Diet soda may prompt food cravings, especially in women and people with obesity
npr.org
npr.org
I guess because it is cheap (~$1 for 2 litres), sweet, and fizzy.
What I don't get is how they can get away with it. I mean people are getting crazy over companies like Facebook but junk food companies get a free pass for some reason. Most Americans are even unable to see the link with obesity rates.
These days it is more common to ask for water, but even then, that will be bottled water and the prices can be similar to soda
But that didn't use to be culturally ingrained in the US until just relatively recently, and since then it has been exported abroad
Meanwhile, in some European countries, for instance, outdoor fountains can be more plentiful which is fantastic in its own way, and indoor options are much less common. In others, neither outdoor nor indoor options exist so one is forced to find a public bathroom to use the faucet.
In some other countries, both public bathrooms and water fountains can be very rare, which unfortunately leaves no viable option.
People are lazy and prefer to replace it with netflix which I don't have a problem with until people lie to themselves and others about the reasons.
I think you are manufacturing your own argument here - no one said that they had to eat at a restaurant, have a personal chef, or a 60s housewife to eat well?
It could perhaps be perceived as laziness when you deride whatever replacement someone chooses over basic chores they’re no longer responsible for but really this is you conflating leisurely activities as lazy.
I personally enjoy cooking but not everyone does and them choosing to pay to not have to do that is their choice.
You know it's okay to criticize the environment you grow up in right? It's how society improves.
We all have a finite amount of time on this planet, and replacing menial tasks with things that are interesting or enriching should be considered one of the more positive things one can do for their own life. It's like what they say about being rich/wealthy. Many people (I blame media mostly) think about the luxury items and lifestyle that one can purchase, but the real win is that fact that you don't have to anything you don't want to do ever again. You can choose exactly how you are going to live your life.
I don't personally believe life has a purpose or meaning, and I've become content to just wander the world finding interesting things until the end of it.
I don't think it's the most charitable interpretation in either case.
The evidence is massive and drastic that the eating habits of the majority of Americans are killing us. Maybe approaching 50 is making me care less about insulting sensitive internet randos than with helping people understand the consequences of poor eating habits and the fairly simple way one can change. Sorry for caring.
I made some seasoned rice, a cucumber salad, and some sesame seed encrusted seared Ahi the other day. It was delicious and healthy, but it took 2 hours to put together, eat, and clean up after. That's not something I'm going to have the desire to do every day.
I think you could replace HN time with cooking, and it would be both more interesting and saving money definitely makes it more enriching
The word came to mind thinking about coming home from a rough day at work and needing to put something, anything together to eat when you'd rather be doing literally anything else.
I'm not talking about a planned meal where some actual planning and effort went into a meal that the cook is hoping you'll enjoy, I'm talking about the results of "i'm tired and hungry and I need to make something and I'm hating the entire process" kind of meals.
The kind of cooking where you mechanically put something together without much thought because you're at the end of your rope for the day.
Obviously such a concept expands well beyond "cooking". Replace that with car maintenance, lawn care, programming, writing, etc. People enjoy different things, and would prefer to replace those activities they don't enjoy with something else.
Being able to is privilege, but I (personally) draw a hard line at calling that laziness.
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with your overall point....but what drive-thrus do you use?
A home-cooked meal for me takes at MINIMUM an hour. Prep, cooking, eating, cleanup. If it takes less than that, then it's probably a lot of pre-made/processed stuff that isn't particularly healthy in itself.
The only way I've been able to get around it with my work schedule is to meal-prep on weekends. Making stuff in bulk helps, but it's still 3-5 hours of my precious weekend used up.
It's not hard to optimize for speed. White rice, beans and frozen veggies boil in 10-15 minutes and don't even require attention for the full timespan. Cleanup consists of putting things in the dishwasher. And I don't know why you would factor in eating, going to McD won't teleport it into your stomach. Time can be further amortized by making several servings, putting them in the fridge and warming them up in the microwave later.
We're comparing to fastfood here, not a high end restaurant course.
We season and bake our veggies. It adds to cost, but doesn't make me want to toss my food in the trash.
It's just that it's the flavour of the vegetable, which isn't full of sugar, salt, or msg unlike the very optimized processed foods
And I don't find any need to put butter or other stuff on the broccoli. Usually just a smidge of Tony Chachere and garlic powder.
You are what you eat. Eat garbage fast food, and you will feel like garbage. And your body slowly accumulates all that garbage.
