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Comment by david-gpu | Hacker News Reader

> My understanding about how artificial sweeteners work in part is that they don't have a caloric impact but still cause an insulin response.

Some sweeteners appear to trigger insulin secretion, some don't.

[0] https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/sweeteners

[1] https://www.diabetes.co.uk/in-depth/study-review-do-sweetene...

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Interestingly seeing, or smelling foods can cause insulin release[0]. Perhaps it's not surprising that tasting foods would.

But it does make me wonder. If evolution was so concerned about blood sugar control it led to insulin release even before you ate (and that in evolutionary terms foods were very low in sugar and simple carbs). What must a doughnut do to our physiology?

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002604...

> What must a doughnut do to our physiology?

Maybe that's why my hair is falling out!

Interesting article (to both of you actually). Thanks for sharing.

That article seems a bit misleading. While some sweetener packets, such as equal and splenda contain some sugar, I don't believe this is necessarily true when they are used in other products. A quick google implies that, for example, Diet Coke (my beloved) does not contain any real sugar, only aspartame. So it seems disingenuous to compare the metabolic impact of a sugar/aspartame blend to pure aspartame.

The article goes into a lot more depth than that and contains links to the peer-reviewed research that it is summarizing.

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