Sugar substitutes and metabolic syndrome

I'm assuming you guys have seen this article about the study that found that even a can of diet soda a day increases your risk for metabolic syndrome by 34%.

Or this piece on Good Morning America about the article. (You have to sit through an ad first before the story starts.)

I wonder if this is going to make companies stop putting sugar substitutes in otherwise healthy things, like yogurt and food for kids.

I think this also puts the nail in the coffin of soda consumption for many of us. Too dangerous to drink sugar substitutes, and way too dangerous to drink high fructose corn syrup. Plus the caramel color is bad for us, and so is the carbonation.

I guess it's back to water. (Until Passover, when some of the stores in NYC stock kosher-for-Passover Coke sweetened with regular sugar, which I'll indulge in.)

I also wonder if this is going to give stevia (a no-calorie sweetener made from the leaves of the stevia plant) any traction, since it's just a refined leaf, not a chemically-altered substance.

Comments

[meggiemoo]

@hedra, that's a good suggestion...I do like cold coffee drinks. Of course, I like them with lots of milk and sugar! LOL

[Nick]

meggiemoo, I feel your pain. Giving up Diet Coke, the vin ordinare of my college years and twenties, was in some ways a more wrenching change than becoming a mother (I think because I wanted to become a mother, whereas I didn't want to give up my Diet Coke). But as a rational adult, it just struck me as an unhealthy food/liquid substitute (esp. in the amounts I was drinking) and something that had to go.

It's strange how that change of habit has come to symbolise the end of the last of my girlhood. Timing was a big part of it, as giving up Diet Coke turned out to be the first step in the weaning from caffeine that predated my pregnancy.

Has anyone heard anything bad about decaffeinated coffee? Because I'd love to switch back to just having the occasional cup of the real thing for "health reasons." This despite the fact that my husband is convinced that in fifty years we will look back in horror at the "society of addiction" centered around caffeine. He may be right, but the man has never in his life had a really good cup of coffee-- I have and boy do I miss it. . .

[melissa]

I saw something related in the news that stated that artificial sweeteners can actually make you gain weight and increase fat.
I have always tried to eat naturally and I don't drink soda whereas the rest of my family drinks diet soda, eats margarine, loads of HFCS and think I am the weird one for eating organics. They are all overweight, some bordering on obese while I have never had a problem with weight.
Related? You bet!

[Kim in MT]

Moxie, I'm pretty curious about the carbonation neutralizing stomach acid thing. I've googled a bunch, but haven't found any reference to it on any reputable website. I'm curious not because I drink soda (I don't... allergic to corn and anti-artificial sweeteners), but from a geeky process standpoint.

As I understand it, CO2 goes into solution from pressure and stays there (weakly) from the cold. They create carbonic acid (H2O+CO2-->H2CO3). As the soda warms up in your belly, the CO2 is released and makes you burp, leaving mostly water behind from what was carbonic acid. I can't imagine how any of that would neutralize any acid... the only thing I can come up with is maybe the initial acidity would cause your stomach to slow down acid production.

Anyhow, just curious about this and would love some further reading if you have it.

[CN]

Sodas from Mexico often contain sugar (not HFCS). Due to some politics, Mexico used their own sugar supplies rather than switching to HFCS.

Check out Coke bottled in Mexico or some of the other sodas bottled there -- I like the grapefruit soda.

[hedra]

You can dodge HFCS if you buy organic... it doesn't qualify as organic. Granted, we have to buy wheat-free now, too (ARGH, stupid digestive disorders - that's from the fructose malabsorption, too, no FODMAPs, no fructose, lactose, polyols, fructans/inulin/FOS, including the huge amount found naturally in wheat), so the only bread we've found that tastes at all okay and has no fruit juice added is $5+ for a half-loaf. I get much grumpier about them not eating crusts at that rate...

Sigh. Must run...

