OK.........So now I'm sad after researching this...................

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  • GRILLZGIRL
    GRILLZGIRL Posts: 32 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    I dont want to sound mean but....i have noticed its always over wieght people that drink diet soda. And then I read those studies and it made sense. Although its calorie free it sends a message to the brain you are eatting sugar. In return you crave sugar...so why not just limit the real thing?

    @antennachick, that's confusing correlation with causation. How about looking at it from the perspective that a lot of overweight people drink diet soda because they're trying to cut calories and lose weight?

    Using the same rationale, I see a lot of fat people in the gym and out running. Therefore, going to the gym and running must make people fat.

    Perfect.

    I drink Diet Dr. Pepper like it is going out of style and I'm losing.
  • lisalsd1
    lisalsd1 Posts: 1,520 Member
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    I cut out artificial sweeteners several years ago when I was pregnant with my first child. I agree with another poster that I seem to now have a much easier time managing my "sweet tooth." Yes, that is anecdotal; but I believe that for me, artificial sweetners negatively effected me. Plus...after zero consumption of artificial sweeteners for 9 months (while pregnant), I found the taste to be HORRIBLE the 1 time I re-tasted Splenda. I never want to eat it again.

    I generally drink my coffee black, tea with mint, water with lemon. I don't find these flavors to be offensive; mostly neutral.

    As for butter, it is delicious. Just use less. Also, sweet potatoes taste great roasted and sprinkled with cinnamon.
  • ClosetBayesian
    ClosetBayesian Posts: 836 Member
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    lisalsd1 wrote: »
    I cut out artificial sweeteners several years ago when I was pregnant with my first child. I agree with another poster that I seem to now have a much easier time managing my "sweet tooth." Yes, that is anecdotal; but I believe that for me, artificial sweetners negatively effected me. Plus...after zero consumption of artificial sweeteners for 9 months (while pregnant), I found the taste to be HORRIBLE the 1 time I re-tasted Splenda. I never want to eat it again.

    I generally drink my coffee black, tea with mint, water with lemon. I don't find these flavors to be offensive; mostly neutral.

    As for butter, it is delicious. Just use less. Also, sweet potatoes taste great roasted and sprinkled with cinnamon.

    I cut out sidas when I was pregnant with my kids (3). The first thing I asked for after each one was born was a Diet Pepsi. Delicious, delicious Diet Pepsi....
  • chastity0921
    chastity0921 Posts: 209 Member
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    Actually, I'm doubly sad bc this is the third time i've tried to type this lol. Anyway, I have done alittle reading on artificial sweeteners, specifically Splenda. There are several bad things it can possibly do to our bodies, but the two I'm upset about is reading that it can spike insulin levels and cause fat storage. I've read that foreign chemicals like sucralose (sp?) can do this. I thought I was doing great by substituting splenda sweetened tea for diet coke. It seems though, that it's all bad. That leaves..............plain ole water :( And I don't like lemon/lime in my water either, so I can't even flavor it. Basically, the info i've read is stating that our bodies don't know what to do with foreign chemicals so it stores it.

    What are your thoughts on splenda? Have y'all read these things too? And what am I gonna do about my no cal spray butter now? Its foreign chemicals should cause fat storage too? When I use the word, foreign, I'm talking about foreign to our bodies. What butter should I use???





    If you haven't watched "Fed Up" on Netflix, do so now. It addresses the sugar and sugar substitutes. Basically, our body produces more insulin and we crave more food. Our body expects sugar because of receptors in our brains.

