Fitness And Nutrition General

I feel stupid for wondering about this.

I've been using Stevia for awhile now. Honestly I need to ask something. I know it's probably the best kind of no calorie sweetener "Since it's all natural".

But technically sugar and high fructose corn syrup are derived from nature. And look at the bad effects a highly concentrated extract can have from a byproduct of beets/sugar cane and corn..

Too much of a good thing can be bad, can Stevia over time make it harder to lose body fat as opposed to just drinking tea/coffee plain? Seems like it might give me even more of a sweet tooth/ higher tolerance to sweets if I use it all the time. Seems like it would be a bad thing if you actually craved real sugar/sweets. Part of me is baffled by it's apparently low glycemic index, yet it's much sweeter than sugar. Am I over thinking about it?

It's only an issue because I like my coffee the way I like my women. White(Or Tan) and Sweet *rimshot*

Bloating/Nausea/Dizziness/MusclePain/Numbness are so called side effects that I do not experience.

I've read about some research showing that non calorie sweeteners can trick the brain and even recondition you to eat more because the taste doesn't equal what you end up getting. IIRC it can even lead to issues in the long term because various chemicals and hormones are released in preparation based on what your mouth tells the brain about what you are eating. I'm not sure how backed up that actually is but it makes sense.

Something can be sweet because it reacts with the receptors on your tongue but can't be "normally" digested so it has no calories.

Also, natural doesn't mean anything. Hemlock is natural and it'll kill you pretty damn fast. Everything on this earth that you eat is chemicals in some way or another and each reacts differently to the other chemicals in your body. So you just need to take each thing individually and look at it, though even science doesn't have all the answers. There is no short or easy way.

I hear you on the all natural hype. Cocaine is technically as natural as white sugar is. Both are the byproduct of concentrating a chemical naturally found in a plant. I planned on staying away from processed sugar/flour/Aspartame( and other artificial sweeteners.)

Im tempted to just get the dried stevia leaves over the white byproduct.

Sweetener issue has just made me learn to live with water with the occasional juice. Though I still have a lot to work on with the food part...

I can look into steviol in detail tomorrow for you, a quick glance it has a different structure completely than granulated sugar. depending on the sweetner they target different activation sites responsible for the sweet sensation on the tongue.

As far sweeteners tricking the brain, bitter and sweet are primitive human traits. It was used to differentiate poisonous foods. Sweet=good, bitter=poison, so I don't recall it affecting satiety on terms of taste.

Stick to real sugar, just smaller amounts. Artificial sweeteners are not only bad for you, but they actually lead to more weight gain than regular sugar.

i gave up anything that has Aspartame in it 2 years ago.. dont remember full details why but iirc that ***took like 10 years to get past fdaa approval (eventually..) and was surrounded with bribes pay offs and years later they found in reports many mice the trials were conducted on having died of abnormally large cancer cells.

now im all natural with that ***lol - my rule of thumb is .. if it tastes REAL GOOD chances are its packed with something bad and you should be thinking is this my cheat meal lol

i try stay away from ALL sugars where possible - i dropped 28 ibs this last year so im doing something right

Only relevant if you're bad with self control really. If that is the case, then I agree whole heartily. In my case, I write out a meal plan at the beginning of the week and follow it. I allow one day to cheat; so if I'm at school or something and my friends want to go out to lunch, it can be used there.

My artificial sweetness also comes into play since I do intermittent fasting. Those 18 hours of the day I can't have calories, low amounts of sugar doesn't cut it

You would still have to keep the fake sugar to a minimum. If you pay attention to most diet stuff, and stuff like 1gr splenda packets, there is very little actual sweetener in there, and a lot of (but still less than 1gr) of filler - which is, surprise! sugar. just a packet or 3 won't matter much, but if you are pounding back 10 teas a day with 10 packets of splenda, or 10 diet pops a day, you are looking at about 30-35 calories. That may or may not be a lot depending on your fasting rules.


As far as the sugar vs sweetener debate, i usually stay out of those, it's like getting in an argument about politics.

