https://peterattiamd.com/what-are-the-side-effects-of-aspart...

>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).

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, do you combine your diet drink with calories, or is most of your aspartame consumption on an empty stomach?

Also your idea is very american centric, diet sodas are mainstream around the world and most of those countries did not follow the us into the obesity epidemic.

- All artificial sweeteners when consumed on empty-stomach, causes very strong feelings of hunger in a short time. My guess is that this can more than cancel out the reduced calorie content.

- Sucralose gives me headaches.

I experimented with non-alcoholic mocktails. The one that works for me is diet cola + milk in equal proportions. Somehow provides the combination of richness/creaminess, sweetness, bitterness that replaces the feeling of drinking Irish cream.

Diet cola contains aspartame. Anyone know if there's a safer non-sugar version of or alternative to diet cola that I could use instead?

It's not "aspartame". It's eating out twice as much as we did in early 70s [1], rise of fast food consumption, and huge portion sizes.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-consumption-nutr...

Average heights continued increasing through the 1980s. This suggests that a not insignificant chunk of the population was still in caloric deprivation until the 1990s. You can't get obesity while lots of people are still continuously hungry. For this one, correlation probably is causation.

In addition, smoking bans took off in the 1990s. Nicotine is a noted appetite suppressant. Correlation might be causation. You may be trading the problems of smoking for the problems of obesity--probably a decent trade.

My N=1 is that I've always liked Diet Cola drinks - a lot. I easily drink more than a couple liters a day and have since at least 1990. I have my own soda fountain at home (along with a flake ice machine). I was significantly overweight for about two decades. I'd tried a lot of different weight loss programs over the years including medically supervised. I approached each diet very diligently and put in a lot of effort - yet none ever worked long-term for me. I'd lose 10 or 20 pounds over a few months but would put it back on. I was always back where I started (or worse) in less than six months.

About seven years ago I decided to try keto. It was definitely the hardest, weirdest and strictest of any diet I'd tried but I did the entire program very diligently - just like the others. Keto worked extremely well for me, where nothing else had. The first 5-6 weeks was hard - not because I was hungry but just due to the degree of change, new things to learn and the rigorous ingredient tracking. All the other diets were much easier but I was constantly hungry. On keto it was the opposite. After the first three days, I was never hungry on keto. The challenge in keto was changing habits, learning new patterns and missing the flavors of familiar carb-heavy foods. But that only lasted about six weeks. After that my palette had been retrained and I didn't miss carb-heavy "comfort foods". I also had gotten used to the new patterns and it didn't take much extra effort or thought. Over the next 8 months I lost close to a hundred pounds, putting me back at a weight I hadn't seen since high school. I went from size 42 pants to 32 and I had abs! I lost weight so fast in the first three months, I heard some people at work suspected I had cancer or something.

To answer your question, I never changed my very heavy Diet Coke consumption during any of this. If anything, I increased it. And I've now stayed at my ideal weight for the last seven years. I stayed strict keto for the first couple years but now I'm not as strict although definitely still low carb by choice - because I feel better mentally, emotionally and physically on low-carb and because I now prefer these new foods and flavors. Doing keto helped put me in control of my weight and calorie intake through managing my blood sugar - and for me that was the key difference and a major revelation. I'm still never hungry and I can easily manage my intake and weight. If I creep up five pounds, I make a minor adjustment and it's gone in a few days.

However, I don't think keto will necessarily do the same for everyone. I've learned different people have different metabolisms as well as different preferences and ability to adapt to different changes. Strict carb management worked long term for me and Aspartame wasn't a barrier. The other counter-intuitive thing about my weight loss experience was I found early on that exercising did make me hungrier - so I stopped all exercise. While I've never been one for exercise or working out, during the 8 months I lost all the weight I became even more sedentary. I'm not suggesting that to anyone else, of course. I'm just sharing it as an example of finding what works for your metabolism, lifestyle and preferences. Interestingly, after I lost all the weight I found I started liking exercise more than I ever had and continue to today, seven years later. The typical advice is "Cut calories and hit the gym." What worked for me was "Cut carbs and hit the couch." My first week on keto I dropped almost all carbs but actually increased my calories (mostly in meat and cheeses). Once I'd weaned myself off carbs and had control of my blood sugar, cutting calories wasn't just easier - it sort of took care of itself. The whole 8 months I just counted carbs and stayed under 20 a day, while eating as much as I wanted. Without carbs driving my blood sugar and hunger, "as much as I wanted" to feel full all the time turned out to be a lot less calories. The key with the keto strategy is it only works if you execute it rigorously. Cheat all you want on calories but if you "cheat" on the carbs and go over 20g/day, even a little, you'll not only fail - you'll put on even more weight than before. I think a lot of people see that as a major downside but, oddly, for me the "all or nothing" aspect of keto turned out to be an unexpectedly helpful "feature".

It's not just the sweetener itself. It's the whole shift. More processed crap in everything, sweeteners included. Cheaper, easier, engineered to be addictive. That's the real change that lines up with the weight gain.

Focusing just on sweeteners is missing the point. They're just one piece of the bigger processed food takeover. That's the simpler, more likely explanation.

Would gratuitously large steaks in the meat section and huge rotisserie turkeys instead of chicken at Costco produce the same result?

It seems strange to pick on certain types of foods unless believe those foods are the cause of obesity instead of just eating too many calories of any kind.

If you think cookies and candy are bad but other things are not, why? Is it that they are easier to over-eat? If so, how does that compound over time, given humans are trying to maintain homeostasis which includes a healthy set weight via satiety. Exercise induces more calorie consumption later. Over calorie consumption also induces lower consumption later. This seem like relevant factors.