There is all kinds of solid research on the detrimental effects of artificial sweeteners.<p>One area that comes to mind where there is _a lot_ of redundant evidence backing up effects is on the microbiome.<p>Another is glucose uptake pathways and insulin resistance.<p>These things aren't myths, prior to this article I'd never heard anyone suggest that possibility. The amount of research, approaching the problem from numerous angles, arriving at a similar conclusion, is hard to deny.<p><a href="https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener-microbiome-9935/" rel="nofollow">https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener-microbiome...</a><p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/5307224" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/530...</a>
Just drink diet soda if you think it tastes good and drink normal soda if you think that tastes good, and don't drink soda too often in general. Constantly worrying about things like these probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal and diet soda.
I don't care about the debate of sugar vs. artificial sweeteners - my personal hobbyhorse/trigger is the way artificial sweeteners are added to products these days that are not marketed as "diet" or sugar free, apparently because someone figured out it would save money. I don't know if it's legal to completely fail to disclose, but I've noticed it's often quite obscured or they use tricky language. For instance I saw something that said "no artificial flavoring" but had sucralose. Yeah, people will smugly say "read the ingredients", but you used to be able to rely on the rest of the writing on the package not being actively deceptive.<p>If there's a market for drinks with <i>less</i> sugar, why not just <i>do</i> that?<p>A few decades ago I was pretty much on board with the smug disdain some people had for the unscientific tendencies of the organic/natural foods movement, but now I have to admit it seems like companies have decided that anyone who <i>isn't</i> buying organic has absolutely no standards and they are going to exploit it to the hilt. Even if organic standards are mostly BS, at least they aren't regarding their customers as asking to be abused.
What if the problem with sodas isn't only the sugar (variants) but the preservatives?<p>I mean, why do we presume the preservatives don't affect the body's ability to process the rest of the soda content, so it accumulates?
It's important to remember a simple fact about artificial sugars: they're about 10 times less dense than sugar (at least the one i use, which is a combo of maltodextrin and sucralose). This means that 10g of sugar is sugar sweet equivalent of about 1g of artificial sweetener. Which means if you're switching your sweetener from sugar to artificial you're getting 10 times less sweetener! Which means, even if sugar and artificial sweeteners were equally bad for you gram for gram, you're still getting 10 times less of thus 10 times less bad for you.
Even if the claims in the article were correct, which they are not, the basic reasoning is still wrong.<p>The author says that we should drink diet sodas unless they are proven harmful. But the artificial sweeteners are a new artificial chemical. That means we should not drink diet sodas unless they are 1) proven safe and 2) proven to help in weight loss, neither of which even the author claims is the case.
I've read repeatedly (but never dug into it) that contrary to intuition, replacing sugar by artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss. My own take is that I should consume less sugar, but if I'm going to commit that particular sin, I'll use sugar and not the funny tasting alternatives.<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/17/537262142/artificial-sweeteners-dont-help-people-lose-weight-review-finds" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/17/5372621...</a>
I think the biggest impact that diet soda has it the high salt content dehydrates you which makes you perform worse at the gym and creates this negative feedback cycle. Additionally, diet soda's cause you to retain water which will make you look softer and the scale weigh heavier. If the majority of your liquid intake is water, diet soda is just fine. I've been able to lose significant weight while drinking it. It's the carbs that kill you!