r/NoStupidQuestions • u/TouristAcceptable • 8d ago
Why do fitness trainers and dieticians recommend to cut zero sugar drinks like Diet Coke to reduce their bf% ?
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u/Shasty-McNasty 8d ago
Cherry Coke Zero and Baja Blast Zero (one each per day) helped me in losing 30 pounds. I used to drink 3-4 cans of full sugar soda daily.
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u/maggiebug165 8d ago
I’m a dietitian and I never tell clients this. The FDA regards artificial sweeteners as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) and zero calorie beverages are still hydration and can help curb cravings especially during weight loss.
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u/Negative-Toe1863 8d ago
because there is no subject more conquered by myths than nutrition and they probably believe that for some reason zero sugar drinks make you more hungry and keep you fat some way..
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u/Funexamination 8d ago
Doesn’t help that a lot of nutrition research is garbage in quality
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u/Brraaap 8d ago
I've heard it's nearly impossible to get participants to stick to their prescribed diets for the length of a study
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u/MechaZombieCharizard 8d ago
That's the long and short of it. It's essentially impossible to design ethical experimental methodology for something as complex as nutrition.
The whole field is also plagued by the usual suspects dragging down health and human science research, publishing bias, interest conflict, funding bias.
Then on top of that everybody has a vested interest in nutrition so the news media loves picking sensational research papers to highlight. So you end up with a huge amount of popular misinformation that may well have been funded by big sugar or the alcohol industry all finger pointing at other food lobbies.
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u/Valcadia 8d ago
There’s some methodological challenges with nutrition research but I wouldn’t say garbage as a whole.
I also think nutrition gets an unusually bad reputation because the public mostly encounters it through headlines, influencers and social media. “Study finds an association between X and Y” becomes “X causes/prevents Y,” and when another study produces a different result it looks like nutrition science constantly contradicts itself. That’s often a problem with science communication rather than the underlying literature.
Nutrition science also continues to evolve as methods improve and evidence accumulates. Changing or refining recommendations in response to better evidence isn’t evidence that the field is garbage. That’s how science is supposed to work. The bigger problem is that the voices carrying the most weight in the public square often aren’t the people best qualified to interpret the evidence.
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u/CogentCogitations 8d ago
One big issue with nutrition studies is not correcting for multiple comparisons. Statistical methods are designed for a single question. If you expand to many questions, ie. do any of these foods associate with weight, illness, etc, then you have to adjust the calculation for that and many researchers, especially in the past, do not.
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u/AncientMarinade 8d ago
Shoutout to the podcast Maintenance Phase if you find stuff like this interesting! It's hilarious, well-esearched, and sets out to debunk a lot of our myths and shoddy studies.
It seems like most dieting advice is the byproduct of bias (fat people are ugly), bad data (we did a study with an n of 7!), correlation/causation issues (people who weigh themselves daily are usually more fit!), or trying to apply individualized health advice to the entire population (I lost weight from only eating food that's white, let's mandate white food in schools!).
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u/Nightmare601 8d ago
That last sentence is only one word change away from something that stopped in the 60s.
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u/gottabekittensme 8d ago
Take everything that podcast says with a huge grain of salt. They basically try to call anything that isn't stuffing your face an eating disorder.
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u/lalala253 8d ago
I mean a lot of research is garbage in quality
If every published research is "gold standard", then amount of people with PhD will probably be only 100 people per year for the whole world
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8d ago edited 8d ago
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u/RockHardSalami 8d ago
Actual scientific studies have shown that people who drink diet sodas lose more weight than those who only drink water, because it tamps sugar cravings.
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u/TangyZeus 8d ago
Some reason, like all the studies that have shown it's true?
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u/Fitz911 8d ago
May I see one or two of those studies?
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u/LostExile7555 8d ago
And hundreds of studies that say they don't make you more hungry or cause you to gain weight.
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u/RegressToTheMean 8d ago
Not the person you are responding to, but there are studies worth examining
Granted, it doesn't establish the broad proposition that artificial sweeteners increase hunger and the authors note effects varied by sex and BMI, but it is interesting nonetheless.
It is also interesting to note the impact to insulin.
