Artificial sweeteners: not so good 🙄

(Joey) #1

Can’t get access to the full study, but what CNN is reporting:

Notwithstanding my interest in taking a closer look at the study design and protocols, it doesn’t sound very encouraging for users of these common artificial sweeteners:

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#2

It’s important to look very closely at how the studies were designed and administered and what the conflicts of interest and ulterior motivations of the study are. All too often these days medical journals and RCTs are being hijacked and manipulated to force through a preferred narrative. Simply parroting main stream media stories and their propaganda, whom also have conflicts of interest, isn’t really sound science. And CNN is one of the worst to trust.

There is a push by the sugar industry to discredit any and all sugar substitute and trigger fear so that people won’t trust them. No surprise there as we see it with other foods too surrounding the Keto diet. Low carb diets are a threat to the food industry, and to the SAD and the national nutritional advice that government institutions push in cooperation with our academic institutions. Discrediting healthier alternatives is the name of the game and RCTs are the main battle field nowadays.

I’d have to agree that the majority of alternative sweeteners are really no better than sugar, but probably no worse either when comparing the whole picture of all the different ways it impacts our health.

However, some are not the same or worse, and so they are a threat to a very big industry that is in bed with the main stream media and big pharma.

This study even mentions a recent one done by the exact same researchers about erythritol giving the impression it can cause blood clots. But when you look closely at the study you find several things that aren’t quite right, least of all the conflict of interest that these doctors are going after, namely a machine being developed by the primary doctor that will identify blood markers caused by erythritol. He stands to make a lot of money of such a machine and to ensure he does he must cause the needed fear of sugar substitutes first. So not surprising his next target is now xylitol. One problem though with his erythritol study is we naturally generate erythritol inside our bodies already and there is no distinction between whether the exogenous ones are to blame. And they fed the erythritol to study participants in packaged foods, soft drinks, cookies, etc, all which contain a list of other questionable ingredients. There are far too many variables and a good scientific study reduces those competing variables.

The appearance of erythritol in the blood before a cardiac event doesn’t necessarily mean that erythritol is causing the event. These studies are heavily reliant on correlation.

Here is a good article that debunks the erythritol study and explains things way better than I could paraphrase:

I’m much more cautious about these studies nowadays, looking more closely to how they are designed and where the lack of clarity or reliability is. They don’t expect the average American to do that, as a matter of fact they are counting on us not doing it so that they can feed us what they want us to believe. I’m even more careful believing what main stream media reports about these studies, paying close attention to their choice of wording and where it is intending to lead the reader

EDIT: Here’s another fantastic analysis of these studies better explaining what I was trying to:

(KM) #3

I agree, the agenda behind food vilification / promotion is so corrupt it’s a science project in itself to tease out any objective info. Sometimes it seems the only reason this “research” is done at all any more is to provide marketing ammunition.

I tend to think of naturally occurring sugars as less toxic, although they may be no better in terms of insulin response. Xylitol is a sweetner that can be produced naturally from birch trees, or synthetically. Are they distinguishing between the two?

#4

I’m unsure. I haven’t fully delved into the xylitol one yet. I only noticed it was done by the same researchers that did the erythritol one, and given that the ultimate goal of that one was to let the media run with the wrong conclusions I had to stop and comment.

The researchers openly admit the study is more associations and correlations and cannot definitively attribute cause to the sweetener. But of course the media ran with an opposite, predetermined theme/message and I believe these researchers count on that. If they had no conflict of interests and were fully without bias going into the study I might be able to give it more importance. But even they admit it can’t really conclude anything. So then I love reading the opposing critiques and that’s where I start to find that the truth resonates, unlike the actual study.

Also, the erythritol study was done on participants who all were over the age of 60 and had preexisting and current heart diseases and conditions. This cannot apply to anyone who lies outside that group.

The studies are not at all representative of the widely disseminated conclusions.

(Joey) #5

@Just_Juju @kib1 Just the kind of feedback I was hoping to elicit. Many thanks.

(Alec) #6

Linked to, associated with, may increase… all epidemiology bollox. If there was any real evidence of anything serious here the headlines would be screaming MUCH louder.