    I use real sugar and real butter. A little bit of it. I do not like the taste of fake "butter". And I actually prefer 1/2 cup of whole milk vs. more of the low fat stuff. It just depends on how much of the stuff you are eating.
  • FunkyTobias
    FunkyTobias Posts: 1,776 Member
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    Actually, I'm doubly sad bc this is the third time i've tried to type this lol. Anyway, I have done alittle reading on artificial sweeteners, specifically Splenda. There are several bad things it can possibly do to our bodies, but the two I'm upset about is reading that it can spike insulin levels and cause fat storage. I've read that foreign chemicals like sucralose (sp?) can do this. I thought I was doing great by substituting splenda sweetened tea for diet coke. It seems though, that it's all bad. That leaves..............plain ole water :( And I don't like lemon/lime in my water either, so I can't even flavor it. Basically, the info i've read is stating that our bodies don't know what to do with foreign chemicals so it stores it.

    What are your thoughts on splenda? Have y'all read these things too? And what am I gonna do about my no cal spray butter now? Its foreign chemicals should cause fat storage too? When I use the word, foreign, I'm talking about foreign to our bodies. What butter should I use???





    If you haven't watched "Fed Up" on Netflix, do so now.

    Don't.

    It's nothing but propaganda.

    https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-the-movie-fed-up-make-sense/

  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
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    lynn1982 wrote: »
    First of all, your "no cal spray butter" still has calories in it. It's just less than 5 calories for a half second spray. But have you ever sprayed it for half a second? No, I didn't think so.

    It doesn't automatically mean each half spray is 4.999 calories. I found an entry that's about 8 calories for ten sprays, and that's what I used for lunch today. Delicious, yummy toast. You have me curious now, though. I'll have to calculate the volume of butter spray and how that translates calorie wise to the entire container, divided by the total # of sprays per bottle. The product is also a bit more convenient for me - no need for a butter knife or anything, just spray directly on the bread
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    cityruss wrote: »
    heybales wrote: »
    Even if the artificials do spike your insulin - if that's all you had was a diet drink - there is nothing to store as fat.

    For that brief time insulin is up fat release is stopped, but body isn't fooled that bad and as soon as blood sugar drops a bit because you stopped using fat an main energy source and blood sugar was instead, insulin will drop right back down again.

    If drinking with food - well your food was going to increase insulin anyway. It's the nature of body preparing for some sugar coming in with sweet taste that can make it release insulin in preparation.

    So I'd remove that as factor. Whatever else you research and believe would be more useful.

    And be aware of the differences between when product with it is heated and not heated but kept cool. Some research will comment on that difference - but play off the heated info when the product you use might never be in that state, so the effect is immaterial.

    yes, this was one thing i read about.....how the insulin can cause fat storage, but also I read that our bodies don't know what to do with the unnatural chemicals, so it stores those chemicals as fat. Have u heard of that before?

    Also, can you explain your second paragraph somewhat, im kinda confused. Where u talk about blood sugar dropping? Thanks so much for your help.

    That's an... interesting thing you read there. If your body wouldn't know what to do with it, how would it know how to convert it to fat? Fat doesn't just appear out of thin air, your body has to process something to turn it into fat. You know, that whole energy equation thing that this website is all about with calorie counting and whatnot.

    Artificial sweeteners are many many times sweeter than sugar and thus only put into drinks in amounts of fractions of a single gram. That's why they're 0 calories, there's just not enough in there to be over the 5 calorie threshold of needing to be labelled. So if you convert 1 calorie of a sweetener into 1 calorie of fat (somehow, despite not knowing what to do with it), you end up with 0.111 repeating grams of fat.
    Is that seriously something you need to worry about? Nope.

    And all that aside, as you could probably already tell by the tone of my post, that's not even what happens.

    Artificial sweeteners do not spike your insulin.
    https://examine.com/faq/do-artificial-sweeteners-spike-insulin/

    And even if they did, without fat to store it can't do anything. Not even to speak of the fact insulin is an important hormone and nothing to be feared.

    Splenda is mostly not metabolizable by the body, which means most of it just passes through you, not get turned to fat. To be able to be turned to fat it would need to be metabolizable.

