[mike10921]

I fully agree. The main argument is that if you use sweeteners you will eat more sugar, so it is worse than sugar. So basically don't eat the non-poison because it will cause you to eat poison, so instead eat the poison itself.

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.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Sugar is not poison or "clearly bad".

Sucrose is bad when eaten on its own, specifically in the abscence of fibre and other macronutrients that bring the GI down.

[mike10921]

It is not bad if one has self-control and eats a small amount of it, but that is really the case for most bad substances like alcohol, weed, etc.

If one is out of control eating sugar it is clearly going to have bad consequences. The immediate consequences will be obesity and bad teeth. The long-term would be diabetes, and there are definitely others as well.

[anonymouskimmer]

This depends on the sweetener. There have been recent articles linking bad health effects to erythritol and sucralose that I am aware of.

[unethical_ban]

Damn, I thought erythritol was downside-free. Looks like it is associated with a nontrivial risk of heart attack and stroke

https://www.realsimple.com/study-links-stevia-and-monk-fruit...

[uranium]

Let's wait for the news cycle and science to settle: https://peterattiamd.com/more-hype-than-substance-erythritol...

[anonymouskimmer]

On the positive side, while researching my comment, apparently that old boogieman of artificial sweeteners, saccharine, may be fine for humans (as the cancer-causing in rats is because of a unique rat feature that humans don't share).

[orwin]

I heard it was because the species of rat they used tend to get cancers anyway when they got older, and shouldn't be used in any long-term study.

I love scientists, loved working with them, best clients i ever had (if you're a devops or automate dev/scientists tools, and have to regularly explain stuff to scientists and to other devs, we don't compare advantageously at all), but sometimes there is too much noise.

[anonymouskimmer]

This is what I read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin#Warning_label_additi...

> However, in 2000, the warning labels were removed because scientists learned that rodents, unlike humans, have a unique combination of high pH, high calcium phosphate, and high protein levels in their urine.[34][35] One or more of the proteins that are more prevalent in male rats combine with calcium phosphate and saccharin to produce microcrystals that damage the lining of the bladder. Over time, the rat's bladder responds to this damage by overproducing cells to repair the damage, which leads to tumor formation. Since this does not occur in humans, there is no elevated risk of bladder cancer.[36]

I work in the biosciences (in a role between lab tech and actual scientist). So many things are provisionally accepted simply because you don't have the time or resources to verify them. Which is not too different from any other job, it just seems weird in the context of the sciences.