- Sucralose(Splenda) is the notable exception to the non-caloric artificial sweetener paradigm

- Nature has no preferences with regard to your nutrition, and even if it did, you wouldn't even recognize your food if you ate what nature initially provided us with

- Artificial sweeteners can be treated as a singular unit insofar as apple juice and peanutbutter can

- Aspartame is one of, if not the most outstandingly and unnecessarily researched food additives ever created

- Linking single studies, without sources, and without understanding how to interpret their data is a waste of everyone's time

- This thread never fails horrify me

I'm not disagreeing with your statements on sweeteners, however, attempting to educate people in a condescending tone accomplishes nothing.

This ***plays on repeat every five pages; People don't come here to learn, they come here to reaffirm their misconstrued ideas about biology and how it applies to what they put in their mouth




When this stops happening, I'll consider worrying about condescension

you are joking right. /facepalm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owtF2nt2VX4

yes the ACS may now say its "ok" but any substance that goes through the long and shady approval that this did can not be good - this is a substance that was made for PROFIT a LOT of PROFIT, the products about MONEY not helping people.

Weight gain is a complex issue that has aspects of biology and psychology. The psych aspect alone is part of the reason why there are such discrepancies in public health recommendations. Public health recommendations should never be based on metabolic pathways alone, nutrition recommendations need to address the psych/socio issues in order to be effective.

Diet drinks are not the sweet solution to fight obesity, health problems


Her particular research is interesting because she isn't criticizing artificial sweeteners based on them going through some hidden biopathway only found on the internet but rather how the brain interprets these caloric deficits.

Her publication in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism she says

I absolutely believe that the data on satiety responses has merit to it, and I'm interested to see the research continue. And I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone go guzzle a diet coke-- I just can't stand the cult of ignorance that surrounds nutrition, particularly as it applies to what people already "know" about today's sweeteners


Everything is created for profit. Do you think that the relatively recent surge of natural and organic products is for our sake? It's a marketing campaign targeting a scientifically illiterate consumer base, and nothing more.

missing the point - last time i checked organic food wont give you cancer, hell i pay a little more for free range chicken as not only does it taste better but i don't believe in battery farmed animal cruelty

Congratulations for being exactly why this thread is horseshit

Hate you so much lol. All these years I thought it was whoreshit (no lie lol)

I was probably around 19 when I stopped saying "intensive purposes", don't worry about it

Ok guys don't fight just go lift.

dont even know wtf he is on about - nor do i really care ...

Exactly-- you don't know what you're talking about, yet your conviction on the subject doesn't waver. You don't understand what it means for something to be organic, or natural, or synthetic, and you don't understand their respective biological consequences(or lack thereof). You know buzzwords, and you know how to improperly interpret data.

We've all had to go through the learning stage, myself included. The trick is to not profess knowledge in the mean time.

If her research is valid it affirms the concept that salivary enzymes and mastication regulate enzymes production in the GI tract, which is fascinating.

Have access to the full text?

Edit: Derp, apparently I do

The majority is on Google search her name. But she uses a cry wolf analogy to explain the effects of artificial sweeteners. Also this is her specialty she has several papers on artificial sweeteners.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've read this case before. The endo I worked under for a while had me extremely interested in mastication's role in digestion. She gave me login credentials for databases I didn't already have from my university, which has been handy

This is kinda my trouble with life in general. And I guess research as well. In order for anything to get done, you have to have money. Which either means some rich benevolent person or company just doing things in the name of science or a company who wants to make a profit. Even non-profits and governments are not free from this entirely... I don't have access to awesome resources nor as much experience as I would like to dig behind the titles and articles and expose what is science and what is fluff and/or manipulation. I'd imagine that many studies are fake, poorly done, set up to intentional bias, skewed, cherry-picked ect to support the funds that make the research possible. I know many studies go unpublished if the data doesn't support what they wanted it to.

So really, I feel it's hard to blame anyone for being on one side or the other or not having all the real facts when there are so many people doing everything they can to fool the general public. I've been wrong a lot even after hours/days of research.

I appreciate when you and others take the time to explain things and back it up with your experience and citations.

Trust me when I tell you that it's not about being wrong. Wrongness makes the world go round. Wrongness makes the scientific world go round. I find new and exciting ways to be wrong on the daily. My issue isn't with being wrong, it's with claiming knowledge of things that aren't known.

Anyway, the point is that synthetics should be treated like anything else in the world: on a case-by-case basis. Synthesis isn't magic. Nature isn't magic. You can grow a carcinogen as readily as you can synthesize one. You need to understand the mechanism, not regurgitate a buzzword.