    Thanks, alittle sarcastic, but ur tone made me snicker. But thanks for the info and i'm going to read that link you provided. This is why I posted, so as to get others views, info because frankly there is so much conflicting info out there, all I can do is gather info and make my decision.

    There really isn't much conflicting information out there.

    There's reasonable and rational information that uses the latest scientific research and is evidence based.

    And then there's the rest.

    Then please tell me how to know the difference when it is not blatantly obvious?? I truly don't want to waste my time on fluff, but maybe I can't tell sometimes when the fluff isn't blatant.

    Some websites are trustworthy, some are inherently non-trustworthy. You will build up a database of the former, but some hints are that reputable institutions like the Mayo Clinic are good places to start. I also like Examine.com, which always backs it's conclusions with lots of links to and discussion of the studies, Alan Aragon, who does the same, the Harvard Nutrition cite, and a variety of others. The WHO, the NHS, and the AMA, as well as something like the cancer.gov site also have some indices of reliability. Something that is selling a particular type of diet I'd be suspicious of, and a variety of sites (Mercola, anything Dr. Oz, that awful authoritynutrition site (on the other hand, Precision Nutrition is decent, and will link to studies, many, many others) are not reliable at all. I'd run a particular site by MFP if you have a question. You can also try to read studies on your own, but for many that would be more work than they are interested in, and it's really not necessary if you look at the information on the mainstream reliable sites like I mentioned. There's really no significant disagreement on how weight loss/gain works (eating less or more than you burn) or about the major nutrition points.
  • BeetChew
    BeetChew Posts: 3 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    I dont want to sound mean but....i have noticed its always over wieght people that drink diet soda. And then I read those studies and it made sense. Although its calorie free it sends a message to the brain you are eatting sugar. In return you crave sugar...so why not just limit the real thing?

    @antennachick, that's confusing correlation with causation. How about looking at it from the perspective that a lot of overweight people drink diet soda because they're trying to cut calories and lose weight?

    Using the same rationale, I see a lot of fat people in the gym and out running. Therefore, going to the gym and running must make people fat.

    I thought it was 3X shirts that made people fat?
  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
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    JaneiR36 wrote: »
    lynn1982 wrote: »
    First of all, your "no cal spray butter" still has calories in it. It's just less than 5 calories for a half second spray. But have you ever sprayed it for half a second? No, I didn't think so.

    It doesn't automatically mean each half spray is 4.999 calories. I found an entry that's about 8 calories for ten sprays, and that's what I used for lunch today. Delicious, yummy toast. You have me curious now, though. I'll have to calculate the volume of butter spray and how that translates calorie wise to the entire container, divided by the total # of sprays per bottle. The product is also a bit more convenient for me - no need for a butter knife or anything, just spray directly on the bread

    Net weight for my bottle is 340g. Assuming the contents have the same calorie makeup as their solid state counterpart (in this case, "I can't believe it's not butter" in a tub), 14g => 70 calories, therefore 340g => 1700 calories. There are 1700 sprays per bottle, so approximately 1 calorie per spray is a likely amount
  • antennachick
    antennachick Posts: 464 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    I dont want to sound mean but....i have noticed its always over wieght people that drink diet soda. And then I read those studies and it made sense. Although its calorie free it sends a message to the brain you are eatting sugar. In return you crave sugar...so why not just limit the real thing?

    @antennachick, that's confusing correlation with causation. How about looking at it from the perspective that a lot of overweight people drink diet soda because they're trying to cut calories and lose weight?

    Using the same rationale, I see a lot of fat people in the gym and out running. Therefore, going to the gym and running must make people fat.
    should of added these are people that have been overweight and have drank diet soda for years and ...are still fat despite thier diets lol I dont need to give 10 examples to prove my point...why dont just drink water? and Its calorie free ;)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    heybales wrote: »
    Even if the artificials do spike your insulin - if that's all you had was a diet drink - there is nothing to store as fat.

