[Avalaxy]

> Nobody drinks artificially sweetened soda unless they have a problem because it just tastes bad. A healthy person would just pick soda sweetened by sugar.

What a bizarre statement. I have no health problems and will always pick the 'zero' variant of any soda, because to me it tastes exactly the same, but minus all the calories.

[hilbert42]

"What a bizarre statement."

Exactly, I don't have diabetes and I always choose the sugar-free ones because of their reduced calories.

I'm not implying that artificial sweeteners are completely safe as I simply don't know—and that's the real problem.

What's damn annoying about these studies is that there are many artificial sweeteners with vastly different chemical structures but generally they're all lumped together. If the gut microbiome is affected and it increases diabetes risk then it's hard to believe that these vastly different chemistries would all have the same effect.

On the other hand, if the body responds badly to the sensation of sweetness then that could explain the result—all other factors being equal.

It seems obvious to me the first job is to determine whether sweetness itself is a factor before anything else.

The 'debate' over artificial sweeteners has been raging for many decades and it's high time it was resolved to avoid confusion. For example where I am the star rating system gives artificially sweetened drinks typically 3.5/5 versus a worse figure of 1–2/5 for those sweetened with sugar.

We need to have faith in officially sanctioned government health warnings.

[stolencode]

> because to me it tastes exactly the same

Mimi: "If you close your eyes."

[throwaway150]

Not everyone is a soda connoisseur like you. I get it, some people refuse to drink anything but the original cola. But not everyone is like that. Some of us have a reduced ability to distinguish differences in taste, myself included. To me, the diet and regular versions taste exactly the same, whether my eyes are open or shut.

This thread is not about the differences in the taste between the real cola and diet cola. Many many healthy people with no health problems have the diet version!

[bjackman]

Yeah I actively prefer diet drinks. Consuming 40g of sugar felt good when I was 10, but since around puberty it mostly makes my mouth feel sticky and my body feel dehydrated. Often it gives me a headache.

However despite my strong objection to this point in the post I'm still very sympathetic to the idea that this study is bullshit.

(AND I also think drinking sweetened drinks every day is likely a bad idea. I just think this is very hard to prove. I think almost all nutritional claims finer-grained than "eating lots of vegetables seems to be good for you" are probably poorly founded and we are mostly forced to operate on vibes).