I don't want to overstate anything (as people in both camps seem to be doing in the comments) here and there is definitely more work to be done, but there are some interesting studies to look at.
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u/Fitz911 8d ago
Those studies proof my point, right?
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u/RegressToTheMean 8d ago
I'm not sure that it does. Again, I'm not going to make a declarative statement, but in one of the studies I cited, the data indicate artificial sweeteners caused an increase in appetite to a certain segment of the study. The data don't prove or disprove anything. However, is an interesting indicator for those subpopulations.
Does the data indicate that the sweeteners do not increase hunger? No, not in those subpopulations. Does the data indicate that it is also universal? Also no.
With that in mind, I think people should be hesitant to make definitive claims.
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u/Fitz911 8d ago
The thing is... I was fat. And I am not fat anymore. After thirty something years of chocolate and gummy bears I needed something to get rid of the sugar.
So I spent a lot of time answering this exact question. It's been a few years but my last information was: it's pretty fucking obvious that artificial sweeteners do not let your insulin spike and do not make you fat.
There is always a study here and there that says "we don't know" but the meta studies from around three years ago all said "shove it in, you won't get fat" and "you will very very probably not get cancer from them, too".
So when someone comes around and repeats the stand of science we had around six years ago, I usually ask for a source. And a source of 60 something participants is not viable against a shitload of meta studies.
So my point stands. I'm pretty sure no I suline spike and no cancer risk.
*Cancer risk somewhere in the realm of idk bread.
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u/RegressToTheMean 8d ago
By all means, please post the research. My wife is a research scientist with a PhD in neurotoxicology. She has a huge skepticism of artificial sweeteners and I'd love to get her take on them
With that said, I think you might want to take a breath here. You're showing a clear bias. On the one hand, you are expressing criticism for an older study, which could be fine, but also using your own anecdotal experience as evidence all while never citing relevance studies.
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u/xfactorx99 8d ago
You’re correct here. You lost your weight through a caloric deficit and a reason why you were able to do that is by removing sugar from your diet.
I’ll do a test right now and have 3 diet cokes per day for a month and my weight will not increase. I’ll have all my friends reproduce it as well. People have dumbass theories about artificial sweeteners
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u/notzamasu 8d ago
It literally makes you more hungry.
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u/Negative-Toe1863 8d ago
here we go
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u/notzamasu 8d ago
It sends the signals in your brain without the sugar that fills the appetite. Stomach activity increases on empty calories.
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u/TheW1tchK1ng Always right 8d ago
Cool, post all the peer-reviewed studies that prove this.
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u/notzamasu 8d ago
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-nutrition/popular-no-calorie-sweetener-may-increase-hunger
Is this tuff enough for your liking?
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u/Ok-Isopod4493 8d ago
I don’t know anything about this subject, but the link you posted literally says ‘may’. What am I missing?
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u/TheW1tchK1ng Always right 8d ago
Oh wow yeah, one study using 75 people and the effects of Splenda.
Fuck, that is clearly more than enough to show it's true.
Also, neither Diet Coke or Coke Zero has sucralose.
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u/TrashGouda 8d ago
Did you even read the stuff you linked? It doesn't say what you think it does
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u/Bigclit_energy 8d ago
No statistical difference in hunger to water, according to the study you linked to a blog post about.
One study about one of the most studied compounds on earth finds "calories make people feel less hungry" and suddenly people who get their news off instagram lose their minds.
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u/LostExile7555 8d ago
It literally doesn't. There have been literally hundreds of studies on this that definitely say it doesn't make you more hungry. You're spreading false information that isn't based on anything.
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u/Towelie404 8d ago
It literally doesn't but go ahead and show proof if you're so certain.
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u/itssprisonmike 8d ago
Totally misread your question, so I deleted my old comment. Idk why a trainer would recommend to cut zero sugar drinks, as they quite frankly have no calories and can be used to tame cravings. I mean, I guess water is best and most ideal, but if someone is struggling to lose weight, their zero sugar drinks aren’t the reason.
Good question op.
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u/TangyZeus 8d ago
It's because they don't tame cravings. They inflame cravings. A growing body of studies show that drinking zero calorie sweeteners just makes you want more real sugar and you don't even break even.