[pnuts mama]

@CN- i believe the basic reason why most of the rest of the world *doesn't* use the ridiculously high amounts of HFCS in nearly every food that we do here in the US is because in the US we grow an enormous amount of gov't subsidized corn (hello, corn lobby)- more than we could ever consume or export so we had to figure out what to do with it...enter into the chemical process of turning it into a sugar substitute called high fructose corn syrup...and then having said corn lobby influence big-food corporations to switch to using it.

it's such an unknown and dirty story, and i've reeeeally simplified it, but that's the gist. HFCS is absolutely linked to the huge rise in obesity and diabetes and a multitude of health problems, but so far the powers that be are able to squash most research that shows the link. if i run across a good link to it i'll post it later.

[ALG]

I hardly ever drink soda (maybe Fresca once a month?), but I do drink cranberry juice with flavored seltzer sometimes. It's very good! Mostly, though, I drink water and Lactaid milk. And sometimes wine.

[ALG]

Oh, so I'm clearly not so concerned about a little seltzer now and then. I kind of feel like nothing is horrible in moderation. My major problem is that I eat tons of crap like store-bought chocolate chip cookies, muffins, etc. It's a problem.

I refuse to eat most artificial sweeteners, though, because I hate the aftertaste.

What, exactly, is so terrible about HFCS? I mean, it sounds gross and I think it has a high glycemic index, but is it so much worse than good, old refined sugar?

[Cloud]

And here I thought my cranberry and seltzer drink was somehow unique (Hubby certainly thinks it is a bit weird). Now I think it was the obvious response to not being able to drink alcohol while preggers.

If y'all want some serious food for thought, check out The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. That was where I first came across the sad story of how we ended up with high-fructose corn syrup. It is a very thought-provoking read. I particularly liked his point towards the end about how we seem to be using science to replace our lost cultural moorings in what food is "good to think" (his term for how we identify the food we will eat from all the possible foods out there). I know that might sound a bit weird coming from a scientist, but I think most of the research is too new/inconclusive to truly direct us, so we end up see-sawing on what we'll eat.

[Kathy]

I was once in a hospital-run weight loss program. We were encouraged to give up artificial sweeteners, since there was so much research plus their anecdotal observation that they just made people hungrier, and crave sweet things more.

The hardest thing for me to figure out, having grown up in America in the region and generation that I did, is to eat smaller portions of REALLY GOOD food. To figure out that I'm better off, and happier, savoring one perfect truffle than I am in eating an entire box of Snackwells.

I'm horrified at how many of the baby foods after stage one contain all sorts of things I don't want to pollute my baby's body with. It's another motivation to cook real food and share it with her, but that takes more effort and time than ordering a pizza for us and giving her something in a jar!

[pnuts mama]

on HFCS, here are two quick sources off the top of my head: (apologies to moxie for linking to another blog? you can edit if that's not cool)

http://cleanerplateclub.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/take-the-high-fructose-corn-syrup-challenge/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL

also, if someone could teach me how to do a tinyurl that would be awesome.

[Amy]

@Julie, your comment about losing weight when you started eating more fat is actually supported by a verrrry interesting book I just read by Nina Planck. It's called "Real Food" and her whole argument (best I can sum up) is that "traditional foods" like whole milk, butter, eggs (basically foods that are what they are, not processed to be different) have been around for centuries, and it wasn't until all the processing and HFCS and (gulp) even pasteurization came up that people started getting more heart disease, etc.

It is really worth a read - and my personal anecdote is that, indeed, I have lost weight since going back to whole milk, local eggs from pastured chickens, real butter, and so on. And lots and lots of veg. (-:

[Amy]

A link to Nina Planck's stuff is here:

http://www.ninaplanck.com/index.php?page=real_food_book

[shirky]

you guys know I love you all, but if stevia is indeed safe it won't just be because it's 'natural' and comes from a leaf. I mean, poison ivy is a leaf. Down with superstition! Up with science!

