To use an analogy their argument is: Vaping is bad for you, don't do it. While ignoring that a ton of people quit smoking using vapes and that they're letting the perfect be the enemy of good.
Same thing with NSS. While NSS are a useful tool for sugar reduction, studies have shown that over the medium-long term, you'll want to reduce artificially sweat foods and even sweat food substitutes, to create a "new normal" or new baseline where an e.g. strawberry is sweat again. Which has been shown to be more sustainable.
The WHO aren't wrong, but everyone jumps on this with their own agenda. They are claiming that switching to NSS isn't a sustainable way to reduce BMI (and associated negative health outcomes) over the long term, hard to find data that disagrees with that. That's all they're claiming.
Just an interesting story.
About 5 years ago, I tried to cut out all processed carbs from my diet.
After several months, I was away from home and I had to eat something---the only thing open was a Dunkin Donuts. I ordered an egg-white sandwich on a plain English muffin, and for kicks I took a bite out of the English muffin.
Holy shit. It tasted super sweet!!
I can't be sure, but I assume it had refined sugar added to it to improve its palatability. Made me think about everything that goes into fast foods...
Everything I ate at that hotel tasted sweet from the pizza I ordered that night to the toast I had in the morning. What should have been delicious and savoury was instead sickening and unpleasant - it was so weird.
I don't think there is any difference to your body between sugar and 'refined sugar'. It is all going to have a lot of fructose in it.
Things like agave syrup or whatever else are just tricks to make people think they are getting healthy sugar.
It extends shelf life though. European supermarket bread will mould in usually less than a week, but it’s really unusual for an American bread to go mouldy.
Also, there is no concrete evidence that sweeteners are bad for one's health, it's more the feeling of 'chemicals' are always bad. Sugar is clearly bad and causes obesity and diabetes. The choice seems pretty clear between the two.
Sucrose is bad when eaten on its own, specifically in the abscence of fibre and other macronutrients that bring the GI down.
I'll likely still consume some NSS'es though that is more due to my preexisting condition.
The problem is that the levels of sweetness, acidity, salinity, carbonation etc. in diet soda have become normalized. People give these dessert drinks to children, and drink it like it's water.
You know how overpoweringly strong some chocolate mousse can be? The kind where you can't finish a tiny slice of cake because more than a tiny sliver on your fork is too rich? Or how some foreign cuisines can be so potently dosed with curry or pepper that you can't taste any other flavors in the dish? Imagine replacing white bread throughout your diet with that chocolate cake. Or the punch of salt and pepper on an egg with that level of curry.
Ask someone from 100 years ago to sweeten a glass of lemonade "to taste" and you'd get something so weak that a consumer of diet soda would mock it like the meme "hint of hint of lime" or "transported on a truck near strawberries" flavors of LaCroix.
Yes it's better that they drink diet than regular soda. No, it's not good to normalize that flavor. I think human appetites are just not set up to handle some stimuli that previous levels of foraging or farming, chemistry, and distribution systems could not create.
Oh god I couldn't disagree more. I literally can't stand the taste of diet pepsi/coke, the sweeteners leave such an awful aftertaste on my tongue.
As far as I know, all of the sugar alternatives have some (usually neuro?) downside that makes them scarier to me than sugar!
I've been wondering about that. I wasn't sure if my memory has faded or maybe drinking it often made me like the taste but these days I find Diet Coke/Coke Zero to be equally enjoyable as Coke. Have the taste of the non-sugar Coke been steadily modified?
The claim is that that's not what you're choosing between, because if that were the real choice, then the people who chose splenda would lose more weight than the people who chose sucrose, but that's apparently not the finding. So maybe the real choice is between two packets of sucrose, or splenda+two packets of sucrose, because the splenda causes you to eat more sucrose (or other trash) without your conscious realization.
If you'd like an easy way to try check out SToK. Fairly inexpensive, can be found at large store chains like Walmart.
"Replacing free sugars with NSS does not help with weight control in the long term. People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages,” says Francesco Branca, WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety.
"NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health."
If I read that correctly, the WHO is recommending that the overall amount of sweet foods consumed should be reduced and that replacing sugar with other sweeteners will not cut it.
Perhaps because the public research eventually catches up to them.