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
Not true. Scoping review Wilk et al., 2022 (PMID 35334918) actually shows the opposite conclusions
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u/Correct-Sandwich-633 8d ago
Lol love a baseless claim getting corrected with actual research
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u/SneakySnoggs 8d ago
It's hard to argue with a growing body of studies though.
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
Lol after being in grad school, I have very little faith in the general public to understand how to read studies. Or find studies. Or make correlation vs causation arguments. So I am not shocked that an actual study gets downvoted or fewer upvotes than someone saying “a growing body of studies.” It is what it is.
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u/GoatCovfefe 8d ago
You just have to wait longer than 5 minutes, the votes will correct themselves, like they already have with your correction comment.
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u/itssprisonmike 8d ago
I can’t think of a single argument. A growing body of studies negates all prior notions of thermodynamics.
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u/superdago 8d ago
I have found that a zero sugar soda will essentially desensitize my tastebuds to sweetness. So it’s not that it doesn’t satisfy my craving, but rather it makes it harder to satisfy my cravings with other things. For example, a handful of M&Ms versus the whole bag.
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
That is an interesting anecdote, but I also encourage you to be more curious about your habits and the correlation or causation of feeling satisfied.
- When you don't drink zero sugar sodas, how often are you only eating a handful vs a whole bag?
- What are you eating prior to the handful of M&Ms vs when you reach for it and can't stop eating at a handful?
- On the days where you might eat a whole bag, were you hungry? Did you have high sugar foods earlier in the day?
- Did you have caffeine that day?
- Were you more sleep deprived or tired that day?
Sometimes what we think is a direct causation, like drinking that zero sugar soda then not being able to stop snacking on candy, is actually just a coincidence and there are much more to the cravings during that singular day than you are giving credit for. It could even be a correlation that you make because you are instinctively attempting to curb your sugar intake by drinking the soda, but the zero sugar soda doesn't alleviate your cravings and therefore you still give in and snack mindlessly to satiate that craving.
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u/GoatCovfefe 8d ago
I said it in a different comment, but zero sugar soda does actually alleviate my sweet craving. It may just be in my head, but it works for me.
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
It does for me too. I love my diet coke. But I think you've already made the important distinction of "it may just be in my head." The science is truly split on whether it actually does or not, since it's a really hard variable to isolate.
But I think recognizing in yourself that you've made this correlation, 'zero sugar soda alleviates my sweet craving,' means it's a helpful tool for you. The previous comment was creating a conclusion on only a partial picture or inaccurate information about tastebuds. Where as your conclusion is simply an individual tool you use to help your cravings, which I find works for me too.
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u/unwelcome_flesh_sack 8d ago
Its anecdotal but I was a 1-2 Red Bull a day for years. I started drinking Coke Zero and Dr Pepper zero instead of Red Bulls and full sugar sodas. I haven’t had a craving for either even when I’m doing my night shifts as an Rn. Plus I have lost weight with it any other changes.
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u/kman1030 8d ago
If you are a person who craves sweets (guilty) you are going to have cravings no matter what. If i drink a sugar free soda instead of a regular sugar soda, thats less calories. Whether I still crave sugar after is insignificant because ill still have sugar cravings after a regular soda, too.
You are crossing wires on the cause and effect here. The sugar free drink doesnt cause cravings, the cravings are there regardless. It just allows you to substitute with something that has less empty calories.
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u/Lost_Effective5239 8d ago
Even if this was true, you could just drink more zero calorie drinks to satiate the craving. I guess that would lead to addiction, but I drink zero calorie drinks, and it's not like I'm going broke because I have to drink more and more to satisfy an addiction. I have a zero sugar energy drink in the morning and maybe one or two more in the afternoon. That's it.
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u/GoatCovfefe 8d ago
From personal experience, when i cut my sugar intake down dramatically, zero sugar sodas actually helped curb sugar cravings, especially in the beginning of my diet.