[Julie]

@Amy funny you should mention that....my mom has bought us multiple copies of The Schwartzbein Principle (spelling????) which espouses the same thing.....margerine is bad bad bad and butter is better better better, that kind of thing. It's a fascinating read and really changed the way I viewed "healthy diet". All I know is that my mom suffers from fibromyalgia, and this way of eating has basically eliminated her pain.

[Anon for this]

I am with Shirky and Kim in MT.

I am very concerned about feeding my family organic, non-GMO, preferably local food. I make my own yogurt and my husband makes our bread. I have managed to avoid letting my child eat artificial colors.

I am also (gasp-a little embarrassed to admit this here) a chemist.

While I do eat butter and avoid artificial sweeteners, I am also very skeptical about some "natural products". These products are not regulated as pharmaceuticals while they can have the same potency. Often, they are imported from countries where they have high levels of toxic metals. I am not saying that they are necessarily bad-I have taken more than my fair share of flax seed oil and fenugreek but I try hard to by from reputable companies.

I love a little fruit juice in seltzer or mineral water-the CO2 does not keep me up at night. Phosphorous from phosphoric acid in cola, electrolyte replacement drinks and a host of other products does worry me-but that is a post of it's own!

So, yes, be careful and do what is best for your family and circumstances, but don't believe that something is necessarily better for you because it is natural.

[Another Erin]

Hey, Anon for this, I'm something even more embarrassing than a chemist - a historian of chemistry! I was also going to post that, you know, chemicals is chemicals, whether made by that old guy in the sky or some young guy in a lab, but that point's been made.

So I will simply say that red pop is, in my opinion, one of life's purest pleasures. If you can't enjoy red pop, you can't enjoy life. Oh, I love it so. But I only have it once every couple of years. I think in moderating one's pop consumption, it's useful to move to parts of the country where you can't get what you most desire. I have never found anything on the east coast as delicious as Faygo.

[Shandra]

"What to eat" by Marion Nestle is a great book on stuff I just wanted to add to the discussion and I think she discusses the corn subsidy.

I drink pop now and then - once a month maybe, but only the sugared kind. I get migraines from aspartame, stomach issues from the sugar alcohol additives, and I just have not been motivated to see what Splenda does to me. We don't drink it as a drink in our house; we drink it as dessert.

I agree with comments that natural doesn't mean safe and am not really a stevia fan. I did want to mention agave nectar as another sweetener starting to come more on the market.

What bugs me is the sugar substitutes in medicines you barely even taste.

[terken]

i gave up buying soda in packs but drink once in a while. put mineral water in any organic juice. voila! there's my carbonated drink -or home made fruit soda:).

[caramama]

My husband uses splenda, and he always says that it's not really artificial sweetner, since it is made from sugar. I can stand the after taste which is just like other artificial sweetners to me, which makes me question his claim. Does any body know what the difference is?

Also, people who bake their own bread: do you use a breadmaker? How do you find really healthy recipes?

Thanks for this great conversation, everyone. I realize now that I will have to move even further down the road to healthier eating to be truly comfortable feeding my child, my husband and myself. Thanks for the links and book recommendations, too.

[Anon]

Coke made in Australia is made with cane sugar too.
And I can't stand the aftertaste of artifical sweeteners either, so when I do have a Coke, it's gotta be the Real Thing :)

[Marie]

@caramama - I bake our bread in the winter (and buy delicious bread from the Farmer's Market in the summer.) I love the Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown. He has a VERY detailed section on how to make bread from start to finish. He includes over a dozen varieties of yeast breads, plus pastries and non-yeasted baked goods. My favorite is whole wheat with oatmeal. But everything I've tried has been great (oh, and I don't use a bread machine.)

