Fat? Stop drinking diet soda

[yesthattom]

I always suspected something like this and it makes me glad that I never started drinking diet soda in the first place. Being on a diet has been rather easy for me, and I wonder if this is part of the reason.

Diet Soda: The Brain Knows Better

Comments

[qnetter]

The assumption, however, is that it then leads people to consume more sweets... which is not my experience at all...

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

Annecdotal evidence loses to statistics every time.

[qnetter]

You misunderstood my comment, which is no surprise from your attitude. I said specifically that MY experience -- my personal experience -- is that it doesn't work that way. I'm mongo fatto, I drink diet soda, and I eat about 10% of the sweets that my lean partner does. So the correlation is ill-expressed as being redirected to other sweets. Or I'm a fat fucking outlier. Either way, my statement is true: that increased intake of sweets in not MY experience, so who cares about statistics?

(As pointed out in a subsequent comment: the likelihood of an insulin mechanism being in play rather than a brain function is much more realistic. It's much more likely, then, to influence total caloric intake as well as specifically non-sweet carbs, which are the issues for me.)

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

The paper talked about overall caloric intake, not eating sweets. I had no idea what your diet was like, but I do have a LOT of experience with negative side of the diet industry.

I did not mean to insult *you* in any way, merely to point out that you were assuming that people were eating sweets and becoming fat, when that is not usually the case (from a statistical viewpoint). Most people are gaining weight due to eating highly processed food which the body more readily turns into sugars, leading to higher blood-sugar levels, higher insulin cycling though not all of the sugars are absorbed and higher fat storage. This also leads to a craving for more sugar as the body becomes used to a high sugar diet. Even if you never eat sweets.

You partner may have an excellent insulin response which may be at least in part genetic.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

The paper talked about rats, and the study in humans referred to was on 12 women, and just because our brains aren't fooled doesn't mean that there isn't a constant battle of wills with ourselves, "hey, I had a piece of cake already, I'm not going to have another one!" There's biological craving, which I can believe is caused by diet soda, but then there's psychological craving -- ie, you see a commercial for ice cream and then are "craving" it.

Most people gain weight because they eat in more calories than their body needs.

I learned a LONG time ago that my own body's gauge is severely broken, and if I give into eating when I'm hungry, I gain weight (even if I eat about 300-400 calories at mealtime, and wait 20 minutes to see if I'm still hungry -- drink water, eat 100-200 calories if it's a snack, then wait 10 minutes to see if I'm still hungry).

Also, it has been proven that Splenda actually does NOT increase blood glucose levels *nor* insulin levels (I was told this by my sister-in-law who is a nutritionist, she was explaining this because my father is a diabetic. Google search for "splenda diabetics", I found http://www.splendaexposed.com/articles/2005/02/sugarfree_with.html which gives an interesting look into the complexity of "is it safe for all diabetics".)

And he's right -- the article is ASSUMING that the biological increased craving for sweets leads people to eat more sweets. Your comment is also true -- "most people are gaining weight due to eating highly processed foods" but what does that actually have to do with the study ? Nothing.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

My money is on the sweet receptors in the gut promoting excessive insulin release rather than a brain-based mechanism, but, yeah, it seems like artificial sweeteners are somewhat counterproductive. Honestly, I think the hard truth is that humans just aren't meant to be drinking liquid calories (or faux calories) all the damn time.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, out of all the artificial sweeteners, sucralose (in Splenda) is the one that *doesn't* actually cause elevated insulin levels.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

Even if that is the case, realistically how many products are formulated with sucralose without acesulfame K? Not too many, I suspect.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Well, the actual Splenda itself isn't. So your comment is valid for diet sodas, but not in general -- I was responding to your "it seems like artificial sweeteners are somewhat counterproductive". That's very generic, and I was addressing that.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

If people only ever added sweeteners to foods themselves at home -- even if real sugar was used exclusively -- I doubt we'd have much of a problem.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

Fat != trying to lose weight

Also, if one is trying to lose weight, drinking any kind of soda (diet or otherwise) on a regular basis is a bad idea.

[tgeller.livejournal.com]

What slinkr said. You should know better, Tom.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

My intent was to imply that this might explain the weight gain, not direct people on how to lose weight.

I am growing more and more concerned that America is getting unhealthily fat. I know that fat != unhealthy. However, unhealthily fat is unhealthy. I'm seeing a lot more people that are at unhealthy weight than I did just 10 years ago.

[tgeller.livejournal.com]

Read your second paragraph. In the first sentence you say you don't believe that fat = unhealthy. Then in the next, you say that there's such a thing as "unhealthy weight".

You sound very mixed up about this.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that fat automatically implies unhealthy.

I do, however, feel that there are unhealthy weights.