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Thread: Artificial sugars

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    Default Artificial sugars

    I stopped consuming them because my friend nagged me about it for months but this week I've started drinking coffee with splenda nonstop at work because i've had a massive sweet tooth and I like warm drinks in winter. I looked at the American cancer association site and they said artificial sugars were linked to cancer in animals but not humans. Do you worry about them? Do you know anything I don't?

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    Ah, just realized this is the change in my diet that must be responsible for some uhhh stomach upset... worth it

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    "stomach upset" hehehe *fart*

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    Toot toot

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    It does not really make humans cancerous due to very low amounts that require to make things sweet. It is far easier to overload lab animals.
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    God tier sweetener that happens to have Not Insignificant medicinal properties built into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraitia_grosvenorii

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    Quote Originally Posted by ashlesha View Post
    Toot toot

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    Splenda is way better tasting in coffee than grandulated sugar. And requires only a 10th of the serving size. I drink sugar free stuff, as its an easy way to avoid excess calories if you are trying to diet. Just take a lot of cinnamon and eat a lot of protein too. Cut back on all processed sugar.

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    I think all artificial sweeteners except aspartame are OK at the proper doses. Aspartame causes brain damage very slowly, which is true of lots of things, but I'd rather avoid it where possible. Stevia is probably toxic in large doses since it's a herbal extract but no one knows how large so I think being sane with it is fine. Saccharine is known to be toxic at doses no one would ever take (the equivalent of 300 cans of soda a day.) Sucralose seems fine for unlimited consumption but it can't be used for baking since yeast can't digest it either and you'll have flat baked goods. If you need more sugar substitutes I also like agave nectar though that has a small number of calories and a lot of fiber which is strange. I've had monk fruit before but it just tastes strange to me even compared to saccharine, though maybe I just got a bad version.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tenebris View Post
    Splenda is way better tasting in coffee than grandulated sugar. And requires only a 10th of the serving size. I drink sugar free stuff, as its an easy way to avoid excess calories if you are trying to diet. Just take a lot of cinnamon and eat a lot of protein too. Cut back on all processed sugar.
    It's only better if you're adding to plain black coffee imo. If you're doing flavored coffee or cream it won't taste good at all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    It's only better if you're adding to plain black coffee imo. If you're doing flavored coffee or cream it won't taste good at all.
    Lol well if you are drinking flavoured anything, you shouldn't be adding extra sugar. Late and crap are already sweet. So yes black coffee.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tenebris View Post
    Lol well if you are drinking flavoured anything, you shouldn't be adding extra sugar. Late and crap are already sweet. So yes black coffee.
    I don't mean lattes. I mean like if it's some sort of non-coffee desert type flavor like chocolate cake but the coffee doesn't come with sugar pre-added. If you get plain coffee and make your own latte or mocha or whatever you like (I've done this numerous times) it isn't a good idea to use sucralose in my opinion either.

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    There was a study a while back that linked sodium saccharin (marketed as Sweet and Low in the states) to bladder cancer since it caused it in lab rats. However, this was later found to be bogus since the mechanism by which it was caused was specific to rats and other rodents.

    Aspartame (Equal) is generally safe but it can have some drug interactions (especially mental health medications), so check your prescriptions before using it. Also some people are unable to process one of its metabolites (phenylalanine) but this is a very rare condition. Some people claim that it's dangerous because a metabolite of aspartame is methanol, but the amount is so tiny it's not harmful. You would have to ingest a bucketful to be poisoned.

    Sucralose (Splenda) is chlorinated sucrose (table sugar). Despite how gross that sounds it's actually very stable and generally safe for consumption. There are some recent studies that link it to hurting your gut flora however.

    Acesulfame potassium is another sweetener usually used in processed foods and drinks. It's rarely used alone since it has a strong bitter aftertaste. I'm not aware of any links to ill health, but apparently it does not biodegrade well in the environment.

    Even though there's no evidence that these are particularly harmful, I still avoid these if I can. I also avoid refined sugar and HFCS if I can help it. My sweet tooth in recent months has all but disappeared. Much like my attitude towards spicy foods, if I want something sweet I want it to have another flavor accompanying it too. Unfiltered clover honey is a good example of this.

