Artificial sweeteners, have they been proven safe yet?

My girlfriend gets migraines when she has Diet Coke, it's not from the Aspartme though, it'll be the caffeine coupled with the fact she never drinks enough. Sweeteners are perfectly safe. If you aren't drinking 2-3 litres of water a day you shouldn't complain about headaches.
 
Edward78 said:
Have you tried Stevia, it is even better them sugar (health wise)... Just get a Sodastream to make your own soda & flavor it with Sweetdrops...
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Do not get confused with Truvia either....

Needs to be 100% stevia not the crap you get which is 0.5 Stevia yet branded as Stevia (more or less)
 
Or

Just ween yourself of sugar.... Its really not hard to do just takes moral fibre.

Which granted is lacking under the age of 38 these days.
 
The most plausible health problem with sweeteners AFAIK is around weight gain. Here's a quote from a review:

These pilot investigations are consistent with a revised hypothesis: Sweetness decoupled from caloric content offers partial, but not complete, activation of the food reward pathways. Activation of the hedonic component may contribute to increased appetite. Animals seek food to satisfy the inherent craving for sweetness, even in the absence of energy need. Lack of complete satisfaction, likely because of the failure to activate the postingestive component, further fuels the food seeking behavior. Reduction in reward response may contribute to obesity.
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TLDR: if food tastes sweet but doesn't have any sugar in it it confuses your body, making you seek out more calories.

Sugar is terrible for you though so probably the best thing to do is avoid as much sweet stuff (natural or artificial) as possible.
 
Artificial sweeteners based on stevia leaves have been getting good press lately. Truvia is one of the brands. Quite expensive, though, compared to aspartame.
 
Heck with the amount I ingest if it had any adverse effects I'd know by now.

So either I'm immune to it or it really isn't as bad as some have claimed.
 
Rroff said:
Got links for that? last time I looked into it there were 3 major blind studies done and 2 of those were random people (in which case it is entirely possible with stuff like that to have an entire group that doesn't actually contain a single person who does suffer sensitivity) and the other entirely used people who self claimed sensitivity but the results were judged inconclusive despite being slightly in favour of there being an effect.
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Yes of course the studies were randomised, that is the entire point. If you use a group of hypochondriacs claiming it affects them then obviously the result is going to be tainted and scientifically invalid.
 
Quite a few people, over the years, have claimed to me that it makes their kids behaviour worse. I've queried with them about when they give the drinks and what they give as a substitute. They were giving the kids sugared drinks or artificially sweetened drinks. The kids behaviour was always worse with the artificially sweetened drinks.

I suggested that they then did one of two things - gave water and a snack (ideally) or the artificially sweetened drink and a snack at those times. Strangely enough in every instance the problem disappeared. The issue was never the artificial sweeteners it was they were depriving young kids of regular sugar intake and they were going slightly hypoglycemic which is quite normal and will make their behaviour worse.

I believe this is where a lot of the ADHD rubbish comes from. Any parent will tell you kids get a bit ropey before mealtimes. Sugared drinks hide that a bit - artificially sweetened drinks don't.
 
Certain drinks make my son go wappy. Like Fruit Shoots that are marketed towards kids.

Normal sweetener based juice, no problems at all.

It's not the sweetener itself, it's the other additives in the drinks.

As already mentioned, a small snack and water seems to be the best way. Just glad his school do this too. No more "3 square meals a day" rubbish that some places still try to enforce.
 
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