E.g. "sucralose ingestion caused 1) a greater incremental increase in peak plasma glucose concentrations (4.2 ± 0.2 vs. 4.8 ± 0.3 mmol/L; P = 0.03), 2) a 20 ± 8% greater incremental increase in insulin area under the curve (AUC) (P < 0.03), 3) a 22 ± 7% greater peak insulin secretion rate (P < 0.02), 4) a 7 ± 4% decrease in insulin clearance (P = 0.04), and 5) a 23 ± 20% decrease in SI (P = 0.01)."
https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/36/9/2530/37872/Su...
NNTs, sweet on the tongue, sweet on the liver! Yep, they trigger the same deleterious hormonal response that sugar does. They produce a cascading chemical chain reaction in the body leading to the over-production of insulin, the hunger-hormone, which signals your fat cells to begin absorbing glucose (triglycerides) from the blood stream. Removing the sugar from the bloodstream would normally cause insulin production to drop, but in this case, it's not the sugar triggering the productions, it's the NNT chemicals that are still circulating in your body..
Because nothing so far tastes as good as real sugar. The common practice in employing artificial sweeteners is to combine two or more in an effort to avoid the bitter aftertaste that you get from relying on just one.
I think a similar thing happens with "diet" "sugar-free" products. Almost all of the people who use these products neglect every other aspect of their health thinking they're really going to tackle obesity by swapping out processed sugar for sweeteners.
Anecdotally, I've never seen someone using copious amounts of these sweeteners look healthy. They continue on being obese and out of shape. I think if your goal is to be healthy then your mind set has got to change and using an option like artificial sweeteners is just a "have your cake and eat it too" position that won't result in making you healthier.
You've missed the far-and-above most beneficial effect of switching to vaping, which is getting rid of inhaling the huge category of carcinogens that come with inhaling partially burned solid fuel.
Cigarettes don't give you cancer because of nicotine. They give you cancer because of partially burned solid fuel.
These kids are vaping THC adulterated with vitamin E[1]. Vitamin E is added because it makes a cut product thicker, and thickness is thought of as an indicator of quality. My guess here is that marijuana still has a stigma/is illegal, so these kids are finding it easier to just blame nicotine vapes to try and get themselves out of trouble.
There's no reason to cut nicotine vape liquid since the base ingredients (vegetable glycerin + propylene glycol) are absurdly cheap.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33762429/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_poisoning
Btw, there's in interesting story attached to mistaken view about what constitutes a lethal dose of nicotine.
What if you want to have some sweetness from time to time but you are watching your sugar levels? Surely that's better than just taking sugar. What if you are weaning yourself off so much sugar? Surely that's better too. It seems to me that artificial sweeteners are a useful product for many people and is obviously not a panacea. I mean, honestly, hardly anything is good in excess!
I feel this is so poorly communicated and almost guarantees people will take the wrong message from this.
> WHO suggests that non-sugar sweeteners not be used as a means of achieving weight control or reducing the risk of noncommunicable diseases (conditional recommendation)
> Conditional recommendations are those recommendations for which the WHO guideline development group is less certain that the desirable consequences of implementing the recommendation outweigh the undesirable consequences or when the anticipated net benefits are very small. Therefore, substantive discussion amongst policy-makers may be required before a conditional recommendation can be adopted as policy.
> Because the WHO Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Diet and Health focuses on providing guidance on the prevention of unhealthy weight gain and diet-related NCDs, providing guidance on the management of diabetes in individuals with pre-existing diabetes is beyond the scope of this guideline. Therefore, the guidance in the guideline may not be relevant for individuals with existing diabetes.
https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1501485/retrieve
I don't understand the expectations some people have of the WHO. Anything more complicated than a headline is going to get oversimplified by the media.
> The recommendation is based on evidence of low certainty overall
Partly it seems the issue is that in many cases the reason for avoiding sugar and using a substitute does not actually avoid the negative consequences of sugar. I say this as someone who avoids sugar and has very little.
I agree though i'm a bit confused by this WHO post. I have difficulty determining the severity of the issue. Based on what they're saying it sounds like you should avoid both sugar and substitutes. This post makes them sound basically the same, so why hyper focus on one?
If you're trying to watch your sugar levels (and are not diabetic) then artificial sweeteners are strictly harming your progress toward whatever goal you're trying to achieve.
They also cause all sorts of other health issues (cancer, digestive problems, neurological problems), but those are mostly product specific. The above applies to all non-nutritional sweeteners that have been studied.
I hope the WHO ruling includes "organic" artificial sweeteners too.