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    I don't consider aspartame as safe at all because PKU is based on processes that occur in everyone's body to a much much smaller degree when they consume aspartame so I frankly think aspartame contributes to cognitive decline over the long-term and lower but "statistically normal" mental functioning while you're not old. I don't trust doctors to have an even half-decent standard for "normal" considering how many people have really significant health problems in the modern world compared to the age before doctors. Even worse, I think a lot of the standards for what's acceptable and not are based on comparisons to the general population that already engages extensively in a possibly extremely harmful behavior (e.g. drinking diet soda, so the question of "is it safe to drink diet soda?" is likely to be judged as a group of people who drink extra diet soda for a couple of weeks vs. people who are forced to drink none for a couple of weeks, and not judged against some exemplar of health like an athlete or soldier. Sheesh.) I do think doctors are beneficial if you have really clear goals for your health and they're willing to be open with you and work to attain/maintain them but besides that I'm really skeptical of evaluations of anything as "healthy" or "not healthy" in a vacuum. I think things like whether you should be fat or skinny are pretty subjective, but cognitive function I consider a generally unmitigated good so I say no to diet soda or sweetening anything with aspartame, though I do have an exception that small amounts of sugar-free gum don't seem like they contain more phenylalanine than (actually necessary) dietary sources. I wouldn't use gum to "curb your appetite" though since the effects of consuming something in isolation are usually way different than the effects of consuming it in food and dietary phenylalanine is not going to be found in isolation ever.

    That might've started to veer off-topic a bit but that's how I think about diet in general and whether something's healthy or unhealthy or safe or unsafe to consume.

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    It seems like the danger is more in being addicted to sugary stuff and messing up your taste bud.

    Whenever there's a new stuff, and especially if it's "artificial", then people worry that it might cause cancer. But it's like... why? Cancer is basically caused by the the error in the copying of the DNA during the cell reproduction. So whatever that causes cancer is whatever that can somehow damage the DNA strands. And so can these puny chemicals in artificial sweeteners cause damages to the DNA strands? Well...

    But it seems like at least artificial sweeteners are better alternatives than refined sugar, since they don't have as much bad side effects.

    But then again, it'll only make you crave sugary stuff more and more, and hence lowering the threshold for consuming excess sugar. It might also end up making you consume less sugary stuff, like vegetables that are good for you, since they're not going to taste as good.

    Excess consumption of sugar just isn't good, so limit it as much as possible. It'll make you fat, it'll increase your chance getting heart disease, it might cause acne, it'll spike up your blood sugar levels which might affect your mood like heightened anxiety.

    You don't really "crave" sugar, you're just getting addicted to it. Perhaps you don't even enjoy it that much.

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    Any sort of horrible diet practices can contribute to cancer by damaging cells. Cancer is not caused by random DNA mutations that happen for no reason or you were an idiot who walked into the middle of Chernobyl, it's caused because cells that replicate get sick and the DNA gets messed up so they replicate in a cancerous way. Also, it's completely possible to crave sugar if you're thinking "man, I really want some sugar right now" and not "agh, everything nonsweet is icky, time to throw down another box of stale Valentine's candy I don't really like when there is plenty of other food available."

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    They just get digested by bacteria in your lower intestines. They are great for people who have diabetes. But yeah I mean sugars or anything pointing to sugars isn’t too great for you. Moderation.
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    ^ Actually, artificial sugars are harder to digest, and they impair the ability of your stomach bacteria to digest normal carbohydrates. This is what often causes people stomach upset and bloating from them.