I personally stopped using xylitol years ago simply from the risk of my dog eating some, and we know xylitol is fatal to dogs. So we switched to erythritol.

(Joey) #7

I’m with you in spirit. But if the health alert headlines were screaming any louder I, for one, would be unable to tell. :man_shrugging:

(Bob M) #8

We get very little xylitol for the same reason. Lately, I’ve switched to allulose. Would love to do a nice taste and maybe blood sugar test between allulose and erythritol. Though what they do in these studies wouldn’t really be possible for a person to do.

(Alec) #9

How about: “Sweetener proven to cause heart attacks”? They simply cannot use the word proven or causing because they know their methodology does not provide the evidence to support these conclusions. All they can do is make suggestive claims which are wholly misleading.

#10

Didnt read much but sounds like scaremongering, xylitol gum is great for teeth, people in the northern europe use it a lot.

(Brian) #11

I don’t use a whole lot of any of them. I probably use more stevia than anything else but even that is a tiny amount.

I had looked into adding a line of “sugar free” jams with alternative sweeteners to our farmers market. We already make a “low sugar” jam in several varieties. It turned into a headache almost instantly when I started asking people about it. One could tolerate A but not B, some could tolerate B but not A, etc. And that idea basically went away. Some couldn’t do stevia. Some couldn’t do erythritol. Some couldn’t do allulose. And with as many dogs as I see, I was NOT even going to try xylitol or Bocha Sweet.

It’s probably not going to be popular here but if I do want a little something from time to time, I tend to just have a little of the real thing, sugar included. I know what it is. I know it’s not something I need to be eating. And I absolutely do control the quantity I take in. Some couldn’t do that, and I understand that. I treat it like my wine… a glass when I feel like it a few times a year, and I’m not sorry.

(KM) #12

I agree. A tsp of sugar has about 5 carbs. Obviously not keto. Not the end of the world either, and I know it won’t have a bad taste. If I’m gonna go off, I might as well know I’ll enjoy it.

#13

I don’t care so very much (I do some… not at all on carnivore though :wink: ) about carbs, I have other problems with sugar and I am very much against added sugar. Xylitol tastes way better anyway, not like I normally eat sweeteners, I eat sugar if I want sweet things (as there is no other option on carnivore and I am in training, I don’t just grab sweeteners when I go off. sometimes I do but usually not. I need desserts, not syrupy sweetened stuff though those can be nice too I suppose, now and then).

I can relate expect I hate the sugar part. It would be stupid to force down the sugar I dislike when I don’t need it and it hurts me. So I rather make my own proper treat that suits my tastes way better.
If I eat something made with sugar, it’s despite the sugar (as the other parts are too tempting and I give in) but it bothers me so I suppose I will pretty much stop it soon. It is already quite rare. I can eat other things, it’s fine, I just have weaker, stupider moments… Oh well, it doesn’t happen often.

For my SO and I, determination and woe change is one reason to make our own food even when it comes to desserts but our own are truly just taste way better than almost any treat we could buy now (even if it wasn’t the case, it is good enough, we have lots of highly enjoyable options).

I don’t love the unnecessary sugar in fruits either. But they are fruits. Fruit are wonderful :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: But the store-bought sweets with their insane sweetness? All of my family members who stopped eating added sugar started to find those horribly sweet, no matter how much sugar and carbs stayed in their diets. My high-carber SO has a huge sweet tooth but his sugar is maybe 20% as sweet as the average chocolate. (It’s very sweet if you ask me but carnivore restarted my sweetness perception changes :stuck_out_tongue: If something has sugar, that is usually sweet to me. Cream is my sweetener now. Lactose free as I do love properly sweet things but still… )