    For that brief time insulin is up fat release is stopped, but body isn't fooled that bad and as soon as blood sugar drops a bit because you stopped using fat an main energy source and blood sugar was instead, insulin will drop right back down again.

    If drinking with food - well your food was going to increase insulin anyway. It's the nature of body preparing for some sugar coming in with sweet taste that can make it release insulin in preparation.

    So I'd remove that as factor. Whatever else you research and believe would be more useful.

    And be aware of the differences between when product with it is heated and not heated but kept cool. Some research will comment on that difference - but play off the heated info when the product you use might never be in that state, so the effect is immaterial.

    yes, this was one thing i read about.....how the insulin can cause fat storage, but also I read that our bodies don't know what to do with the unnatural chemicals, so it stores those chemicals as fat. Have u heard of that before?

    Also, can you explain your second paragraph somewhat, im kinda confused. Where u talk about blood sugar dropping? Thanks so much for your help.

    Uh no - chemicals aren't stored as fat - unused fat and carbs while insulin is elevated can be, but insulin also causes carbs, glucose, to be stored in liver and muscles.
    Unnatural chemicals - depends on which one you are talking about - most are broken down, just not as carbs for storage.

    And in a diet, those are never topped off fully - so that's where carbs will go first if the body doesn't actually use it for energy while insulin is elevated.
    Fat too - used if available and needed - just not released from fat cells then.
    Protein sent for use by the cells too - because of insulin.

    Insulin needed for all those positive things.

    If you eat/drink something sweet - some people's body will start releasing insulin in preparation for handling what it thinks is incoming sugar/carbs.
    Because it causes what ends up in the blood to be sent to muscles and liver and used as fuel.
    But if you didn't actually take any carbs in because it was a sugar substitute, then regular level of blood sugar that the body tries to regulate can drop below desired, when that happens insulin is lowered to stop the effect.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
    edited January 2016
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    I dont want to sound mean but....i have noticed its always over wieght people that drink diet soda. And then I read those studies and it made sense. Although its calorie free it sends a message to the brain you are eatting sugar. In return you crave sugar...so why not just limit the real thing?

    @antennachick, that's confusing correlation with causation. How about looking at it from the perspective that a lot of overweight people drink diet soda because they're trying to cut calories and lose weight?

    Using the same rationale, I see a lot of fat people in the gym and out running. Therefore, going to the gym and running must make people fat.
    should of added these are people that have been overweight and have drank diet soda for years and ...are still fat despite thier diets lol I dont need to give 10 examples to prove my point...why dont just drink water? and Its calorie free ;)

    So is diet soda. And I like diet soda. And it doesn't make me crave sugar, nor does it adversely affect my weight loss. And I've read plenty enough studies to feel completely confident that artificial sweeteners and/or diet soda, in moderation, are not harmful in any way.

    Make no mistake, I drink well over a half gallon of plain water a day almost every single day. I have for years. Love the stuff. But I also average 1-2 diet sodas per day, as well as 1-2 cups of coffee and sometimes a cup or two of iced tea in place of the sodas.


    Your example is still correlation, not causation. I know both skinny and fat people who drink both diet and regular soda. That doesn't tell me anything about the context within the rest of their diet. A fat person who drinks diet soda and then proceeds to eat 4,000 calories a day isn't going to be very successful in their weight loss efforts. Nor will they be successful if they drink plain water and proceed to eat 4,000 calories per day.

    As with virtually anything related to health and diet, context and dosage are meaningful and important.
  • jenilla1
    jenilla1 Posts: 11,118 Member
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    Annie_01 wrote: »
    I dont want to sound mean but....i have noticed its always over wieght people that drink diet soda. And then I read those studies and it made sense. Although its calorie free it sends a message to the brain you are eatting sugar. In return you crave sugar...so why not just limit the real thing?

    So no thin person drinks diet drinks? I didn't know that.

