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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Studies have shown artificial (and non-nutritional organic) sweeteners are much worse than sugar for decades.

For instance, they disrupt your metabolism, so equivalently sweet amounts of sweeteners cause more weight gain than sugar. (Due to increased hunger vs. eating nothing, decreased metabolism and decreased calorie burn.)

The study in the article isn’t surprising at all. Links between nutrisweet and migraine headaches have been well understood for a long time. It’s not surprising other similar chemicals have similar negative side effects.

There’s no valid reason to use artificial sweeteners (other than diabetes, but even then, gaining weight from the sweeteners is a problem if the diabetes is weight related.)

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Thats wrong. You can find any individual study to support nearly any conclusion you want.

The most credible meta analyses (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429) only show positive or null effects compared to equivalent sugar amounts.

I was under the impression that this is not the case. Aspartame has been studied a lot and not found to be harmful.

Anecdotal but I have experienced body ache from drinking diet soda with aspartame. I drank regular soda when younger but switched over to watch my weight as I aged. A year on during a more sleep deprived week I went heavy on the caffeinated diet soda and ended up with all muscles feeling like I had done some major exercising. Thinking back, I had been experiencing regular aches. I stopped for a week, felt better. Tested again by going heavy for a week and the aches returned. Tried regular soda and no aches. I just stopped soda all together at that point. I check labels now and avoid anything with aspartame in it.

Anecdotal but I drink diet sodas all the time and have never felt any such thing.

Aspartame is linked to anxiety.

Direction of causation would be very relevant here.

Sugar is still the cultural default; artificial sweeteners are something you explicitly choose due to health concerns (worried about being or becoming diabetic, or overweight, or worried about sugar being unhealthy in general, or about the mood/motivation angle, etc.).

I imagine becoming overweight itself is linked to anxiety both ways, as eating or snacking is a common reaction to stress, a way to relieve it in the moment.

>Sugar is still the cultural default; artificial sweeteners are something you explicitly choose due to health concerns

If only. Check the ingredients (usually near the bottom) of some energy drinks some time. Monster, NOS, AMP, half of the Rockstar flavors, Bang, and so on will add sucralose to the normal versions with sugar or HFCS in them. It's hard to find one without artificial sweeteners. This is especially crazy as Monster already has their sugar-free (Ultra?) line. They're forcing normal people to consume sucralose, and it's awful. Luckily Red Bull seems fine for now (Blueberry flavor is really good). Guru in its original flavor only also has no sucralose, but I think all the other flavors have it. I first noticed this trend one of the times they brought back Mtn Dew Game Fuel and it tasted disgusting. Now I'm scared of any new drink, or that they'll ruin one I like.

Also, I think water is fine, caffeine pills are fine, I know some people are against energy drinks, but I don't think that's a reason to ruin them (preempting replies saying not to drink them at all). I've been drinking black coffee all week but I still have some Blueberry Red Bull in my fridge for when I feel like it.

Is it the taste of sucralose which is ruining the drink or do you feel sucralose makes an otherwise healthy drink like red bull unhealthy?

(Full disclosure: I consider red bull very high risk of being unhealthy, considering the stuff they put in, the artificial flavours, etc. – sucralose is a mere detail to me)

Jumping in, but sucralose tastes very clearly weird to me. Aspartame I had too long ago but probably tastes weird too since I avoided it afterwards. Monk fruit tastes a lot better but it can get overwhelmingly sweet to me. I tend to avoid sweeteners though, partially because of the taste and partially because they are new chemicals and potentially unhealthy.

Sweeteners are definitely an acquired taste. The few times I went on or off of them, it took about two weeks for my body to adjust, after which artificially sweetened beverages started tasting good, and those sweetened with sugar felt off - and then also two weeks to readjust the other way around.

Ultimately, sweeteners won me over, and I've been "on" them for the past 12 years. For me it's a simple matter: I dislike pure water, and have been drinking black tea instead ever since I was a single-digit aged kid - but I also can't stand unsweetened tea. Sweeteners save me from ingesting stupid amounts of sugar through drinking some 10 mugs of tea every day, as I used to long ago.

It's the taste, yeah. Frankly I don't care much about what's "healthy" and I consider that to be a bit of a buzzword as well as a rabbit hole. I do eat a lot of veggies, don't eat meat/dairy anymore, don't drink alcohol, but in my mind I'm not doing this to be some health-freak. Alcohol tastes bad, for example, and I have very low tolerance for that sort of thing. A lot of people will assume I'm religious (I'm not) or otherwise ascetic, but I'm actually just doing what I want. It keeps life more interesting. If we're to look at an energy drink as a fun thing, a pleasurable treat, I think sticking sucralose in there completely defeats the point. I can drink water if I'm thirsty, I can get caffeine from other sources. I wanted the energy drink because it was good. If you make it not good, I'm not going to drink it.

> Studies have shown artificial (and non-nutritional organic) sweeteners are much worse than sugar for decades.

What? No they haven't. This is just straight-up misinformation.

Aspartame is completely safe to consume. It's not carcinogenic, it doesn't mess up your metabolism, it doesn't do anything. At worst, it can cause some people stomach upset in large quantities.

We can't just lie and make things up because they sound intuitively true. Zero-calorie sweeteners sound too good to be true, sure. That doesn't mean they actually are, that's not science.

> There’s no valid reason to use artificial sweeteners (other than diabetes, but even then, gaining weight from the sweeteners is a problem if the diabetes is weight related.)

"There's no valid reason to use artificial sweeteners" -> proceeds to list valid reasons.

Yes, people use these for weight control because they're very effective and safe. Also: it's impossible to gain weight from artificial sweeteners like Aspartame. There's no calories in them, what would make you gain weight?

https://www.healthline.com/health/aspartame-side-effects#sid...

I know multiple people that have had problems on the "other" list, and a few people have mentioned their own problems on this list.

According to the summary, the studies showing those side effects are universally on the list due to lack of funding on follow ups, not due to the effects disappearing when the studies were repeated with larger sample sizes.

Witholding funding and spamming inconclusive results is a common playbook for industries that are trying to slow down scientific consensus. The tobacco industry did the same thing to get an extra 50-100 years of "cigarrettes are probably good for you" to be the public consensus, despite scientists calling for additional study.

Are you aware you've sent a link of side-effects, including interactions with medicine? That doesn't mean a substance is unsafe, all substances, including water, have side-effects. I've never known anyone to have any side effects from aspartame. I've never known anyone who has known anyone who has had side-effects from aspartame.

> "cigarettes are probably good for you"

The difference is Tobacco is a Group 1 Carcinogen - definitely carcinogenic. Along with processed red meat and alcohol.

Red meat is group 2B, possibly carcinogenic. This is also where Aspartame resides. Which means there are SOME studies showing carcinogenic effects, and other's which do not. Please note that the studies which showed carcinogenic effects in Aspartame used many hundreds or thousands of times the dose found in human food and beverage. The great thing about Aspartame is that it's not actually zero calorie - it's just very potent, so we put next to nothing in our food and beverage.

For all intents and purposes, Aspartame is completely safe. When compared to sugar, Aspartame is much, much safer. I mean, it's not even close.

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