More weight loss in those who drank the NNS (Non-nutritive sweetened) beverages:
Granted, the weights lost and the difference between the two weren’t great, but the NNS beverage group lost more weight.
And this was a randomized, controlled trial (RCT), not garbage epidemiology.
The abstract paragraph says, " Participants consuming water maintained a weight loss of 6.1 kg over 52 weeks versus 7.5 kg with NNS beverages (difference [90% CI]: 1.4 kg [-2.6, -0.2]; p < 0.05)." and “However, this difference was not clinically significant.” The difference of 1.4 kg is 3.1 lbs and while it may not be clinically significant I’d be happy to see myself 3 pounds lighter. He said while sipping his NNS-sweetened herbal tea.
There’s a statistician with a sense of humor who runs a blog I read fairly regularly. One of the things he beats on regularly is “wee p values” and how the measure of statistical significance that’s so widely used isn’t a “one size fits all” number. The abstract says p is less than 5%, and that’s generally used to mean, “if it could have happened less than 5% of the time, our result wasn’t a random event, so we can publish our study.” In this case they’re saying since the chance of the lower weight being random was less than 5%, the “treatment” (in this case NNS vs. water) caused the difference.
This is the guy:
His point is that this p-value is filling in the blank on a spreadsheet and it might actually require some more math. Shockingly, the scientists who do this sort of study might be ignorant of such things.
Edit to fix a shocking jumble of words I edited ninety-seven times.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Of course, it doesn’t make me want to drink NNS beverages any more 
Probably the ones who don’t drink sweet stuff to begin with have a less impact 
Even if there is a need for sweet items. Sweet drinks couldn’t replace my sweet desserts, I would merely hate drinking them (as for some reason, I prefer all my drinks not sweetened, desserts are a mixed bunch).
And I would lose nothing either way, of course. But it makes very much sense that dropping a ton of sugary drink help people.
“However, this difference was not clinically significant.”
I found this statement particularly refreshing. In articles I’ve seen referencing epidemiological studies they will find these kind of differences statistically significant.
I think I could see how people using drinks with non nutritive sweeteners would possibly retain more weight loss than those drinking water if drinking those types of drinks keeps them from indulging in other sugar sweetened drinks or snacks.
Makes sense, somebody that doesn’t have to forget what sweet tastes like is way more likely to not screw up from feeling restricted. I both couldn’t do that, nor would I ever want to. I like sweet stuff.
To the extent you can experiment on yourself (you sure can’t do a blinded study on yourself) I’ve done that experiment. In the 8 years I’ve been keto, I’ve gone a month or two without sweeteners in my coffee, diet soda, chewing gum and other things. At least a few months, and this was years ago. Sweeteners had no effect I could determine with or without them.
This also agrees with what Dr. Westman says. If a diet soda makes people go get something else to eat or drink that messes up being keto, that’s a problem. More often, it keeps people from feeling deprived. It just makes life a little more pleasant.
I’ve seen people here say that they get that first reaction; that something sweet triggers them to go eat other carbs. That’s a tough situation to be in, but I’ve never had to deal with that.
I never doubt others, because I’m obviously not them…BUT, when somebody tries that, and they’ve already read about a possible outcome and decided that’s it… placebo is a MF! As you know, there’s a reason it literally takes millions and just shy of locking people up to rule out placebo, your brain can make something that’s not actually happening…happen!
I noticed ages ago that eating sweet desserts make me wanting more sweet desserts… At least until some point and the carb content matters a lot. If I eat a big, fatty and protein rich dessert with 1-2g net carbs (total never seemed to matter to me), that is fine but if it’s some very carby thing, that’s problematic. Even if I got satiated before eating it, I am hungry again, wanting another dessert. Or at least I was in the past, who knows what would happen now…
Drinks are worse than solid sweets as they don’t give me much satisfaction and they don’t have very much fat and protein. But I stopped having sweet drinks many years earlier than stopping having sweet desserts (I probably never will stop that but I have carnivore weeks so I don’t always eat them. as I don’t want them at all. whenever I fancy it, I eat it, it’s quite simple for me) as it was super easy. I don’t need sweet drinks. I do need desserts and they are sometimes sweet as well, they have an important role in my life.
Sweet drinks are usually off-putting for me at this point. Especially sweet coffee, that’s awful. Oh and fruit juice is exception, that is lovely. I usually mixed it with way more (20 times as much?) carbonated water though as it’s too sweet 
Powerful, tasty fruit juice can take it
I would love to know if they did DEXA scans…
So we know it wasn’t Muscle loss!
Open-label (they knew what they and the other group were getting), and what about non-adherence? Do you think they only drink water 100% of the time? Probably not. I suspect they often went ‘off book’ and had something bad to drink. IMHO
Absolutely, and it’s one of the reasons we need to know the absolute numbers as well as the relative change. A statistically significant 50% increase can represent a change from an incidence of 1.0 to 1.5, which is clinically meaningless, or a change from 50% to 75%, which is a huge clinical difference.
There is no good name for this class of sweeteners. Basically, they are talking about any sweetener that is not sucrose; i.e., table sugar, or fructose and glucose. Whether they intend to include sugar alcohols (anything with a chemical name ending in -ol), which have some caloric value, is an open question. Definitely excluded from the term “non-nutritive sweetener” are the many sugars (not to mention other carbohydrates) with chemical names ending in -ose.
when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration uses “non-nutritive sweeteners,” they mean any sweetener they have licenced for market that does not raise the serum glucose of a Type II diabetic.
The reason for the confusion of nomenclature is that some sweeteners are from plant sources (and some of which are even found naturally in the human body), while others are chemicals derived from other sources that happen to trigger a sweet taste on our tongue. (It is either sodium cyclamate or sodium saccharine that I believe is a derivative of coal tar.)
I’m wondering if the NNS group took the idea that they were on a weight loss journey more seriously than the water group, and therefore ate differently.