So the “real things” (typically inferior industrial stuff and homemade treats using cheap unhealthy ingredients) aren’t even enjoyable for some of us anymore and keto isn’t even need for that. One can have a huge sweet tooth and eat sweets for every meal without liking added sugar. It makes sense to me, added sugar is harmful very clearly while it has zero benefits, it doesn’t even make the food tasting any better for us.
But if one gets extra joy from sugary food and can eat it in a proper amount and frequency to lead a pretty healthy lifestyle (or they just accept they harm themselves, we have some right to do that I suppose), I get it. I just say it would be a very bad, senseless choice for some of us. I strongly prefer my own versions. I consider them more real than the originals as they have proper ingredients but I can’t even use the word “real” for food - or just rarely and differently - as all edibles are pretty real to me and I lack the views needed to make the distinction. If you put sawdust into bread, that can be considered fake. If you skip the flour from a pancake, it’s still a very real pancake if you ask me. flourless breads are trickier but I made such ones before. They weren’t good, I mean the raised ones as non-raised bread isn’t in my world but it exists even traditionally… Not sugar and flour define a dish, most of the time, to me at least. But English isn’t even my first language and we humans use the words differently anyway. That’s why it’s hard to understand each other and it’s not only about the words and their fluid definitions, it’s the underlying difference of thinking, of course.

(Bob M) #14

I did not read the entire study. Here are the short-form results, though:

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Hmm…“circulating levels of a polyol tentatively assigned as xylitol”, what does this mean?

The problem with this and many studies is that they take one sample, then extrapolate for multiple years, assuming that one sample is actually true for all of those years. I mean, what is xylitol in? Sugar free gum? What else? How do you know the people consistently took this for 3 years?

Moreover, this was the “discovery cohort”, which was the following: “Untargeted metabolomics studies were performed on overnight fasting plasma samples in a discovery cohort ( n = 1157) of sequential stable subjects undergoing elective diagnostic cardiac evaluations”. Seems like not a great cohort. Don’t seem that healthy for one thing, and maybe the people taking xylitol had some other common factor that has nothing to do with xylitol? (E.g., they were overweight and people were harping on them to lose weight, so they “reduced calories” by switching to non-caloric sweeteners.)

And I also take issue with giving people something and measuring their “platelet responsiveness”, without any comparison. What happens if you eat normally? Would there be “platelet responsiveness”? What happens if you eat sure instead, would there be “platelet responsiveness”? Without some way to compare these, we can’t ascertain what the risk is.

#15

Do you see how the “measuring” becomes important when the doctors performing the study are trying to invent a new machine that measures those things? It’s modern day marketing that begins in clinical studies to support a financial interest.

(KM) #16

Genius! If you can’t create an objective experiment without massive push back from industry special interests, invent a new machine or process to measure something you probably don’t need to know (and then promote that knowledge as essential anyway). Let them worry about the results, you have a magic new machine! Cha ching!

(Joey) #17

You’ve succinctly described a tried-and-true method for monetizing all kinds of useless devices throughout the ages. :+1:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #18

Some of them are being found to be mitochondrial toxins in their own right, but I think the data are not fully in yet. That said, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that certain non-sugar sweeteners affect certain people in ways that mess with the results they desire from eating a ketogenic diet. The cephalic-phase insulin response to a sweet taste can be a problem for people, as well.

Xylitol is known to be deadly to dogs, so it should be no surprise that it might have negative effects on people. Or it might not, since we and dogs have quite different metabolisms.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #19

My two current favourite metaphors are fire engines and thermometers. Fire engines are always found at fires, and high thermometer readings always accompany a fever. So the “obvious” conclusion is that selling off a city’s fire-fighting equipment will result in fewer fires, and putting your thermometer in ice water will reduce your fever. Science! :rofl:

#20

This. I accidentally bought Bocca Sweet not realizing it was xylitol. I decided to use it rather than toss, being very careful of my furry friends. Couple of days ago I developed a gum infection out of nowhere. While I do not recommend this (if you have an infection please see your dentist, infections can be very serious) I figured while I am waiting for my appointment let me try the xylitol. I did a teaspoon in water (which was quite tasty), swished, followed by some hydrogen peroxide (tiny amount, less than a capful, DO NOT drink this). Repeated the next day and felt much better but I have pretty good gums. It is possible something was caught there and by flossing I removed it or once my system got over the fast, everything went back to normal, I have no idea but it is not bothering me but will go to the dentist tomorrow anyway