    I find them hard to digest normally so I avoid them all except for stevia if it has already been added to products I am buying. In particular I avoid buying anything with acesulfame K, aspartame, and usually sucralose too. I usually get nausea and headaches in addition to stomach irritation from them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    I think all artificial sweeteners except aspartame are OK at the proper doses. Aspartame causes brain damage very slowly, which is true of lots of things, but I'd rather avoid it where possible. Stevia is probably toxic in large doses since it's a herbal extract but no one knows how large so I think being sane with it is fine. Saccharine is known to be toxic at doses no one would ever take (the equivalent of 300 cans of soda a day.) Sucralose seems fine for unlimited consumption but it can't be used for baking since yeast can't digest it either and you'll have flat baked goods. If you need more sugar substitutes I also like agave nectar though that has a small number of calories and a lot of fiber which is strange. I've had monk fruit before but it just tastes strange to me even compared to saccharine, though maybe I just got a bad version.
    I think agave nectar is equivalent to white sugar or perhaps worse, due to its high amounts of fructose. It’s also expensive. Basically hipster high fructose corn syrup.

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    A redundant sugar rises cancer and some other disorders risks. Natural or artificial.
    It's better to exclude products which content a sugar from regular meal. I don't limit sweets at Sundays and Holidays and try to avoid in other time.

    For regular sweets - get _a little_ (100-200 kcal per day) of honey, natural marmalade without sugar addition, dryed fruits alike risen, etc. I eat honey at cold monthes.

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    Quote Originally Posted by sbbds View Post
    I think agave nectar is equivalent to white sugar or perhaps worse, due to its high amounts of fructose. It’s also expensive. Basically hipster high fructose corn syrup.
    Apparently agave nectar can be healthier if it's made traditionally but the version I had (and didn't buy myself at all) definitely looked like syrup. I want to find the traditionally-made one sometime but it's probably prohibitively expensive.

    https://www.healthline.com/nutrition...rse-than-sugar

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    I avoid artificial sweeteners because it sounds icky like powdered plastic. Also I tasted some when I was a kid (the pink stuff) and it was yucky. So my brother and I referred to it as the bad/yucky one. And we ate the real sugar.
    High fructose corn syrup's not as bad as artificial sweetener. At least I know it comes from corn. I like corn.

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    Any sort of horrible diet practices can contribute to cancer by damaging cells. Cancer is not caused by random DNA mutations that happen for no reason or you were an idiot who walked into the middle of Chernobyl, it's caused because cells that replicate get sick and the DNA gets messed up so they replicate in a cancerous way. Also, it's completely possible to crave sugar if you're thinking "man, I really want some sugar right now" and not "agh, everything nonsweet is icky, time to throw down another box of stale Valentine's candy I don't really like when there is plenty of other food available."
    If the cell is damaged... then it usually dies. So it's necessary to damage the DNA without causing cell death. Radioactivity can pierce through objects, pierce through cells and directly damage the DNA. That's why the carcinogens are radioactive material.

    So if you're worried that the stuff that you put into your body may cause cancer, then I'd think you'd ordinarily need to only worry whether it's carcinogenic or not. As in, if it's radioactive or not.

    Cancer IS caused by random or nonrandom mutation that cause the cell to replicate uncontrollably. That's why the older you get, the more likely you are to get cancer because the DNA replication makes random errors.

    I think "addiction" is something like "If I do this, then I'd feel good", which may actually not cause you to feel good or it might have negative side effects. Sugar does make you feel good, and it's readily available in large quantities, so it might cause addictions.

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    I think moderation with sugar and/or artificial sugars is the way to go. Personally, I opt for sugar in moderation, I usually just have it with my morning coffee and I generally try to avoid it after that. I rarely consume artificial sugars because I don't like the taste rather than for health reasons. If you consume a lot of sugar or a lot of artificial sugar you are going to run into problems. Avoiding one of the sugars, while indulging substantially in the other is obviously not healthy.

    Some people consume artificial sugars with the hopes in that it is healthier than sugar and that is definitely the wrong way to go about it. If it can help you reduce your intake for sugar significantly, while consuming only a little artificial sugar then it's good. However, if you consume just as much artificial sugars as you did with sugar then you basically just replaced one poison with another poison. This defeats the purpose of using artificial sugars in the first place.

    While, artificial sugars may not cause cancer, it can cause a host other issues that should give pause before consuming them:

    https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/...t-201207165030
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