That does not seem to be the scientific consensus:
"The majority of clinical studies performed thus far report no significant effects or beneficial effects of artificial sweeteners on body weight and glycemic control" [1]
"Thus, evidence from controlled studies suggests that artificial sweeteners don’t cause weight gain and may even be mildly effective for weight loss." [2]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817779/
[2] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-a...
I would love to see some support of this. Artificial sweeteners are some of the most studied food additives. If there were a definitive association at practical consumption levels, that would be huge news.
Me as far as added sugar and artificial sweeteners is concerned, I'm out.
Who are you following that's getting everything right? Or getting more things right than The WHO?
The WHO did the opposite of its pandemic plan. They failed to follow best practices and did so without any evidence for it.
The best evidence that the current WHO is not to be trusted... is the old WHO.
Anybody who believes there is an almighty assembly of "experts" out there with super-human integrity, incorruptibility, and infallibility, is sadly deluded.
These Do's / Don'ts change like every 10 years. But most people seem to love self-searched guidance in their life, especially from so-called authorities, or other "SMEs".
PS: Come on introverted HN lurkers, i want more downvotes! You can do it - give them to me! 46 Karma to go!
Also: downvotes here are kinda cool, I couldn’t care less about it though, I just state my opinion and move on.
In much broader strokes, I was already not happy about how obsessed we became with prolonging life far beyond anything desirable. But even places where medically assisted death is accepted, you can't just go and say I am too old and infirm, help me end in dignity, no you need to suffer until your body and mind is gone. So says Lord Of The Rings
> ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift
There was an international agreement to cut salt in processed foods by a few percent a year for a few decades, and all stakeholders emphatically agreed to do it, since there's no real downside.
Of course, nothing happened after that.
The problem is that increasing salt a few percent gives processed food manufacturers a marginal advantage over their competitors since by desensitizes them to salt, and also tastes slightly better in side-by-side comparisons. This leads to a prisoner's dilemma type situation everyone is incentivized to work against their own long term best interests.
Regulation could trivially fix the problem by stopping the arms race, and doing it slowly wouldn't lead to people noticing the reduction.
Sugar and sweetners are insidious. Once you get used to sweet salads, you won't like normal salads anymore and then one start putting sweetners in every meal. It's surprising how unhealthy a salad can be.
As a person with a healthy weight and the self-discipline to maintain it long term, with no diabetes or risk of it, who is not and never has been addicted to sugary drinks but who enjoys them (greatly) as an infrequent, calorie-counted treat, the loss of these childhood tastes is saddening, especially since there is very little evidence of any actual public health benefit.
If I were magically transported back to the 1980s the first thing I'd do is buy a bottle of Corona Cherryade.
Then again, I understand. I'm a long-term exile to the UK from a Mediterranean country. Fruit and veg in the UK are absolutely tasteless and therefore pointless as anything but a sort of medicine. You guys are really unlucky.
Well at least you got... turnips.
The words may well be opposites. Get it right, people!
I only drink normal Coke but sparingly. Usually I'm having water or plain black coffee. I think the takeaway is that diet Coke doesn't allow you to train yourself to enjoy normal sweet foods again. I just had an apple and strawberries and it is basically candy to me.
Edit: I have a question. Rank these food items by how healthful they are:
a) 150 calories of Coca-Cola Classic
b) 150 calories of fresh fruit
c) 0 calories of Diet Coke
Are you considering mental well-being as well, or just pure physical health? Because in case of the former, option b) will end up with the lowest score.
Not that anybody actually reads or pays attention to these things when they're wolfing down a bag of fritos; but still to the person at What-a-burger getting an 1100 calorie meal - they're probably better off opting for 400 fewer calories with a diet Coke than a fully loaded one.
I may have one occasionally but definitely not going back to eating them every other day.
Also this https://www.prevention.com/food-nutrition/a44156389/sucralos...
So which one is less bad ?
If your protein powders have them - no factor. I feel like the headline is 10x more inflammatory than it needs to be.
Unflavored isolate is pretty expensive for me, and I often find good proteins on sale (I like ISO100 from Dymatize and buy it whenever it's cheap) but for me, it is sickeningly sweet (and artificial as well). So I've been using 50% flavored protein with 50% unflavored isolate to really reduce the overall sweetness. Add in a spoon of fat-free yogurt, maybe a splash of skim milk, water, it's a good time.
Pea protein with no flavor takes some getting used to but is quite healthy and filling. You can mix with some sugar free almond milk to help the taste.