Traditional dine in restaurants are usually just as unhealthy as eating fast food as well.
It's actually shocking to me that garbage food has been normalized to the point where eating healthy is "what I ate when I was a broke in college." and that we must be miserable eating healthy.
Wow that's crazy.
I happen to love cooking, so to me it's relaxing. My wife doesn't like to cook, so I do most of it. But even still, as much as I like doing it, there are definitely days when I don't feel like all the work. And if I'm going to put the effort into making stuff, I want to make something good, and often something new, and that takes a lot of time.
And while brown rice is much better than white rice. If you want white rice, go with basmati. It tastes much better, cooks faster, and is hard to screw up. I don't understand why people use any other white rice. There are tons of other kinds of rice that are worth exploring too. They all have much more interesting flavors and textures than plain old generic long-grain white rice.
It's low status to eat well on home cooked foods, and high status to eat poorly at well advertised garbage restaurants
Going through the drive through at McDonalds certainly will not raise your status in America.
My go-to lazy meal is 1 1/2 cups of rice and beans, a few cups of stock, a cup of salsa, extra flavoring as desired, whatever veggies and protein I have around, all thrown in the pot for 25 minutes. Then I take out the pot and put it in the fridge. That will last two people a few days. Very little prep for a massive amount of food.
You can also make yogurt overnight for maybe a 75% savings over store-bought.
I have optimized what I do quite well, or at least I'm much faster than I used to be. But for example this last weekend, I made some stir fry in a large batch for this week's meals. By the time I left my parents' house (long story but I basically can't cook at the house I live in), I had used up three hours. That was prepping four bell peppers, an onion, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, and chicken, cooking them, and cleaning up afterward.
I'm sure I can speed my prep up even more, mostly with knife skills. But at this point, that's how it is.
I factor in eating because I clean up after I eat. Most of the stuff I make is best fresh out of the frying pan with very minimal resting time.
But anyway, I'm not here to argue. If cooking at home works for you in 15 minutes, fantastic! I can't do that, it never works that quickly. I was mostly wondering how the parent poster's drive-thrus were so slow that they could cook faster because where I live, I never spend more than five minutes in one.
Big Mac, no bun, extra mac sauce. /s
All these carbs can and probably will be bad for your health, regardless of where you get them.
The easy things to fix tend to also be less healthy for you. And the less time and money you have, you tend to lean into this trap even more.
Life isn't quite that simple
Like it is genuinely the most out of touch privileged statement but I have the money and am absolutely willing to buy the time. $30-70/wk (less the cost of groceries) to gain 8ish hours of leisure time and more variety than I would ever bother with is a no brainer experience at this point in my life.
I cook 6 chicken breasts at a time, that way I have chicken for today and the next 5 days. It takes less than 5 minutes of your time to put chicken breasts on a sheet pan and then step away for 20 minutes while they bake in the oven. Then one minute to wash the sheet pan when they are done. There's 6 minutes of my time for 6 days of chicken breasts.
Then there's so many ways to use the pre-cooked chicken breasts. One day ill chop one up mix with mayo, and mustard to make chicken salad and apply to some toast. 5 minute chicken salad sandwiches.
Next day I'll chop the chicken Breast up mix with taco seasoning microwave for 1 minute and apply to taco shells with lettuce and tomato. 5 minute tacos.
Next day I'll microwave a chicken breast with some mixed veggies. 5 minute chicken and veggies.
Next day I'll microwave the chicken breast apply to some toast with lettuce,tomato, mayo. 5 minute chicken sandwich.
That was just some things you can do with a chicken breast. There's so many meals you can prepare in less than 5 minutes that is healthier and cheaper than anything you get going out to eat.
(Long story but I live in a complicated environment with a bunch of people who never clean up after themselves, so the kitchen is basically unusable since I refuse to clean their messes.)
Also, "some mixed veggies". Do you use frozen? I like frozen veggies, but they take a lot longer than five minutes to cook unless I'm just microwaving a steamer bag (and they never taste that good prepped that way). I much prefer fresh (and they're normally cheaper, monetarily, though obviously they take much longer to prep).
you eat chicken six days in a row and you think that is healthy? dude wtf :D
The average American is eating corn, beef, french fries, and cheese for nearly every meal every single day.
For years I could never figure out how my favorite Thai restaurant makes the chicken in the Basil Chicken dish have such a great texture. Now that I cut the chicken before cooking, I get similar results. Now if I could only get the seasonings right.
