[llm_nerd]

Researchers love dunking on artificial sweeteners. It is one of the guaranteed methods of getting loads of press. Press yields prestige. Given that artificial sweeteners often correlate with people with weight / health problems like diabetes for very functional reasons, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Paradoxically this same data source (the Nurses' Health study, which is a continuous series of questionnaires) has had a prior paper claiming "sugar-sweetened soft drinks, refined grains, and red meat" led to depression. Now that "ultra-processed foods" and artificial sweeteners are the public demon, they take centre stage for the next round. I suspect with a bit of p-hacking one can contrive whatever aha result they desire out of it.

Their argument regarding eliminating correlation seems suspect. They analyzed diet in period 1 against reported depression in period 1 and found a given correlation. They then analyzed diet in period 1 against reported depression in period 2 (apparently 4 years later) and claim to have found the same correlation, which is what he cites in defence. Yet they never state that depression in period 2 in those cases is worse than period 1, invalidating it.

The Nurses' Health Study is a really fascinating exercise and certainly holds massive use, but it also has been a source of a lot of incredibly dubious nutritional "science".

https://nurseshealthstudy.org/participants/questionnaires

The NHS II surveys were the ones they used for this "get press" study, and looking at the actual surveys it seems doubtful that they yielded the results they did.

Probably could build a lot of fun blog entries p-hacking the data from these surveys.

[jcampbell1]

What if the deep subconscious keeps track of sweetness in the mouth and nutritional requirements (conscience hunger and cravings)? Artificial sweeteners would break the biological programming and cause all sorts of problems including depression and inappropriate hunger.

Edit: I hadn’t fully thought this through, but in my experience sometimes looking at a clock causes the physical hunger sensation. I have also been painfully starving which immediately stopped after the first swallow of a chugging a coke. Artificial sweeteners would have thrown a monkey wrench in my biological machinery.

[hedora]

There is a lot of evidence that artificial^W non-caloric sweeteners are terrible.

There are correlation studies in humans showing many different health issues (weight gain, cancer, mental health issues, among others) that correct for all sorts of confounding factors.

There are experimental studies in rodents that show all of the above across multiple products.

They're known to interact poorly with certain drugs taken for mental illness, and can cause all sorts of brain-related problems in some people (such as migraines).

They're also known to screw up your gut's microbial community, and that's shown to cause depression.

(I'm not commenting on the quality of this particular study, to be clear.)

[llm_nerd]

>There is a lot of evidence that artificial^W non-caloric sweeteners are terrible.

There is shockingly little good evidence showing this, and these are many of the most studied substances in human history. There are a lot of very flawed studies that got enormous press and attention, however, yielding the "overwhelming proof" illusion.

[hedora]

This argument was made (practically verbatim) to defend tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels. It's easy to fund and publish a sloppy study that shows no correlation, and then claim the findings in the literature are "contradictory".

The studies I'm referring to go back to the 1970's. I've seen many that show strong negative effects, and some that show no or inconclusive effects. None show positive effects.

At this point, if the negative effect studies are statistical anomalies, then there should also be a roughly equal number of studies showing positive effects too.

[llm_nerd]

>This argument was made (practically verbatim) to defend tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels

Sure it was. Indeed, your argument is practically verbatim the rhetoric of antivaxxers, flat Earthers and climate change deniers.

As to your other point, what "positive effect" are you demanding? Controlling blood sugar and controlling calories both have an *enormous*, overwhelming volume of evidence. Sugar substitutes are just tangentially related to that effort.

[hedora]

Sugar substitutes lead to metabolic issues that outweigh the reduction of calories eaten. If you also eat food that contains sugar, then they cravings they cause lead to blood sugar spikes later in the day. This is all settled science.

Anyway, I'd love to get some links to the scientific studies that the flat Earthers have saying the earth might be flat, after all.

Also, I don't think the anti-vaxxer's citation of one retracted study about mercury poisoning is really comparable to the dozens of non-retracted studies showing negative effects of artificial sweeteners across multiple mammals (including humans), or the work showing the chain of causal relationships that lead to metabolic issues.

Similarly, climate change has been scientific consensus since at least 1980, and I'm arguing on the side of scientific consensus, not against it.

The sweeteners cause incorrect hunger satiation signaling (as does HFCS), and also screw up your gut microbiome. The incorrect signaling makes you hungrier after eating the sweetener. If you eat at that point, then there goes the caloric intake benefits.

If you don't eat at that point, your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism, conserving more calories than you saved from avoiding sugar and also discouraging you from exercising. Over time, the lack of exercise and artificially lowered metabolism leads to a lower base metabolism, causing long term weight gain.

This doesn't touch on the problems a disrupted gut microbiome causes, known side-effects / intolerances / drug interactions that various products cause, or that some of them are carcinogens.

[llm_nerd]

Making hugely contentious claims and then stating that it's "settled science" is not a convincing tactic. Again, you are using the anti-science tactic of saying "this one thing kind of said this, and that's what I've selected as my position, ergo it is The Truth". Science doesn't remotely work like that. Claiming you are on the side of "scientific consensus" is so cosmically wrong you're either lying, or staggeringly ill-informed.

There were HCQ and Ivermectin fanatics who were sure it was "settled science" because they read only what they wanted to see, and only accepted results they wanted to be true.

"f you don't eat at that point, your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism, conserving more calories than you saved from avoiding sugar and also discouraging you from exercising."

Ah, the "what's even the point?" tactic, which is the fallback of lazy dieters everywhere. Their metabolism "slowed" and magically the conservation of energy no longer applies.