Now remember the dose makes the poison, so have you checked if it's a dose applicable to humans?
This dose corresponds to the FDA acceptable daily intake (ADI) in humans (5 mg per kg (body weight), adjusted to mouse weights, see Methods).
Which large scale trials? I strongly argue that you're the one missing the forest for the trees as the meta analyses are clear: artificially sweetened beverages consistently show a benefit to weight loss in human populations, contradicting what your quote says. You will now probably produce your study and I will say that the consensus of studies shows the opposite. Let's not waste any more time. Ideally I won't have to comment on this topic again.
More generally, the approach of linking to scientific papers from Google Scholar (which is prevalent all over the internet) is ineffective because people either won't read them, or even if they do are ill-equipped to interpret them properly.
(no UPFs, … stock cube)
The utterly bizarre thing though is that honey is a large part of the diet of some hunter-gather people. And yet they don't suffer from "western lifestyle" metabolic/CV diseases. https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers-teach-us-about-staying-healthy
Similar to our Paleolithic ancestors, today’s hunter-gatherers western teenagers source their food entirely from the earth and wild animals the food cupboard an average distance of 3 metres away from the sofa, stocked with whatever convenient foodstuff that their stressed-out busy parent/s could afford to buy and be bothered to cook after a long day in the office and commute home. They’re physically active for most a tiny part of each day. For instance, the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group, spend their days walking eight to 12 kilometers, climbing trees and digging for root vegetables western teenagers sometimes spending 120 minutes playing 5-a-side with their mates a couple of times per week or going to the skate park for a couple of hours. Their diet consists of various meats, vegetables and fruits a significant amount sugar, as well as a significant amount of honey sugar. In fact, they get 15 to 20 percent 50% of their calories from honey, a simple carbohydrate.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.13020 Looking at this one from Liam, it implies to me (though that may be misreading) that observational studies are more likely to show sweeteners in a negative light than randomised controlled trials. That could be because, for example, one effect of consuming the "diet" version is that you feel virtuous and therefore eat more cake (not possible on trials where placebo or sugar alternative is used; the water ones perhaps it would be but you'd have to look at their methods in more depth I imagine).This doesn't relate to what Pete and Liam are arguing about, but does very much relate to whether sweeteners are liable to make you fatter or less healthy in the real world. If one thing's clear I'd say it's that you'd need to plug a few weeks into this to really have a good feel for the evidence and a good feel for why contradictory views exist among apparently sensible experts.
What a thread! Great reading. Liam, while I would struggle to refute the individual studies you linked, I'm trying to understand the point your trying to defend. That putting artificial sweeteners in food is a good thing? That there's nothing to worry about in the general direction of our national diet and the trajectory of the nations health?
Artificial sweeteners have been researched for decades and the systematic reviews and meta analyses tend to show neutral or positive health effects, principally through aiding weight loss. Agreed the studies show this, no issue here - we're talking about overweight people who need to lose weight, and are on a weight loss program and know they're on sugarfree drinks - how do they control for the placebo effect, or other effects of it not being blind?As is typical for anything we can consume, there are mechanistic studies implicating artificial sweeteners with negative health effects, but this does not seem to be borne out in human populations. For someone who is a normal, healthy weight, drinking artificially sweetened beverages is not going to make them fat/diabetic/have cancer/etc. The studies referenced do not even try to answer this question - they are not taking people from day 1 who are healthy and drink mainly water, putting them on diet coke for 15 years and seeing what the resultant outcome is - they're short trials looking at the intervention impact of swapping sugary drinks for sweetened or water, so I don't think they do show this.... Go ahead and drink the diet coke if you want the diet coke. Whooaaaa not so fast. This is where I think we disagree, and where the observational studies and the gut microbiome stuff may outweigh, may outweigh and "weight loss" benefits. If you don't currently drink many sugary drinks (I don't, maybe one glass of fruit juice every couple of weeks, the odd coke on the weigh back from a winter climb, the odd irn bru with a hangover), I don't think that suggesting smashing in to sweetened drinks is such sage advice . Who knows, maybe in 50 years you'll be proven right and we'll be proven wrong. So be it. Until then I'll be on the water thanks!For someone who is overweight, artificially sweetened beverages might actually be part of a weight loss strategy, particularly if it is replacing sugar sweetened beverages Again, fine, if they help some people get off fullfat redbvll and this makes them a bit healthier, then fine .