But aside from that, your recipe ideas are excellent, and I do a lot of the same kinds of things. Chicken and veggies, usually done as a stir-fry kind of thing (and with a good wok, you don't even need to add oil, although I usually put a little in).
Another item I can't live without is garlic paste. I put that in almost everything, and my wife always gives me a hard time for buying so much of it, but I use it that much. Besides, we've had an agreement for many years: She doesn't like cooking, so I do most of it. And there are few things more satisfying than having your wife just raving about some excellent dish you've prepared (ditto the kids). That alone is enough encouragement for me to keep doing it, but I get to enjoy it as well.
Chicken breast is my go-to for easy meals, but lately I've also been using tilapia filets a lot. They're relatively inexpensive... for fish... and very easy to prepare. For a treat I'll use salmon filets or tuna steaks. I love both, but my wife really prefers the tuna.
I have a number of similar dishes based on ground beef, too, (like chili) but since that's been going up in price more than chicken, I've been using it a bit less these days.
Pork loins and chops are another good protein that's easy to cook, and not too expensive, but chicken often wins because it's the cheapest of all.
Add up that time over the course of a week and see how much time you waste on convenience.
You can cook a lot of inexpensive and healthy food in less than an hour. Protein, veg, complex carbs. Get a wok and do some stir fry - you can make a meal in literally 5 minutes then.
I own a wok and stir fry is my go to meal- I can’t make meals in 5 minutes. I take the time to cut vegetables/protein, then clean up afterwards. And if you’re going from pre-cut frozen it takes more than 5 minutes to thaw???
I agree that stir fry is a fast easy meal but I really disagree with this exaggeration of its speed. It makes the argument disingenuous.
I wish I could simply but healthy meals for a few bucks. I mean I can outsource my laundry for 7€ a bag and get it washed, dried and folded the next day. Why doesn't it work like that with food?
There's takeaway of course but those aren't the healthiest of options. It's more a luxury special thing. I wish I could get a meal service like some old people get :)
As you cook more at home, you get much faster at it. Especially for recipes you familiarize yourself with. It also becomes less of a chore as it requires less focus and you can do other stuff (listen to music/podcast, chat with your SO/roomates) while cooking.
Cut some onions and garlic, some cabbage and perhaps some dried sausage, fry it while your rice is cooking. Dinner done in 20 minutes. Cleanup is done with a dishwasher, because I don't live in a swamp. Forgoing rice, it can be done far faster.
I don’t think most people analyze the cost like this and they probably like restaurant food more.
It’s like spending “just 10 minutes” on HN everyday, adding up to something significant by the end of the week.
On Wednesday, I made a stir-fry with boneless chicken breast , broccoli, poblano peppers, canned mandarin oranges, canned pineapple, garlic and ginger paste. It took a little more than an hour for this "quick" meal. I should have chopped a couple of onions, but I was getting lazy.
After reading your post, I'm realizing that I spend a _lot_ of time chopping vegetables. I have a food processor from 25+ years ago, but I can't find all the parts to it. I think it's time to find those, or just replace it.
My most common lunch is a salad that takes all of 5 minutes to chop the vegetables. My most common dinner is a bowl of steamed vegetables that takes seconds to throw in the microwave, and a baked potato that takes seconds to put in the toaster oven a half-hour ahead of time. Oatmeal or eggs for breakfast take five minutes or less too.
Unless you really work incredible hours, like a 16 to 24 hour medical shift or something, citing time as a reason not to prepare food is either looking for an excuse or way overshooting on the complexity needed.
Wasting it on mindless things like chopping vegetables or washing pots and pans is of course a choice you are free to make, but it is a foolish one in my view.
It's usually about 2x the time to clean up after a meal than it is to actually prepare it, in my experience. The cooking is easy, but cooking makes a mess of the stove, of the pots and pans, of the utensils, et c.
It would be at least a 15 minute round trip to the drive thru from my house and would cost 5x as much and be 10x less healthy.
Kids don't choose what their parents feed them, and that's how culture is imparted to the next generation.
That being said, junk food isn't the privilege of Americans. Even countries with a "food culture" like France eat a lot of junk food.
Consider these individuals (not meant as an exhaustive list of archetypes):
1. A high-income American who lives in a large city, owns a car and/or can afford grocery delivery
2. A middle-income American who lives in the suburbs and has access to a grocery store, but is price-sensitive when it comes to food
3. A low-income American without access to a car, who lives in a "food desert" in a large city and does most of their shopping at a bodega/corner market
4. An American who lives in a rural area without a grocery store for several miles
The way these people engage with food is wildly different, and only those in the first group could be rationally considered "lazy" if they chose processed food.