[z]

my husband drinks diet soda by the gallons. i think he averages 2-3 a day. there was a time when i was drinking that much myself. when pg w/ #1 i gave up diet soda and pretty much drank unsweetened ice tea for a treat and mostly water.
with #2 i have tried to be more careful but have had days where i have been drinking a soda a day. then not too long ago i decided if i was going to drink soda i should at least have the regular version since allegedly it is better.
all i can say after reading/watching this is it reinforces my desire to eliminate soda from our regular diet.
but also to be perfectly HONEST it totally overwhelms me how vigilant we have to be as parents and watch everything we eat (besids everything else).
i don't know about the rest of you but somedays i wish i could live in blissful ignorance rather than try to figure out how to fit one more change in my life but i think that is a discussion for another change.

[z]

i mean discussion for another day.

[anon for this]

@another Erin-cool chemical history, do you study a specific area?

@caramama I have to admit, I like sucralose (splenda) but I try to avoid it. Sucralose is similar to sucrose, however three hydroxyl (OH) groups have been replaced with chlorine atoms. These chlorine atoms are covalently bound unlike sodium chloride (NaCl) where ther is an ionic bond. I am not saying that sucralose is bad-in fact I have not seen a single convincing study that shows that it is bad-BUT when I look at the structure I tend to think more of PCBs and chlorination byproducts than I think of food. Again, this is just my decision for me, it is not based on any scientific evidence.

I am not exactly sure of my husbands bread making technique. He usually makes whole wheat sourdough. He keeps starter in th fridge, lets the dough rise slowly in the fridge from one evening to the next, then he forms a ball and bakes it.

[Cloud]

Hey, anon for this, don't be embarrassed to be a chemist! Chemistry has done a lot of good things for us. I'm glad to have tylenol to give Pumpkin when she has a fever, for instance. (I'm embarrassed to be a biochemist by training and have mistyped phosphoric acid and called it phosphonic acid. *Blush.* I blame multitasking.)

I think we need better science education in school so that consumers stand a chance of sorting out all the claims (both good and bad) about new products. I personally think that we as a society worry too much about some things that are unlikely to cause problems and not enough about other things that are clearly causing problems (for instance, you really don't want to get me started about our modern farm practices and how they make harmful strains of E. coli more likely to make it into our food).

[Beth]

Not by virtue, just by luck, I've never liked soda - ever. My family would occasionally offer me a sip as a child just to see my face scrunch up. The carbonation 'hurts' my mouth and I don't like the taste of any kind of pop (ginger beer and Tanzanian passion fruit/granadilla pop I can get down if there is no other beverage available). I'm very glad I just happen to be quirky this way.

I really liked the PP who said she could have a soda as a child whenever her dad had a beer (usually with pizza). I think that is a great idea and will try to persuade my husband to make that our 'policy.' Our son is only 10 months so I have a while to get my husband used to that idea. 'Course, if we are really fortunate, my son will take after me and soda will be a punishment, not a treat!

[hedra]

meggiemoo, by the way, that was cold-filtered coffee, rather than cold, filtered coffee. My bad on the grammar there. Try toddycafe.com for a filter kit. Cheap, and no waste (the extract survives admirably for two weeks in the fridge, longer in ice-cubes in the freezer), and it tastes like coffee SMELLS, rather than like acid over a vague sense of what coffee smells like. MMMmmm. Hated coffee before, now love it.

[hedra]

@ALG, HFCS is actually lower Glycemic index (fructose is low on the GI scale), but it varies by variety - they can be pretty much 50:50 glucose and fructose (match to sucrose) or up to 90% fructose (closer to agave syrup). The label doesn't say.

One difference between HFCS and sucrose is that the fructose and glucose aren't bound together. In some people this appears to cause no trouble 'free fructose' causes no reaction. In other people, this causes huge problems, though the exact mechanism isn't clearly understood. What we do know is that if there isn't 1:1 glucose to fructose, it is hard to absorb all the fructose (fructose 'piggybacks' on the glucose ... too long to explain now). Anyway, you end up with a serotonin imbalance (low levels), which affects all sorts of systems.