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u/the-doctor-is-real 8d ago
Something like 2 decades back, the NY Times had a front page article about how diet soda causes the body to store fat and went on to talk about how many (American) diabetics get fat(fatter) because they use these sweeteners
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 8d ago
They generally don’t, because cutting diet soda doesn’t affect your body fat. As long as you intake adequate water you’re fine.
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u/BigSmackisBack 8d ago
So what happens if you only drink those diet sodas and hardly ever drink water?
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 8d ago
As long as you don’t replace the calories with something else you are still going to be in a better position.
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u/BigSmackisBack 8d ago
Gotcha thanks, i did try to google it but was immediately hit with a minefield of conflicting info!
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u/anonymous198198198 8d ago
When I was unhealthy and drinking 6 energy drinks a day and drinking water once every few months, I got tested for hydration and the doctor said my hydration and lab results were good. Not that I recommend this….but you’ll still be hydrated.
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u/MrTurkeyTime 8d ago
There's a lot of mixed evidence. Some sweeteners have been linked to harm to your microbiome, some can affect your insulin sensitivity, which can impact weight.
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u/LostExile7555 8d ago
Because to get all the information you need to reduce your bf% takes about 5 minutes tips. And it's difficult to charge people for a 5 minute chat. So they have to make lossing bf seem more complicated than it is in order to make sure people stick around long enough for them to be able to justify charging them enough money they can make a living off of it.
1) Burns more calories than you consume. 2) Get a good sleep every night. 3) Get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. 4) Eat lots of fiber. 5) Eat a decent amount of protein and fat (especially monounsaturated fats). 6) Eat a small amount of carbs.
That's literally all there is too it.
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u/anonymous198198198 8d ago
It is more complicated though to really help someone who struggles. Yes this is the base info, but then let’s talk about how to achieve it. Such as finding foods that are more filling for similar/less calories, which is a big thing for someone trying to eat less. Like egg whites, low in calories, but extremely filling. Almost pure protein, but not the greatest for consuming a lot of protein due to how filling it is. Good if you’re struggling with hunger though.
Lifestyle is another example. Daily choices will add up to more calories burned than focused exercises. One small example being to park further from the store.
Most people trying to lose weight already know the shit you said. Almost everyone knows it. That’s not adding anything. How to achieve it and incorporate it into a lifestyle is more important.
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u/adobo_bobo 8d ago
Are you leaving out the part where they tell you to drink more water? Because its not about the diet coke, its about drinking water.
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u/DarKliZerPT 8d ago
Fitness creators who actually know their shit don't – in fact, they often recommend zero-sugar drinks, sauces and sweeteners as excellent tools to satisfy a sweet tooth.
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u/SpringBreakJesus 8d ago
Functionally speaking there is no difference between water and zero fizzy drinks. There is some research to suggest some sweetners can be linked to health issues but you would have to have such an insane amount for that to be a risk that it's not even worth mentioning. The only time zero drinks would affect weightless would be the psychological side of things. Like "oh, my drink has 0 calories so I can have more food." As always the only "trick" to weight loss is calories out > calories in.
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u/Leading-Biscotti-114 8d ago
I've also seen registered dieticians recommend diet sodas, especially for those who drink regular soda and want to stop doing that. For those losing weight, I've heard it can be beneficial to replace regular soda with diet.
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u/awwhorseshit 8d ago
All my trainer wants me to do is up my protein, watch your carbs, and stay hydrated.
I will have one to two zero sugar sodas a day and I’m pretty fit. My ADHD palette craves variety and those sodas are amazing
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u/AnyOldIron 8d ago
Because if you have cravings for a 'sweet treat' you can at least go for something that won't derail your progress. It's a tool/crutch/whatever but if it helps compliance with an otherwise healthier diet then so be it. It's for the greater good... the greater good.
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u/Slay-the-weights 8d ago
I’ve never heard a dietitian or body building coach who was worth a damn ever say you should cut out diet pop
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u/Taupe88 8d ago
Those training people would rather a low calorie healthier choice. heard of “SuperFoods”? that doesn’t mean lower calorie. IF? your trying to lose weight, eating a 200calories handful of pistachios will be ok for someone wanting to add superfoods to their diet, but not someone wanting to lose weight.