If your goal is simply to feed yourself and your family, you're likely going to optimize more for calories-per-dollar than you are than for freshness. When compared to processed food, fresh produce is actually incredibly expensive.
The real truth is that a majority of Americans are now overweight. Unhealthy lifestyle has been normalised to a point when non fat kids who don't eat pizza for lunch will be bullied.
I see mostly healthy (80% or more) BMI kids in these photos.
2021 middle school America: https://www.google.com/search?q=2021+middle+school+america&c...
Again nearly all of them healthy BMI.
Moving away from anecdotes to statistics: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
Not surprising 20% obesity and 80% healthy.
This is a tragedy that needs to be addressed but is not even close to non fat kids are being abused by fat kids now in America.
While the picture for adults is much worse, still only 42.4% of American adults are obese. A great tragedy that needs to be addressed but a “significant” majority of Americans are still at a healthy BMI.
The bar to entry gets high when your parents can't cook
is that sexist or are you stupid? I have news for you then - guys can cook, too - no kidding
Most people I know who actually buy soda and bring it to their home either don’t drink alcohol or coffee. Plenty of Indian’s drink tea and there are probably street vendors who sell sugar cane juice or fresh squeezed fruit.
Everyone has their vices. Lots of people chew Paan and betel leaf but you’d never hear about it in the US.
1. Because the glass bottles were fairly precious by local economic standards, soda would be served "to go" in a plastic bag with a straw and a rubber band to keep it closed.
When I was 19 I worked at a tech company with unlimited pop available. The 15lbs of additional weight caused me to look at it a whole different way, and broke that habit pretty fast!
Now the only time I have Coke is after a huge endurance event, otherwise it's just way too much.
It's not much of a decision point, I don't really think about it in terms of expected value or return on my choice, diet soda is simply the answer to the question of, "What are you drinking?"
And despite articles like the submission, there's no real observed downside to this choice (I'm not obese, and have never been obese, so this article doesn't really apply to me), other than potentially what the carbonation could be doing to my teeth, and as long as my dentist doesn't seem to have any concerns (she doesn't), I persist.
I enjoy the taste of diet pop, but I also find myself reaching for it sometimes out of sheer boredom rather than thirst. If I drink some water and I find it bland, to me that's a sign I wasn't actually thirsty.
I don't think there's anything unusual about reaching for a soda as a treat for its taste. But in terms of pure thirst-quenching - damn does water hit the spot.
But there's also genetics. Some people spit out stuff like "omg, that's too sweet! yuck!" I eat a pretty spare diet these days and try to eliminate sugars and other additives, and still, sweet is good. I cannot put together this concept, "too" sweet. My sister doesn't like the taste of red meat, never has. People are just different!
Short of overhydration, there are no downsides to pretty much constantly consuming non-caloric liquids.
It's also what you're used to. There was a time when I would drink a lot of soda, but then I made an effort to switch to just water (and coffee). I almost never crave soda now.
Acid + teeth is not a good mix.
Dressing up water with lemons or whatever takes time. Grabbing a soda from the fridge is dang near effortless.
Plus caffeine.
No calories, better than alcohol and the delight.
The only thing is if I drink a lot of it in a week, I sort of get used to the taste.
Also Coke Zero is the only one that I've found that doesn't have an artificial taste to it. Things like Sprite Zero have a very odd after taste.
I'm originally from India, so I can understand your apprehension, but a diet soda is really cheap here.
I worked for a B-School program which looked at growth opportunities for Cola in India.
One of the challenges were lack of electricity in large parts of the country. Even those who had electricity did not get it for 24x7. Those who had it uninterrupted could not afford to buy a freezer. This prevented the whole appeal of cold drinks that are not cold. Coca Cola and Pepsi invested heavily in refrigeration technologies as they mass imported cheap fridges and offered them for free. But electricity being government controlled remains a luxury in India. Coca Cola and Pepsi did crazy things to solve this problem including creating tie ups with ice makers who supply ice slabs for special events to brine based coolers than can keep things cool for 12 hours.
The results however were stunning. From 2016 to 2020, India has doubled the per capita consumption of cola per year to around 88 bottles. I think it is fair to assume that the ceiling for this number is around 1500 bottles per year because both USA and Mexico consume that much soda. Given the income difference between both countries I think that is an upper bound.
