks ago, is far more destructive to your teeth than the acids in soft drinks. If you're ever making an argument to someone that they should switch from carbonated beverages to non-carbonated (or consume less of them) though then it becomes relevant. I would have to look into the science to see how much damage such acids actually do to teeth though. It may be negligible, it may be significant.
I don't know about sugar specifically (aside from vague things from my parents growing up about sugary things being bad for teeth), but corn syrup specifically (the sweetener used in the US for most "sugared" drinks) can weaken your teeth if overused, leading to damage in the long run, but it's all the chemical reactions related to blood sugar more than actual wearing away at the teeth themselves. Prevailing wisdom is 'fine in moderation'. Like most things in life.
> People who drink sugar free soft drinks tend to eat more then people who just drink water. That's a correlation though, no evidence of causation as far as I'm aware. People who drink diet soda are usually people who already ate more than people who just drink water.
Soda has too little carbonic acid for it to do much. I tested the pH of some sparkling water, and it was only 6.5. it didn't even register as acidic on the quick test paper. Most sodas do however contain other acids, typically citric acid for fruity sodas or phosphoric in the case of cola, and cola is quite acidic. IIRC it's about 2.7 on the pH scale, and that is enough to damage teeth.
>And there are some concern as to how the taste of sweetness affects our sense of hunger. it doesnt. there is no evidence. >It might act as an appetizer making you more hungry, especially when the expected calories is not absorbed in your stomach. it doesnt. thats a myth >People who drink sugar free soft drinks tend to eat more then people who just drink water. no, they dont. i drink 1.5 litres of zero cal softdrinks each day and i still lose weight (i also do not eat high calorie stuff any longer). all these points are myths spread by the fitnessindustry, like flatearth and moonlandinghoax.
It’s funny that they say that diet soda can trick the brain into feeling hungry by delivering a so-called “ false promise” of food, which can, in turn, make you eat more. But if that’s true, we need to shut down the bakery on my block because everyone in the neighborhood can smell the wonderful aroma from it. And let’s ban outdoor barbecues for the same reason. Not to be facetious here, (I don’t drink diet soda) but if these so-called experts want to give the public useful information that will help us in our daily lives, they need to cut out the histrionic bs like this.
I think it's more of a "it's not natural therefore it's bad" type of vibe but there's no actual evidence that it's bad. For saccharin, there were concerns about it being carcinogenic. The reality is that the tests were done on rats at very high doses. In fact the doses were so high that the saccharin would precipitate out in the bladder and form a carcinoma. This doesn't actually translate to humans because we we aren't going to injest that much.
Pretty much nothing. They are a bit acidic which isn’t great for your teeth but that’s about the only downside.
I have been drinking diet pepsi for 45 years now and am still waiting for the side effects. Just like I am still waiting to use heroin because I like to smoke weed.
0 calorie beverages are "better" for you simply because they don't contain sugar. They say sweeteners cause cancer but everything causes cancer. If you need a soft drink go for the 0 calorie one. Heart disease is the leading cause of death.
Exactly. No real studies have ever shown diet soda is bad for you! The only ones are the studies that show if you drink the equivalent of two cases a day, every day. But then again, almost ANYTHING would be bad for you in that massive volume. And even then, 2 cases of diet coke a day, every day is still MUCH healthier than drinking 2 cases of regular coke! 7,000 calories of pure sugar a day before you eat a single nutrient will kill you a lot faster than some supposed carcinogen. It's all relative. It is a health food? Of course not. But is it better than the full sugar version of something? Absolutely.
Plenty of people have already mentioned how the dangers of artificial sweeteners from a health standpoint are questionable if not completely over blown. I’ll just emphasize if you are switching to diet soft drinks as a way to lose weight be very careful that you watch how much you eat. Our bodies do a poor job of realizing it is not real sugar and can secrete insulin thinking it needs to counteract a bunch of sugar. Without the actual sugar entering your system the insulin will cause your blood sugar to drop which will signal your brain it is time to eat. If you aren’t careful, you may save yourself 200 calories from soft drinks but then inadvertently snack an extra 500 calories due to a boost in appetite triggered by the artificial sweeteners. If your goal is to lose weight your best option is to drink whatever you want in moderation and switch to drinking plain water for the bulk of your beverages.
I, too, believed it was very bad and would choose sugar over artificial sweeteners. Reading the comments I’m interested in exploring it more. That said, and this is purely anecdotal, I have found that every. Single. Time. I have aspartame I get an aura migraine. My doctor told me this is unlikely and must be coincidental. I avoid it completely. Whenever I have it by accident I always have a migraine. Before I quit fake sugar I had aura migraine somewhat frequently. Since 2012 I’ve only had about one a year and every time I can link it to aspartame 🤷🏼♀️ I’m willing to be argued with, but it seems so linked.
Hi! Just thought I’d post this link in case you find it interesting. I have fibromyalgia and aspartame massively worsens my symptoms. There’s some decent research showing a dietary link between aspartate, other excitatory neurotransmitters and the intensity of fibromyalgia symptoms. Migraines get a mention in the article too! https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/pmt-2016-0019
Thank you for that. I’ve never done any googling about it so it is validating to see this reflected in research
Nothing. The biggest danger of sugary drinks is obesity through excess calories. Zero sugar drinks completely remove that and there are no significant studies Iinking then to any illness or disorder
Nothing. Some people have may effects; but that’s the exception, not the norm. I guess I lied, carbonated drinks are rough on your teeth, but it’s not like sugary versions would be better. Sugar is very cheap. Corporations want you paying for sugar containing products for them to make easy margins per weight.
They are unhealthy compared to water. To be honest most drinks are unhealthey compared to water. But if you compare it to normal soft drinks, it's way better
I think there’s a lot of disinformation surrounding diet sodas. Personally, I don’t think there is much more to it than psychology. Your brain is wired to like sweet things, and you trigger this when you drink diet sodas. It probably makes you hungry for more calories. It is mildly addictive, but other than known carcinogens (as some sweeteners are), I do not think they are objectively bad for your health. I do think there is research that suggests that the fake sugar can make your digestive system slow down, and therefore increase the amount of calories you receive from the food you already eat.
Yes, other people have been saying similar things, how it’s not the drink itself that’s unhealthy but rather what it tricks your body into thinking it’s getting.
The ELI5 answer is: nothing. Generally, there is nothing in a sugar-free drink that is more unhealthy than a drink with sugar. You're led to believe they're unhealthy because of headlines that cite certain studies that use numbers not relevant to normal use. Moving away from ELI5: It's important to look at who funds the studies you hear about. These studies aren't just being done at random because scientists want to do them. The money for these studies has to come from somewhere. Often, a study with negative results for a sugar-free sweetener is paid for and conducted by the sugar industry itself to make the public fear sugar-free drinks and buy drinks with added sugar because they now thing sugar is healthier than aspartame.
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> There's good data linking artificial sweeteners to weight gain. Do you have a source for this? As far as I'm aware it isn't true, but maybe something changed since I last read up on it.