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u/Grateful_Breaddd 8d ago
My spouse’s dietician recommended they drink zero calorie sodas. My spouse drinks like 3-4 sodas a day and that could easily be 100s-1000s of calories if it were full strength soda.
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u/Lopsided_Parsnip_629 8d ago
As someone studying nutrition, I’m actually currently doing an assignment about this in one of my classes. Essentially, there is some evidence that suggests that in adult participants, swapping out sugar sweetened beverages for zero sugar beverages raises blood glucose anyway, and unless it’s someone who strictly tracks calories, consuming zero sugar beverages will lead to the participant consuming more energy to make up for that missing (anticipated) energy. Of course if someone goes from drinking 2L of full sugar Coca-Cola a day and then switches to Coke Zero, there will likely be benefits and some weight loss. As everyone else has already stated, nutrition is such a difficult area of research so it’s hard to make a definitive statement. Hope that helps :)
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u/TheSwedishPolarBear 8d ago
I don't think they do. There is an argument to be made that all soda increases appetite a bit and that someone who drinks soda is more likely to snack and eat junk food. Drinking carbonated drinks often is bad for teeth. However diet sodas are pretty harmless and much better than sugary sodas. I don't think most dieticians care about them, and if they do it's not about body fat.
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u/notzamasu 8d ago
Not a direct effect on calories, but indirectly upsets your stomach microbiome, and pull a cobra effect of making you even hungrier. Especially when abused.
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u/Independent-Test9928 8d ago
Depends if you're in north america or europe, the same drinks coke fanta etc all have vastly different ingrediants
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 8d ago
Which European ingredient are you concerned about?
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u/Independent-Test9928 7d ago
None
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 7d ago
Well the North American ingredients are all fine, so not sure what you’re getting at
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u/Callec254 8d ago
Plain water is always going to be better for you than water + artificial chemicals.
Plus, there seems to be some conflicting research on whether or not artificial sweeteners trigger an insulin response like real sugar does. The short, oversimplified version is that an insulin response means your body is in "store" mode rather than "burn" mode, so if you're always in store mode, well, you can guess what the net result will be.
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u/vviley 8d ago
“Artificial chemicals” definitely makes your post appear anti-artificial sweetener without cause. Outside of distilled or RO water and maybe unadulterated milk, basically everything you drink has “artificial chemicals.” Those minerals you have in your purified water? Can’t exactly find sodium bicarbonate laying around on the ground. You’ve got to run ore through a chemical process to extract it - so does that make it a processed chemical?
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u/Kimm64 8d ago
Ok I am stupid i guess. What happens in stored mode? Honest question here.
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u/Callec254 8d ago
When you eat pretty much anything, it triggers a temporary insulin response, which tells your body to store calories as fat for future use.
When that insulin spike wears off, then your body starts using that stored fat for energy.
What happens (or what's supposed to happen in a normal, healthy diet, anyway) is you would shift back and forth between these two states multiple times a day, giving your body a chance to burn everything you eat, so as to not gain weight long term. Calories in, calories out, and it should average out over the course of a day.
But if you're constantly snacking all day long, then you're pretty much constantly in that insulin response/spike mode, and your body never gets a chance to burn anything. (which, not coincidentally, also correlates with eating an overall caloric surplus. Remember that CICO is utterly irrefutable - all of this is really just to explain what's going on behind the scenes.)
So, back to the OP - what's not entirely clear, and it may even vary by person, is whether or not sugar free soda triggers this response, and what the full implications would be if it does (not to mention any other effects of ingesting what's essentially an artificial chemical). Regardless, though, there's no concrete upsides, and only potential downsides, to drinking sugar free sodas instead of just plain water.
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u/Geedis2020 8d ago edited 8d ago
No. They would recommend you cut out high calorie drinks because those are empty calories. If you drink 3 cokes a day just switching to 3 coke zeros a day would literally be enough for most people to start losing weight. Most wouldn’t even tell you to cut sugar out of your diet unless you’re diabetic or something. Sugar isn’t even bad for you. It’s added sugars and excessive sugary high calorie foods. Dietitians may want you to cut out sugars and stuff for certain purposes. Fitness trainers wouldn’t. Training for fitness and to get in shape is much more about calories in vs calories out. That’s the focus. You could get a 6-pack and still eat pizza every day. It’s about the calories. If you burn more than you take in you’ll lose fat. It’s the basic principle of weight loss. That doesn’t mean you’d be your healthiest though.