USA has 30x of India's per capita income but only 20x more soda consumption. Which makes me think Indians are going to hit that 1500 bound much much sooner than expected.
Note:
Some of our research results were fascinating and counterintuitive.
People preferred Coca Cola because it was "healthy" to a locally produced freshly squeezed sugarcane juice. The reasoning was that while the juicer center does not even have a food department clearance and is unsanitary, people had more faith in soft drink manufacturers quality control. Ice mixed with sugar cane juice was often transported via two wheelers, kept on the road and smashed into smaller pieces with a hammer.
When people were convinced that the sugar cane juice was produced in extremely clean fashion people preferred it over coke and were willing to even pay more than coke.
Companies like Paperboat in India have come into existence from these sort of insights.
You answered your own question - because America is wealthy and Soda is cheap.
I'm in New Zealand and soda was definitely a luxury growing up. But here it cost 14.57 USD for an 18 pack, while for a 24 pack in the states it's 10.22 USD. So almost half the price.
[1]https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/addicted-to-soda [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6488513/
In the case of diet soda, I assume that since most people already start drinking regular soda, there's a placebo effect.
If they told us to cut off our nose today you'd see a lot of noseless Americans tomorrow.
>Seriously, I thought people were smart in here, but all these answers...
Shame culture is sad and pretty obnoxious. Does that a make you feel good about yourself, was that your objective? WTF do you care what people drink? Maybe do some self reflection on that.
People who grow up on soda invariably think water "tastes bad", which has been the reason folks around me keep drinking it. I find it as mystifying as you.
I see sucralose in a lot of processed foods, especially ones trying to pretend to be healthy. It's a shame that it's hard to find unsweetened sliced bread in some stores.
American bread has sugar because it's cheap and Americans like it.
It's worth maybe pointing out that this study was based on sucralose, just because it seems this sweetener is worth tracking separately in general. I don't really consume things with artificial sweeteners but sucralose is starting to become a concern of mine (eg for my daughter).
Still think it's worth keeping track of artificial sweeteners as they're not all the same in their effects.
Still think it's worth keeping track of artificial sweeteners as they're not all the same in their effects
So I think that this brain reward system still applies to anything that tricks your palate to think something is sweet.
"Grouping by nature of comparator revealed that NNS vs placebo/no intervention and NNS vs water produced no effect."
so like, there's a food craving, and then ???? you don't gain weight. who cares! maybe you eat more in the next meal, and then it's not clear this persists into a real caloric surplus.
NPR repeats the same old wives tales like you would hear from the guy next to you in line at Dunkin' Donuts but in a soothing posh accent to make you think you are an intellectual.
Some people underestimate the power of food cravings. The amount of willpower needed to overcome cravings as a result of starvation can be monumental. Some people have never experienced starvation level hunger in the first world. Some people experience it every day by choice.
Your brain will re-wire itself to think of nothing BUT food and how to acquire it. You notice colors associated with foods. Smell becomes heightened. I once smelled what the neighbor was cooking two doors down and felt an overwhelming urge to knock on their door. Commercials for food are endless. One time on a walk, a white-tailed deer walked by and I had the feeling of a NEED to run it down and kill it with my teeth.
Real hunger, experienced by people every day, is almost at the level of psychosis. Trying to hold a job, raise kids, keep a house, and have a relationship while starving yourself to not be fat is nearly impossible as it is. Artificial sweeteners aren't going to MAKE you eat. But they will make you even more miserable.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19221011/#:~:text=The%20incr....
0: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141009154007.h...
Other than that, far, far better than regular coke, which should be banned for people under the age of 21.
That said - it's much easier to drink just water now. No caffeine headaches and such. Can't actually drink the caffeinated diet coke anymore - get sick from it. Super weird.
I heard a speculation recently from a science vlogger, I think he was citing a paper, but as a side comment to the fact that humans have taste buds elsewhere in our bodies, that it's possible that when the artificial sweetener is in your intestines, your body makes an effort to absorb the 'sugars' that it senses, but in the process ends up absorbing some of the ambient sugar in your GI tract that otherwise would have not been captured, or used by gut microbes, throwing the whole balance off in the process. So in effect sugar free foods still have a caloric cost from a diet perspective.
Then there's sugar alcohols, which are edible by bad gut microbes but not by you.
