[throwaway743950]

Let's not pretend sweeteners are anywhere near as damaging as sugar.

[slifin]

I know lots of people, loved ones included who are utterly addicted to sugar-free soft drinks they will not even touch the "full fat" versions.

There are no nutrients there and they appear more addictive, which is why I suspect the industry was so accommodating in moving away from sugar

[dole]

Diet Coke is notorious for having higher caffeine content than its brethren. Edit: I mean, that's why I love it

[rsynnott]

> and they appear more addictive

_Massive_ citation needed, tbh. Sugar is highly addictive.

(Also, I mean, even if aspartame _was_ very addictive, to some extent, well, so what? To be clear, soft drinks ~never contain the sugar alcohols that people are talking about above; the sheer volumes would have, well, undesirable digestive impact. They use aspartame, which is pretty well-understood at this point.)

[aaomidi]

We’re adding fat to soft drinks now?

[walthamstow]

Full fat is a Britishism for whole milk and it's used to refer to non-diet drinks too as a way of saying full sugar. Original coke is often called 'full fat coke'.

[shrimp_emoji]

Real sugar soda tastes like shit by comparison. It's less sweet, and it's got a sour aftertaste as the flora in your mouth begin fermenting the sugar to acid. And you get cavities and weight gain as bonuses.

[bondarchuk]

fat??

[soulchild77]

Fat as in fat models, thin controllers ;-)

[faeriechangling]

Depending on the person they can be worse since sugar alcohols tend to cause digestive issues whereas sugar doesn’t.

[bmacho]

Humans eat sugars for thousands of years now (and honey since millions of years), but random sweeteners are new.

I'd say let's not pretend that any map made by splashing paint on a paper is the terrain, and go full retard based on that.

[robertlagrant]

Humans have not eaten this much sugar for thousands of years.

[Wolfenstein98k]

They have not eaten any artificial sweeteners for more than a few tens of years.

[robertlagrant]

I'm contradicting the point that people have been eating this much sugar for thousands of years. I'm not claiming the reverse for sweeteners. No population's eaten this much sugar for more than tens of years either.

[bmacho]

All the living humans, in average? No.

But otherwise, individually, why wouldn't they? A lot of people had the sweet tooth, and the money, and they ate this much sugar, or even more.

[jedberg]

Because until recently it was very expensive to get sugar. Only the richest people could even afford any at all.

There were lots of things with small amounts of natural sugars, but nothing like the processed foods we have now.

[strken]

The Hadza get 15 to 20% of their calories from honey: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers...

[jedberg]

First, honey is not the same as refined sugar.

Secondly the article itself states that it’s the intense exercise that keeps them healthy, not their diet.

[dtech]

I fail to see how this is relevant, if anything it's evidence of harm. Those people notoriously had rotting teeth [1] and probably a myriad of other health issues (many unrelated to sugar)

[1] https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/01/18/tudor-england-the-...

[rsynnott]

> Humans eat sugars for thousands of years now

Indeed, and that has been plenty of time to discover that, in excess, it kills us. Despite intense scrutiny, there is no reason to think that the same goes for aspartame, which is the only sweetener used in significant amounts in soft drinks in the UK, and thus the only one promoted by this levy.

[agurk]

I don't have an opinion on the health effects of sweeteners, but as I noted in a longer comment on this page, multiple sweeteners are commonly used together and aspartame is far from universal in the mix.

[waihtis]

Research suggests that aspartame increases the risk of:

    -certain types of cancer, including lymphoma, leukemia, urinary tract tumors, and neurological tumors

    -type 2 diabetes

    -preterm delivery

    -toxicity in the kidneys

    -toxic liver disease

    -harmful changes to the salivary glands

Your "completely safe without question" additive, sir

[xigoi]

Is there any food that doesn’t cause cancer according to some study?

[AlexeyBelov]

Can you cite the paper, I'm very intrigued.

[croes]

If you know one road is dangerous and the other may or may not, which one do you choose?

[meowfly]

This conversation always goes like this:

----

Person: Diet soda is bad for you

Me: It's better than sugar and especially high fructose corn syrup

Person: Just drink water

----

Ok... Such a helpful suggestion. We should all just drink water, just exercise, just save money, just work harder, just put down our phone.

I wonder why we don't all just do all the right things all of the time.

[waihtis]

a rare smart take on HN, hats off

[Wolfenstein98k]

Citation needed.

They will have an outsized effect on children (everything does due to their rapid growth, and longer time to bioaccumulate). There is not currently pressing evidence of harm, but little study has been done in children, and some signs suggest there may be issues (see other posts upthread).