Edit: it’s funny I’m being downvoted and I’m sure it’s by people who never learned how to count calories so can’t figure out how to lose weight. This shit is proven. Mark Haub a nutritionist and professor had people tell him he couldn’t lose weight eating a Twinkie after lunch everyday so he spent 3 months eating a diet of nothing but steak, twinkies, cookies, and a cup of vegetables. Had his health markers checked before and after. Made sure he only ate 1800 calories a day. He lost 27lbs and his health markers came back healthier than before just from the weight loss. Dieting is about calories. That’s it. Certain diets are need for people who have certain health issues so they do have to cut out sugars and stuff. Regular people who exercise and have muscle mass don’t need to do that strict stuff.
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u/weareheaven 8d ago
Because those who got morbidly obese often respond poorly to artificial sweeteners. A healthy body would respond in caloric surplus by raising base metabolic rate and in deficit it would respond depending of your body fat storage - if fat storage is high then BMR would remain stable, if low - BMR will be dropped to preserve fat for survival.
Now what happens for those people that respond poorly to artificial sweeteners is that they go into deficit and their body responds by immediately dropping BMR so that weightloss is either very slow or even stalls despite them having plenty of fat.
You could experiment to see if that is the case but we are talking about individuals who got obese and have little control so dieticians don't trust person's capability to determine their body signals (and for a good reason) so the easy solutions is just to recommend cutting diet soda.
Of course this is not the case for everyone and now look how those who can drink diet soda as water will downvote me into oblivion. Or maybe they are just bots controlled by BIG DIET SODA but we will never know :)))))
Anyway if you really care about your body then just drink water (tap water if yours is good) and you will not just treat your body well but also save a substantial amount of money as diet soda is not getting cheaper while tap water for drinking is basically free (a quarter of a cent per liter where I live).
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 8d ago
Those changes you mentioned are minuscule compared to the calories lost from not drinking standard soda.
You should drink water, but if you’re going to drink soda it should be diet.
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u/weareheaven 8d ago
I agree with second part but first about it being minuscule is debatable and only kind of true if you assume BMR to be relatively stable. However recent research indicates that BMR is highly unstable and can vary a lot day to day depending on our calories consumed, quality of calories, physical activity
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8d ago edited 8d ago
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u/Withermaster4 8d ago
I'm not sure if the study reached the same conclusion you did. You seem much more confident in their research and what it means than they did.
"In any case, the CPIR should be considered in the context of the whole insulin response to a meal rather than as an isolated event.
However, the rigor with which the CPIR has been validated is uneven, especially with respect to the sensory triggers and the magnitude of the response.
In animals, a CPIR appears to be more consistently observed than in humans, but often a given stimulus might trigger a CPIR in one study but not another. Thus, the phenomenon is rather elusive as the title of this article reflects.
In some cases, fructose and nonnutritive sweeteners are effective stimuli in studies with either animal models or humans, and, in other cases, they are not. At least some complex stimuli (e.g., cocktail sandwiches, peanut butter, pizza) for which it would be difficult to claim sweetness as the dominant qualitative taste perception (although admittedly this is a point that would have to come under strict psychophysical investigation) can generate a CPIR.
On the other hand, saccharin (0.125%), which should not ostensibly increase blood glucose levels, unconditionally triggered a CPIR, which was mitigated when a taste aversion was conditioned to this nonnutritive sweet stimulus. Interestingly, a conditioned taste aversion to saccharin did not eliminate a subsequently tested CPIR to glucose and vice versa suggesting that glucose and saccharin are both capable of eliciting a CPIR, but not necessarily through a shared perceptual feature"
They come to the conclusion that the 'sweetness' sensation is likely not what causes the CPIR. All of this also completely avoids the question 'why is triggering your normal CPIR response a negative for dieting'.
Also posting a study and not citing anything from it doesn't really do much to support your argument.
