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Comment by rr888 | Hacker News Reader

> I think everyone knows that "diet" in a product name means it's healthier than the non-diet product.

Disagree with this. Its marketing BS to focus on one diet optimization usually at the expense of something else.

What would be the something else? There are occasional studies that may indicate health risks associated with diet soda, but as best as I can tell they are not really conclusive. The health issues with consuming large amounts of refined sugar on the other hand are concrete and very well documented. Dental caries, increased likelihood of developing diabetes mellitus, etc.

It's true that refined sugar has been very clearly proven to be associated with terrible consequences to your health. But most of the sugar substitutes used in "diet" products simply don't have those warnings because they're just newer and less studied. But there's been a lot of recent research showing just how bad these artificial sweeteners can be even in small amounts. Some studies have even shown long-lasting and intergenerational effects on the gut microbiome[0] and increased cancer risks.[1] The impacts on the gut microbiome[2] are particularly worrying to me. Many of these sweeteners love to sit in your gut for a while and can lead to really weird microbiome makeups and possibly even be a risk factor for diabetes and/or metabolic syndromes

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.79584...

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/