[ZeroGravitas]

These things are all so confusingly written I can't help but feel it's a pro sugar conspiracy.

If I'm understanding the article correctly, drinking sugary beverages makes you fat, and then you only have a 23% higher chance of diabetes than an equally fat person who doesn't drink sugary sodas.

While drinking artificially sweetened drinks doesn't make you fat but does make you more likely to have diabetes than an equally non-fat person.

So the obvious but unanswered question seems to be, would you rather be fat and have the absolute risk of diabetes 23% more than that standard fat person plus other health problems of being overweight, or be thinner and have a 43% more chance of diabetes than a thinner person? What's the actual risk, not percentage increase compared with different baselines?

Answering that straightforward question would let you know "is it better to drink artificial sweetened than sugary beverages" that always seems to go unanswered in these studies while heavily implying that it's worse than sugar, presumably because they're funded by big sugar.

[somenameforme]

The simple answer is not to drink sweetened beverages - period, regardless of what it is sweetened with.

[ZeroGravitas]

This kind of "teach the controversy"† response is exactly what I'd expect big sugar to embrace once they realise they can't win on the facts.

That the paper explicitly says we should hold off on taxing sugar because of their very weak evidence that sugar alternatives might have issues supports this

† To explain the reference, once evolution had clearly taken the lead over creationism in the struggle to be taught in American schools they shifted to "Intelligent Design" (creationism dressed up as science) and "Teach the Controversy" i.e. position them as equals because who can say which is more correct, as strategies to manage the retreat and keep a foot in the door.

[ZeroGravitas]

Replying to myself:

> Obesity is considered the main modifiable risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and it's estimated to account for 80-85% of the overall risk, according to Nice CKS

[ggm]

I think its It's multivariate conditional. The sweetener doesn't provide direct calorific input, but that encourages more to be drunk and so exacerbates the problem. Weight for weight liquids taken, to energy, to signal received by endocrine system, to outcome on blood sugar levels.

Now add genetic variability to risk/predisposition, exercise levels, bmi, gender, age, co-morbidities..

[zihotki]

There is nothing in the article or studies to justify your point about encouragement. The points raised at the start of the thread are still very valid - who participated in the study and whether there were other important factors which were negleted intentionally or not.

Anecdotal point - I'm fit, it doesn't matter if I drink sugar free soda or water. My calorie intake doesn't change because of that at all. It changes due to other factors like lack of sleep or stress levels.