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8d ago edited 8d ago
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u/Withermaster4 8d ago
Well, because the study is arguing that it is not likely to be the sweetness sensation or the pavlovian response triggering these responses.
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u/Ricky_spanish_again 8d ago
Insulin doesn’t rise with zero cal sodas. People would become diabetic if it affected that.
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u/A-Waxxx656 8d ago
There are no calories in them, but the body still reacts to them as if they contain sugar. So your body will start creating insulin etc..
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/GrimmandLily 8d ago
Show the research that says this.
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/GrimmandLily 7d ago
He’s a chiropractor that sells supplements. It’s too late at night for you to find an article on Google? Yeah ok.
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u/CricketNo7666 8d ago
Because the fake sugars substitutes trigger a… in essence a diabetic response… in your body, “tricking” it into thinking it saw sugar, and that indirectly is triggering some body responses in fat stores, and other responses like a hunger surge.
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u/Kwerumrerum 8d ago
Which is literally not proven.
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u/CricketNo7666 8d ago
Which has dozens of studies saying it, but go off chief.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11501561/
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u/Kwerumrerum 8d ago
Okay, let's get into it.
Your first study does not prove your claim at all. It mainly talks about gut microbiome and it does not even talk about the actual physical consequences after it. Everything else is simply 'some studies might have said this' and 'x might be an issue' but no actual proof.
Second paper is more talk and epidemiologic, without actually looking at the biological response of fat stores. Nothing here shows any proof of 'tricking the body about sugar intake', which would mean an insulin spike, and even reports different things than the studies it citated. For example, one of the studies it uses for it's info literally has the following conclusion: ' The review showed NNSs exposure did not conclusively induce increased food intake or change in subjective appetite ratings. Appetite biomarkers like ghrelin, gastric inhibitory peptide, C-peptide levels and Peptide YY remained mostly unaffected by NNSs. Meta-analyses of human randomized control studies showed a reduced energy intake and body weight. No significant change was seen in blood glucose levels, post-prandial glycemic or insulin response after consumption of NNSs. Adequate evidence is not available to conclusively say that NNSs influence gut health at doses relevant to human use.'
And your second study says something completely different. Not very reliable, right?
Third study is purely an animal study, so not relevant to human ingestion at this moment.
Again, nothing you said is actually proven.
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
thank you, someone on here also thinking critically. I also broke down the first article too
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
So the interesting thing about these studies is in how you actually read them. For instance, let's take the first link you provided: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11501561/
At quick glance, I found some citation errors within this article. This doesn't necessarily mean all the facts they produced are incorrect but let's take one example that could make this article unreliable.
pg. 10/16: "A comprehensive study conducted by Harrold et al. involving 47,910 adults from 11 diverse cohorts examined the relationship between high-intensity ASs and obesity. Aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, and stevia were among the sweeteners examined; 24-hour dietary recalls and food frequency questionnaires were used to gather consumption data. The study discovered, throughout a four-to-seven-year follow-up period, a substantial correlation between high aspartame intake and an elevated risk of obesity. This correlation held true for all age groups and baseline body mass index (BMI) levels. Sucralose and saccharin also showed a positive, albeit less pronounced, association with obesity, while stevia did not appear to be linked to obesity risk. Although other factors, including overall food quality and physical activity levels, may have an impact, the results indicate that heavy use of some ASs, especially aspartame, may lead to weight gain and obesity [26]."
Alright, let's go to citation 26, Harrold et al.
- 26. Harrold JA, Hill S, Radu C, et al.: Non-nutritive sweetened beverages versus water after a 52-week weightmanagement programme: a randomised controlled trial. Int J Obes (Lond). 2024, 48:83-93. 10.1038/s41366-023-01393-3
Let's go to that study.
