Peter Attia has covered this at some length.<p><a href="https://peterattiamd.com/what-are-the-side-effects-of-aspartame-stevia-and-other-sugar-substitutes/" rel="nofollow">https://peterattiamd.com/what-are-the-side-effects-of-aspart...</a><p>>While an excess of alcohol sugars can cause gastrointestinal distress (e.g., if you overdo it on these you can get diarrhea), in most people they do not cause secretion of insulin from the pancreas due to their distinct chemical structure (see figure of their structures, above).<p>The same is true for the first group of non-sugar substitute sweeteners I mentioned (e.g., aspartame, saccharin, sucralose), with respect to the lack of insulin response. In addition to studies confirming this, I’ve also documented this in myself for xylitol (my personal favorite), aspartame (Equal), and sucralose (Splenda).
50 mg is over 30 cans of diet coke for most of us.<p>If we had to consume the amount of aspartame per kilogram these mice did we would have far more serious problems on our hand than insulin resistance
Aspartame (1965) was approved by the US FDA in 1974/1981. This is commonly paired with acesulfame-K (1967) to provide sweetness in low-calorie drinks and sodas.<p>Saccharin (1879) was the first artificial sweetener, followed by cylcamate (1937). Low calorie sodas (Tab, etc) using these sweeteners were introduced in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the 1980’s diet sodas sweetened with the combination of aspartame and acesulfame-K reached the market.<p>This is at about the time the obesity epidemic took off. Correlation != causation. I think it’s interesting that the introduction and increased consumption of diet drinks paced the increase in America’s waistlines. U.S. adult obesity rates went from 15% to 30.5% to 41.9% (1980/2000/2020). U.S. childhood obesity went from 5.5% to 13.9% to 19.7% in the same period.<p>Others have made a case that aspartame, acesulfame-K and sucralose (discovered in 1976, US approval 1998) play a role in the etiology (causation) of the obesity epidemic: people who want to lose a few pounds switched their beverage consumption to artificially sweetened low-calorie drinks. The insulin released by the sweet taste of aspartame lowers people’s blood sugar level, thereby amplifying their hunger. This causes the diet-soda drinker to consume more total calories than if they’d had a HFCS-sweetened beverage.<p>There are certainly more important contributing factors to “the obesity epidemic”, but I think this is an example of simplistic science: it's technically accurate that low calorie sweeteners have fewer calories than sugar, but they are not that helpful for weight loss. I'd wager it'd be better to consume an 8oz can of HFCS soda than 12oz of 'diet' soda.<p>Do any of you have any n=1 stories of success or failure using artificial sweeteners? How about herbal sweeteners? If you regularly consume diet sodas, <i>do you combine your diet drink with calories, or is most of your aspartame consumption on an empty stomach?</i>