Must run, try to post more later. Sigh.

[Shandra]

I came back to add (off topic) that we make bread and we use a bread maker. Honestly there is nothing like working all day, picking up my son, and walking into a house that smells like homemade soup (crockpot) and fresh bread (breadmaker). I could marry those two devices.

[rudyinparis]

I came back too, to second what Cloud said--I read The Omnivore's Dilemma a little over a year ago, and--seriously--it changed my life. I've never read anything that so quickly and effectively changed my real living habits (didn't just change my view of the world.) Also, the Marion Nestle book is a great resource, too.

[Mykal]

It is still blowing my mind that in all these comments there were only two others that pointed out that the study did not prove caustion, only correlation.

All this study proved is that people who have metabolic syndrome are more likely to drink diet soda. It is impossible to go from there and say that diet soda CAUSED the metabolic syndrome.

Large or small scale studies looking into diet and nutrition factors can rarely prove a real causation between factors.

[Mrs. Higrens]

Has anyone else had the experience with Splenda sweetened beverages to not have an objectionable aftertaste while drinking, but the next morning (after drinking other beverages, brushing teeth the night before, etc.)when you wake up, have a sweet essence in your mouth, perhaps rising from the stomach/esophagus?

[hedra]

Mrs. Higrens, splenda is happy food for GI bacteria (both good and bad forms) - not digested by us, but like other undigested stuff, feeds the flora. The sweet thing sounds like a thrush reaction (yeast). (one of the symptoms of thrush in babies is sweet breath.)

Oh, and I'm with the correlation is not causation crowd. However, where something is inessential, with little to no proven worth anyway, I'm happy to skip it if there's even correlation - sometimes there's a causal relationship found, sometimes not, but if the value to my body is otherwise nil or easily replaced (other sources of caffeine, say), eh, I'll quit that thing. Granted, we're already skipping the artificial sweeteners for entirely different reasons, and skipping HFCS for entirely different reasons, too.

And of course, there's my usual mantra for the all-or-nothing type issues - moderation, moderation, moderation. For moderation with food, I generally go with no more than three or four actual portions per week - not uber-US-portion-stravaganzas, just the actual normal serving size (which is hard to find in a bottle of soda, most have 2 servings or more!).

[hedra]

(and sorry for the gross generalizations in the gi flora thing above - obviously not everything is food for flora, but one reason my kids can't have splenda or sucralose is that gut fermentation MUST be avoided for them, and these promote it. Some fermentation isn't a problem, and plenty of people even with a lot of fermentation don't have secondary reactions to it.)

[miznoire]

I realize I am late in chiming in. I just can't keep up with all the information and discussion that occurs on this page!

But, I did want to add a note on Stevia. My husband and I did some research when we adopted a low sugar/low yeast diet about 5 years ago. We decided to avoid as much sugar as possible and also to avoid anything with high fructose corn syrup.

We looked at Stevia and decided it was the best option for us. I bake with it and we use it to sweeten drinks made of seltzer and non-sugared fruit juice. It does not work well with all baking/sweetening, but we have found some very compatible recipes and have developed some of our own.

As for the safety of Stevia, those who are interested should look at Japan. The Japanese have been using stevia in their diet for decades. The Japanese actually have much lower incidences of obesity, heart disease and cancer than we do. As for reproductive problems, this is the first I have heard about this connection. Stevia has also been used in South America for centuries.

I was very reluctant to try something that I did not feel would be safe, especially since my daughter also eats stevia flavored cooking. However, the information from Japan and other parts of the world allayed many of my concerns. I imagine that there are side effects and issues with most things we eat. Moderation in everything is probably a good bet.