    I've been a thin person basically since forever. I prefer to consume "diet" drinks rather than sugared ones (which make me feel tired and crappy and are a total waste of calories) and it hasn't had any negative impact on my weight. My overweight and diabetic in-laws drink tons of regular soda, since "diet is bad" for them. Everyone's got their own anecdotes they like to use to support an argument. Just do what works for you. If artificial sweeteners seem to be failing you, don't use them. If they work fine for you, use them.

    I actually prefer to use stevia to sweeten my drinks, though. My favorite is brewing my own hibiscus tea (aka jamaica) and using stevia to sweeten it.

    :)
  • antennachick
    antennachick Posts: 464 Member
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    Each to their own. when even science tells you the sweetener in diet soda is toxic BUT not enough to matter...its something I would avoid consuming. Thats just me.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
    edited January 2016
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    Each to their own. when even science tells you the sweetener in diet soda is toxic BUT not enough to matter...its something I would avoid consuming. Thats just me.

    I guess you didn't read the first post in the why aspartame isn't scary thread, nor any of the multitude of studies posted in that thread. For starters. Science tells me just the opposite of what you feel.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited January 2016
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    If there's any evidence that any food is terrible for us, it's soda. I think this is likely because people either don't drink soda, drink soda moderately, or drink INSANE amounts of soda (this is based on the stats I've seen). People who drink INSANE amounts of soda have a variety of negative health results that more moderate drinkers of diet soda don't seem to share (nor non drinkers) (this is based on the various longitudinal studies, among other things). Anyway, my personal analysis is that switching away from non diet soda to something else, for big users, is huge, whether it's water or diet coke.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited January 2016
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    Each to their own. when even science tells you the sweetener in diet soda is toxic BUT not enough to matter...its something I would avoid consuming. Thats just me.

    So are apples, cashews, bananas, tuna, nutmeg, cinnamon, many beans, potatoes... and so on. It's the dosage that makes a poison, and if we want to cut out everything that can potentially be harmful in large amounts then water would be the first on the list. You would have to consume at least 170-250 packets of sweetener a day (depending on the type, except for stevia which has a 29 packet upper daily limit) to start posing problems. I doubt many people consume that amount.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
    edited January 2016
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    Each to their own. when even science tells you the sweetener in diet soda is toxic BUT not enough to matter...its something I would avoid consuming. Thats just me.

    So are apples, cashews, bananas, tuna, nutmeg, cinnamon, many beans, potatoes... and so on. It's the dosage that makes a poison, and if we want to cut out everything that can potentially be harmful in large amounts then water would be the first on the list. You would have to consume at least 170-250 packets of sweetener a day (depending on the type, except for stevia which has a 26 packet upper daily limit) to start posing problems. I doubt many people consume that amount.

    Cinnamon is harmless and even beneficial to some in moderation, but contains coumarin, which is hepatotoxic and carcinogenic in large doses. The tolerable daily intake (TDI) is currently set at 0.1mg/kg bodyweight. This has been scientifically established. So I suppose everybody should run screaming from anything which contains cinnamon just like they do from diet soda. Maybe even more so, since the TDI is set pretty low - 10mg of coumarin would be a toxic dose to a 220 lb. person. A potentially hazardous dose for any artificial sweetener is orders of magnitude higher than that.

    ...or maybe if we consider the fact that virtually nobody consumes enough cinnamon for coumarin to become a health hazard, there's no reason to avoid it in sensible moderation. Hmmmm......
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    Why are people consistently upset that insulin works the way it works

    If you do not have issues with your insulin from a medical standpoint your body is doing what it is supposed to do

    Artificial sweeteners are some of the most tested food products anywhere...they are as safe as anything can be

    The rest is media hype to sell a newspaper, book, site or client ...meh ...don't be a sheep

    (Only read OP cos early)
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    Scanned thread

    OP ..I like you, you will do fine

    Derp merchants quit derping and follow the OPs lead...seriously if you use your brain it will be so much easier to get your body to do what you want it to do