Diet sodas. A question

#1

OK, Keto has worked for me and I am at my new (lower) goal weight and all the blood numbers have improved…stopped taking statins and had to decrease my heart meds substantially. I drink (ahem) “several” diet dr. peppers a day, diet coke when I can’t get them. Two of my keto friends are at opposite ends of the spectrum on this…friend1 arguing aspartame increases insulin levels and everything in a can of DDP might as well have been delivered to me (and to friend2) by Satan … while friend2 drinks more diet sodas than I do (which means a lot) and poo poos the doctrinaire attitude of the macro-counting MCT oil swilling friend1.

Clearly they are not an impediment to weight loss for me and frankly I am worried more about the caffeine than the aspartame… but you people have done more research here… at least they have no PUFAs

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

I think it’s pretty much chaos in the world of artificial sweeteners. Different ones affect different people differently. So it’s hard, if not impossible to make blanket generalizations.

My opinion is that catering to sweet serves no useful purpose. But then I’ve never been much attracted to sweet and never have experienced cravings or addictions to anything. So maybe I’m an outlier. But I think adding ‘sweet’ to almost everything was a substitute for removing the ‘richness’ and ‘satisfaction’ of fat. Thanks again, Ancel Keys.

That said, I like carbonated beverages. I’ll drink ‘sugar free’ Red Bull or Zero Coke. I like Fresca which is a great mix for gin. I think all of these (not the gin) contain aspartame.

(Central Florida Bob ) #3

What Michael (@amwassil) said in bold italics:

Unlike Michael, I freely admit to having a sweet tooth. Although I’ve reduced it, I still have sugar-free gum, like two or three pieces of Orbit per day, and usually one diet soda per day. At one time, I’d put three packets of Equal in a mug of coffee (only 12 oz). Now I use 1.

There’s a school of thought that since we can’t specifically measure insulin, there’s no sense measuring anything. I lean more toward the saying, “half a measurement is better than none” and tested myself by measuring blood sugar responses to a few things. Erythritol (my favorite sweetener), aspartame packets, and the diet A&W root beer I drink most days. None of those affected my blood sugar. For all of those, I did the test at least five hours after morning coffee. Took a reading, drank the soda or water with sweetener in it, and compared the readings every half hour for 90 or 120 minutes. None of them made my sugar go down, which I’d expect if I released insulin, but it is half a measurement.

At one point, I quit chewing gum or sugar-free mints for six weeks and noticed no effects.

Any of those experiments are worth doing if it makes you feel better about your diet soda.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #4

I’m all in favour of self-experimentation!

#5

If you’ve noticed no issues I personally wouldn’t worry about it. Caffeine has more health benefits than drawbacks, one exception (kinda) is if you’re a slow caffeine metabolizer as I am, I gotta cut it off real early in the day. If you metabolize it normally you’re pretty good.

(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #6

An as a person who makes things I am a measure twice cut once kinda gal… but if the meaning of the measurement is ambiguous, why measure at all? Why not just eyeball it with my experienced eyeball? Which is the tactic I use with keto. If what I am doing is working for me, why get all caught up in the numbers? That said, I’m grateful for all those numbers people out there working to make those measurements mean something in the future.

(Jack Bennett) #7

I love sweet tastes and I use artificial sweeteners frequently, but also with a suspicious eye.

I’ve had good results with erythritol-monkfruit in certain cases, but it dissolves poorly (bad “fudge” fat bomb result - gritty!). It’s nice in cottage cheese mixed with a small scoop of blueberries as a keto-ish dessert.

I’m fond of diet sodas but try not to go nuts with them.

I wish I liked stevia more because it’s very convenient but I find the bitter aftertaste unpleasant.

#8

My cousin refers to diet soda as “Satan’s Nectar”…LOL! I know that there are some artificial sweeteners are questionable, and I don’t drink that stuff regularly. But once in a while, I’ll have a diet Canada Dry or Vernors. Or, a diet lime Redbull. I peruse the soft drink aisle in search of the flavored seltzer waters- which has replaced most of my diet soda drinks. I’ve noticed that a few of the soda brands have replaced artificial sw. with stevia. So, that’s kind of cool. Can’t remember what the particular item was- I wanna say it was a sweetened seltzer water. So, I bought it- and it wasn’t too bad.

Regarding the aspartame… my response to ingesting it in larger amounts resulted in feeling very hungry much faster than when I didn’t ingest it.
Regarding Sucralose (splenda)…this was weird. No effect on weight loss that I noticed, but there was another issue… Nestle had those bottled flavored waters on the market in the early 2000’s. I started drinking them like mad when I was on Atkins. Gradually, I lost my voice— completely. I didn’t put 2 and 2 together right away, but what eventually made sense was the Splenda was the culprit. Splenda, as I understand it, is basically chlorinated granules of what used to be sugar. Still sweet, but, no calories. Back in the day- I was a swimmer all through school and college. My throat would end up sore after swimming, as would the eyes and nose- due to the chlorine. When I moved and stopped swimming daily, my throat would be perfectly fine. I got the exact same feeling after drinking those waters. I stopped drinking them, and after a few weeks, my voice was back to normal. I waited awhile longer, and just to test the hypothesis, drank a bottle of the water. Sure enough…it got very scratchy. I tested it out a couple years ago when one of my kids bought them, and dang it…same thing. So, I stay away from splenda just for that reason.

On the rare occasion that I might need a sweetener for something nowadays…I use the liquid stevia.

#9

what diet soda did to me.

lead me to heart palps that I thought I was doing heart troubles and diet.

got an exercise EKF treadmill thing.

heart monitor and crazy results

was thinking I was f’d big time and scary as heck

that aspartame shit f’d me up.

heart racing, heart skipping to just freaked me out.

AFTER A heart catherization and scared me to now end…any yet it was 'easy thru meds and the test from the surgeon in general and I was surprised thruthis…….cause I WAS so that bad, the surgeon Dr said my arteries were clear, I was fine, I had good veins and more…it bad to be PVS. They are combated by caffeine, lifestyle, food and shit food intake…yea that was me. ALOT of diet pepsi, bigt time.

Wanted me on statins. Heck no from a clear report from a surgeon like I was every going there on that crap med. Nope, After reseach on PVC I new todo a few things. I dropped all diet soda and NOT ONE issue after. I am not a coffee drinker. PVC health has some things to drop to effect good change.

So CRAP in and horrible effects for some.

Once I knew my PVC situation I thrived and felt great and never had that nighmare of just going off to sleep with heart skips and flips and feeling I was one hitting the heart attack realm. OMg what a diff. but I had to learn about the why of it all, oh yea I learned,

not one PVC since I changed my life. All gone now.