I also wonder about the sugar and corn industries and their leverege over FDA regulations and rulings here. The FDA has recently lowered their standards and taken real meaning out of food lables such as "No Trans Fat" (this really means that the item can include trans fat, but only to a certain degree) and the "organic" label, which has been watered down considerably from the original organic standards. Finally, the World Health Organization apparently released results of a study conducted in 2006 that supports the safety of Stevia and dismisses some of the claims made in the anti-stevia camp.

I would encourage anyone who is more interested to read further about Stevia. We dropped sugar and switched to Stevia and quickly noticed health and wellness improvements. Yeast infections are a thing of the past. My husband's acid reflux symptoms disappeared. And we both lost weight. My energy level increased. I also conceived easily and had an easy pregnancy in my late 30s. I can't say this is all due to this diet change. But I know that I feel and look better now that I eat better.

[Colleen]

I apologize for not reading all the comments, so I may be repeating someone else's sentiment. I find when trying to kick a dietary habit that if I go cold turkey and vow "never again!" that at the very next opportunity, I will be cramming whatever's the new contraband down my gullet--choc cake, soda, hamburgers, etc. I have to find substitutes--which is probably why sugar substitutes are so popular. I make a point now to define my diet with what I eat, rather than what I don't eat. I was a vegetarian, which means eating vegetable-derived foods, but for me it meant no meat, so fair game on anything that wasn't meat, and lo, an extremely poor eater was born. Now I do eat meat after an eye-opening trip to china (a story for another day) as a part of a diet of eating food that are whole and do not have labels touting health benefits--I'm 30 pounds lighter (and not a skinny bitch by any means). I'll break the rules now and again and enjoy a coke or a snickers, but without guilt because generally, these things are off my radar. I eat sugar, no substitutes, in baked goods, but as others say before I go for quality (the more I can spend on a cookie the better) and a LOT of dark chocolate. To me it's for entertainment, like going to vegas and planning to gamble away $50. When I'm done with the $50, I'm done. The more relaxed I can be about these kinds of personal habits the better. Getting my hubby to cut out the diet coke and dr pepper--oy vey, that's another story.

[attiton]

@carmie: There are a number of brands of xylitol-only gums...the one my dentist gave me to try is called Spry (http://www.xlearinc.com/spry). I can get it at my Whole Foods.

[MRasey]

Hmm. I seem to remember reading about this study last year on MSNBC. I wonder if it's just been revamped to be published in another journal? Do academics do that? Or is this a second study?

Frankly, until medical science can unravel obesity so that the options for weightloss are better than a pill that causes explosive diarrhea and surgery with a high morbidity rate that doesn't prevent people from gaining the weight back again anyway, I'm not giving these studies the time of day.

Having said that, while pregnant Diet Pepsi did spike my blood sugar in a really bizarre way. I switched to Diet Coke and Coke Zero and was fine.

Anything can hit our systems in a wonky way. Anything. Or not. It's not 100%, something science likes to gloss over alot imo. You know, even in drug trials for new medications, not everyone experiences the full benefit. Nothing is 100%. There are always anomalies, some of them significant.

Diet beverages do not make me crave sugar or inhibit weight loss when I am low carbing (the only way I can lose weight) but some people and experts swear they do. Well pfftt to that too.

That being said, I do limit myself to 2 diet drinks a day. Just on the principal that extremems of anything probably aren't good.

When science gets a clue, I'll pay attention but right now there is no credible evidence that a)they know what the hell they are doing or b)that I should change what I am doing.

And don't forget, a lot of food studies are funded by large food corps who have a vested interest in how things come out. There's a lot of conflict of interest in the study of nutrition and weight loss.

M

[halloweenlover]

In college, our biology teacher told us that he'd seen studies showing that fat binds itself more to artificial sweeteners than fat would be created by consuming pure sugar. After hearing that, I figured why bother with artificial sweeteners!

That said, while I don't eat tons of sweets, I do let myself have Dr. Pepper from a tap if we're out. Especially at the movies! It is my guilty pleasure.

Interesting article, though. I'll have to pass it along.

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