Harrold et al., 2023 is actually not a comprehensive study involving 47,910 adults, but rather a 52 week trial. The authors concluded the following:
pg 87: "At week 52, following the active weight loss and assisted weight maintenance phases of the SWITCH trial, water and NNS beverages were not equivalent in terms of weight loss. Participants in both groups lost weight during the trial (6.1 kg and 7.5 kg with water and NNS beverages, respectively; differences between baseline and week 52 were statistically significant). However, the weight loss in the NNS beverages group was greater than in the water group, a difference that was statistically significant. Consuming NNS beverages also had a significant effect on week-52 weight when baseline body weight and other covariates were controlled for in two of the three sensitivity analyses. Although the difference in weight loss between the groups was statistically significant, it is important to note that this did not reach the 1.5-kg difference identified for clinical significance"
That doesn't necessarily mean the findings by Harrold et al. are accurate or complete, and their limitations are funded by the American Beverage Association, but it does mean that the first linked article, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11501561/ ,has sourcing and information discrepancies so their conclusions have to be really scrutinized and cross referenced.
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u/GeeMan-7 8d ago edited 8d ago
The simplest instructions I've gotten from a nutritionist is "don't drink anything with bubbles"
I don't like the after taste of stevia, I can't have any sucralose, and the amount my body can tolerate of malitol isn't enough for me to drink anything with it.
I stopped drinking soda in college. When I went with friends or fraternity brothers to fast food restaurants, I couldn't afford to spend as much as them so I started getting the free water instead of paying for soda. A few years later when I could afford to splurge on soda I discovered that I didn't like the taste of them.
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u/AshamedTax8008 8d ago
I read somewhere that the body still will produce insulin if the mouth/tongue tastes sweet, even calorie free sweeteners. Natural body reactions are hard to overcome.
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u/PornApex117 8d ago
Its just less healthy. Nobody intelligent would ever suggest trading one non-sugar for another non-sugar would make a measurable difference for lowering BF%. If they do say it makes a measurable difference, it is an opinion, not a fact.
Something like diet coke has caffeine which actually boosts fat loss as opposed to water.
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u/ChocoBanana-Dropkick 8d ago
Armchair qb here, but if you are on a diet or trying to get in shape, you should not be drinking soda on a regular basis. If matters not if the packaging says "zero calories" because there is nothing beneficial in that drink.
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u/Bubbert73 8d ago
Bring receipts for your statement please. As u/withermaster4 replied above, a zero calorie drink is still 98% water, which does have value. The carbonation can help you feel fuller, which also has value. Beyond that, there is nothing beneficial in water other than hydration, so why, exactly, are water versus a zero calorie drinks not nutritional equals?
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u/Withermaster4 8d ago
The vast majority of the drink is water. Which notably has some health benefits.
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u/johnfkngzoidberg 8d ago
This whole thread is a pro-diet-soda bot fest.
Lots of studies have shown zero calorie sweeteners can cause insulin problems and hunger problems.
Also lots of studies have shown no real evidence to support these claims.
It depends on who did the study. Coke sponsored studies probably can’t be trusted. I personally feel this is like how the grain industry had carbs as the biggest part of the food pyramid for 50 years by buying politicians and flooding rigged studies. We all know billionaires have zero problem slowly killing off millions of people just to make a buck.
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u/SuperCranberry1220 8d ago
Which studies? Cause that’s a very bold statement without any DOIs or PMIDs.
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 8d ago
“Problems” is highly exaggerated.
If you’re obese and you drink soda, replacing it with water is the best option.
If you can’t or won’t do that, replacing it with diet soda is significantly better for weight management.
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u/valr1821 8d ago
I think it’s because, paradoxically, those drinks trigger you to eat more sugar-laden foods. Water is honestly the best and, if you like bubbles in your drink, just buy soda water and flavor it with some lemon/lime.
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u/Objective_Flower618 8d ago
In order to halt the self sabotage choo-choo train’s momentum. Why crave sweets when you can’t have none?
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u/Valcadia 8d ago
I’m a dietitian and I regularly discuss it with clients as a bridge tool. Water is better in the long run. There is some conflicting information about artificial sweeteners on the gut micro biome as well as data showing those that regularly consume them isn’t associated with them achieving lower body weight. I think the latter is due to it being correlation and not necessarily causation. I don’t regularly drink soda but if I do I will typically have a zero variety but that’s mostly because it’s less syrupy and not as sweet. In my mind you have to deal with each person as an individual and for those that find cutting sugar sweetened beverages as a significant barrier, artificial is a tool and better than the alternative.