What are you comparing it to though? If you're deciding between diet soda and water, then it's hard to make a health case for diet soda. But if you're deciding between diet or regular soda, then diet soda starts to look a lot better.
Look around. This whole thread is about how the tradeoff of artificial sweetener is worse than you think it is. In toto it's pretty bad in fact. There is no 'health case' for diet soda. The person who put those four words next to each other in your brain was in marketing, probably when you were still a kid.
There's a hedonic treadmill with sweets. If you stop consuming processed food with refined sugar for a while, the common complaint is that they are too sweet to drink. We have to acclimate ourselves to drinking soda regularly. Can you see how screwed up that is?
Artificial sweetener is trying to keep our unhealthy relationship with sweets but cut out the consequences (or rather, trade them for other consequences).
And maybe some day I'll remove diet soda, but for now it's not competing with water; it's competing with soda, and I suspect it's at least an upgrade in that regard.
The amount and kinds of artificial sweeteners in each drink could well be reduced and varied by manufacturers, but time and time again they choose not to, but if you look at the alternatives of water every time or drinks that are also very high in sugar on the inverse, diet drinks are a blessing for many people.
My #1 tip: Do not have it in the house. If it's there, your body will find its way to it and will perpetuate the habit, the addiction, the cravings.
Also serving size matters. It's cheaper 'per serving' to get the larger container, until you are honest with yourself about how big your serving is actually going to be, and how much time and energy (and possibly money) it's going to take to undo.
Buying the single serving chips or the smaller cans ends up being cheaper for me, overall. A serving of fancy chips is a treat. A whole bag of them is just self-recrimination in a crinkly bag.
Allulose looks promising and tastes like real sugar (I‘ve tried it), hope it will be used more widely.
Somehow the body is reacting badly to the dissappoinment of not getting all the promised calories that it tasted. Either triggering cravings that drive people to make up the deficit elsewhere or causing the digestive system to change gear in some way. It is now known that there are sweetness receptors in the gut, so this flow of what the body thinks is undigested sugar may make things go haywire. Anyway, it's not my field, but I find it interesting.
Almost everything to do with weight loss verges on pseudo-science and the field is constantly flooded with misinformation from people peddling something. Focusing on weight loss as a goal in and of itself is thus pretty much always a road to pain anyways.
It's the malt I think that convinces you that this stuff must be like a beer shake.
I can buy good local micros for a few dollars less, so the NA pricing feels a bit wasteful. But I haven't been drinking alcohol lately, so... this is my choice if I want something beer-y tasting.
I'm really looking forward to NA Guinness.
There definitely are good boutique NA beers out there, they are just SO pricey.
Now that's a surprise! Seriously - okay if you like the aspartame taste of your diet coke, go ahead. But if you actually think diet coke is "healthy" in any meaningful way - then I'm sorry, nobody can help you!
Some good alternatives are stevia, monkfruit, and the sugar alcohols (xylitol, erythritol, etc). I don't especially like the taste of stevia, but stevia + monkfruit blends aren't so bad.
I keep a bowl of fruit in the house at all times, and it's time to go to the store when it's getting low. I make it easier for myself to get some fiber with my sugar than to make myself something sweet. It's not enough on its own, but it sure helps.
The newer version tastes a lot more like regular coke, but to get that flavor, it seems that it is meant to be poured over ice.
If its caffeine you are physically addicted to, I will say the withdrawal is probably just as bad as a nicotine withdrawal. Nicotine withdrawal seemed to hit much faster (for me it was within 15 minutes of my last hit of nicotine vs coffee I just needed it bad in the mornings), but other than that the effects of withdrawal felt the same to me between the two stimulants. In both cases, if you are able to deal with a terrible migraine headache and feeling underslept and sick and nauseous for the two weeks it takes to get through these symptoms (in my experience at least), you will have successfully quit. I have cut back my coffee to maybe 3-5 cups a week (after a long initial detox) and I haven't used or craved nicotine in years.
Simply put a spike in blood sugar due to a sugary food is much, much bigger than the drop in blood sugar sufficient to trigger a change in eating habits. And that's before we consider the impact of non-insulin hormones on our behavior, such as Ghrelin, which won't show up on a blood glucose test at all.
[1] e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6363527/
> So far, only saccharin and sucralose (NNSs) and stevia (NS) change the composition of the gut microbiota.
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/18/9863
Is stevia ever used alone? If it's just a "fig leaf" so to speak, then perhaps the health effects of the sugar alcohols would be more relevant.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-b...