Overall my suggestion is to start viewing food as fuel. Of course you should enjoy some meals but don’t allow yourself to be picky or give into cravings.
Again, once your mind and body start to correlate eating good foods with feeling good you’ve got it made. You won’t even want to drink alcohol, eat sugar or seed oils. You’ll shutter at the thought because you know they will make you feel like crap.
If the WHO says something, you need to go through all the work of checking their sources, and in this case, there was no source:
>The recommendation from the World Health Organization (WHO) is based on a review of available evidence which suggests that artificial sweeteners do not help control body mass or reduce the risk of weight-related illnesses.
I'm a bit offended that I pay taxes to such a prominent anti-science organization. I don't mind the idea of a world health organization, but to be so brazenly anti-science and pro-authority is the last thing I want.
If those people were experts, they would have been the ones writing any papers cited and they'd be repeating the results from those papers.
As an example, in the US you pay thousands for an ambulance call, get to hospital, pay hundreds of thousands, insurance (for which you pay thousands more per year) covers most of it, except they're trying to cheat you out of as much as possible so they pay less, and in the end, all amerikans are one incident away from bankruptcy.
In most if not all of Europe, you pay health taxes, but not in the upper thousands, get good doctors, and don't end up bankrupt for breaking your arm or hip. And the ambulance is free (as in your taxes pay for it).
Study after study has shown that it is extremely, almost absurdly difficult to lose weight and keep it that way in the long term.
If "not actively causing long term weight loss" is the only criteria for advising against something, then we should be advising against a heck of a lot more things that are perfectly fine.
It's phrasing like this that causes people to go on crusades against random foods, rather than actually using moderation in all things.
"WHO also noted that “potential undesirable effects from long-term use” of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The results of the review also suggest that there may be other dangerous consequences such as the increased risk of premature death among adults."
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-b...
Did big sugar threaten you? Offer you money? Are some governments/sponsors making you say these ridiculous things?
This is an extraordinary claim that defies common sense. And your evidence is, what? Oh right, let me quote from the paper:
> The recommendation is based on evidence of low certainty overall
Now I read this still poses risks for me to develop diabetes and cardiovascular factors, how so?
There is a correlation between NSS consumption and negative health outcomes, this is true. However, read how this article states this:
>WHO also noted that “potential undesirable effects from long-term use” of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The results of the review also suggest that there may be other dangerous consequences such as the increased risk of premature death among adults.
A layman will obviously read this as a statement that NSS is a direct cause of harm, not as the correlation that it actually is.
The correlation is simply explained: NSS is heavily consumed by people who have diabetes and/or who are obese. These people are naturally going to have far more health issues than non-diabetics, and non-obese people. They even acknowledge this in the article:
>the connection between consuming NSS and disease outcomes might be subjectively determined due to “baseline characteristics” of those taking part in the study
If you have a choice of drinking regular soda and diet, the diet is without a doubt leagues better for you. I think the most convincing evidence that NSS is safe is this: It's obvious that diabetics and obese people consume NSS significantly more than the general population. Diabetics and obese people are naturally prone to high levels of health issues. Yet why is it that they never just filter these people out to get a good baseline? What are the chances that these university educated people can't filter out obese/diabetics, or that they did not anticipate needing to do this and thus did not collect sufficient data? That they didn't read decades of prior studies who failed to do this, including the studies that specifically mentioned the dirty baseline issue? Is our higher education system this bad? Are researchers just this stupid? Not likely.
The more likely explanations are these: 1 The study was funded by corn growers that are threatened by NSS (a huge number of the studies I read through fall into this category). 2 The researchers have a bias for "natural" products. 3 The researchers dislike the taste of NSS and are afraid that NSS proliferation will reduce the supply of the flavors that they enjoy.
They've tried to prove NSS is harmful for way too long. Sure, that's not proof that NSS is completely safe, but if it is harmful, it must be so minimally harmful that 4+ decades of intense research can't definitively prove it.
There exists an International Sweeters Association, that has been against these efforts since it's inception 35 years ago: https://www.sweeteners.org/latest-science-post/the-who-recom...
https://www.sweeteners.org/about-isa/
Which shouldn't be a surprise given the Sugar Association is 80 years old: https://www.sugar.org/about/history/
So sure, consume "whatever the f*: you feel like knowing that either way you will be receiving "sciene based" communications from interested parties supporting that behavior.
You know what they mean. "Let" can be "let us carry on doing this without informing us better". Bad-faith nit-picking is detrimental to conversation.
