More suclarose bad news

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paper: https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(20)30057-7.pdf

tldr; if you have to consume this stuff, never mix it with carbs

openai summary:

The document you uploaded provides insights into the effects of consuming sucralose with carbohydrates on metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Here are some key takeaways relevant to diet, weight loss, energy, and metabolism:

  1. Insulin Sensitivity and Glucose Metabolism:

• Short-term consumption of sucralose combined with carbohydrates impairs insulin sensitivity in healthy humans. This suggests that the body’s ability to manage glucose levels effectively is reduced when sucralose is consumed with carbs.

• The study found that consuming seven sucralose-sweetened beverages with carbohydrates over 10 days decreased insulin sensitivity. This impairment is associated with decreased neural responses to sugar, although taste perception remains unaltered.

  1. Neural Responses and Taste Perception:

• The metabolic impairment from sucralose and carbohydrate combination correlates with reductions in brain responses to sweet taste but does not affect the perception of sweet taste itself. This indicates a specific neural adaptation rather than a change in taste sensitivity.

**Implications for Weight Loss and Energy:

• While sucralose alone did not impair insulin sensitivity or alter glucose metabolism, its combination with carbohydrates led to rapid metabolic dysfunction. This suggests that for those trying to manage weight and improve metabolic health, it might be beneficial to avoid combining artificial sweeteners like sucralose with carbohydrate-rich foods.

• The combination effect may contribute to impaired glucose tolerance, potentially affecting energy levels and overall metabolism negatively in the long term.

  1. Central Regulation of Metabolism:

• The study indicates that altered central responses (brain responses) to sweet taste might play a role in glucose metabolism, pointing towards complex interactions between dietary components, brain function, and metabolic health.

Practical Recommendations:

• Avoid Combining Sucralose with Carbs: If using artificial sweeteners, it might be wise to consume them without carbohydrate-rich foods to prevent potential impairments in insulin sensitivity.

• Monitor Artificial Sweetener Intake: Regular and significant consumption of sucralose, especially with carbs, should be approached with caution to avoid potential negative effects on glucose metabolism.

• Focus on Whole Foods: Emphasize a diet rich in whole foods with natural sugars and fibers, which can help maintain steady energy levels and support healthy metabolism.

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I’m not sure what would compel someone to combine artificial sweeteners with real sweeteners. You’d assume someone employing suclarose is attempting to keep their carbs low, no?

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Chips and a drink? Not sure what sugar substitutes are used in those, but that’s how I see it combining.

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I figure if we’re including alcohol in the equation we’re already letting the ship sail as far as “metabolic derangement” goes, haha.

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No, the average person is thinking about calories not macros. They are trying to keep calories lower. Instead of frosted flakes they eat cornflakes with Splenda. I think there is even Soda that is reduced sugar with artificial sweeteners.

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25+ years of breaking this guy’s “rule” – Still don’t have a metabolic disease, still don’t have insulin resistance, still have abs. Of course, I could replace sucralose with sugar, but then I’d have metabolic disease, insulin resistance, and no abs. :man_shrugging:

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On the whole, nutritionists have not done a great job regarding the quality of advice given over the last century.

Part of the reason is that good studies are hard to do, very expensive and time-consuming. It is easy to do useless studies and easier still for them to go viral.

It is pretty clear that the things that make people obese are insulin and insulin resistance. (Chronic cortisol also elevates these things). Since sugar drives a strong insulin response, it should largely be limited to reasonable amounts and around times of exercise. Chronically high insulin leads to insulin resistance, so there is some value in reducing snacks, so the body is not in a perpetual “fed” state. (Pulses of insulin momentarily high or when it can be used to build muscle are not remotely the same as insulin which is chronically high even after fasting twelve hours, as per standard blood tests.)

But it is easy to go off the rails about these things. Fruit is healthy. Vegetables are healthy. The 800 calorie sugary milkshake and 500 calorie sugary latte should be a rare treat. Your caveman liver was not built to eat these things every day.

Sweeteners have been studied in great detail. They are used in small quantities and many have a far smaller insulin response than glucose. So this is what they should be compared to… not nothing at all. Unless you plan to stop consuming sugar completely.

When you think of a food you are addicted to, what is it? Are you addicted to fish? To apples? To steak? To cabbage… so you just can’t stop eating it? The foods people are addicted to are those which don’t provide satiety: cake, sugary breakfast cereals originally designed to be as sweet as cake, chocolate, etc. or salty foods engineered to thrill your palate (Cheezy Poofs, chips…)

If eating a little sweetener makes you consume much less sugar you are likely still better off. Thousands of studies have found little harm for the ones most commonly used at the doses people actually consume. Sure, you might be slightly better off avoiding these, especially in excess. But a little sweetener in most cases is still better than a lot of sugar and the insulin and insulin resistance responses are not comparable and can be seen on the bathroom scales of most nations.

Note: this study is almost useless by definition because it was conducted over ten days. You become obese by gaining three pounds a year for long enough. So ideal obesity studies look at what happens over years, even decades.

Despite this, monitoring sweetener intake and preferring whole foods with less processing is still reasonable advice.

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I always keep coming back to this

The poison is not in the product…the poison is in the dosage

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This was said over five hundred years ago. It’s still true. But it is also true most sweeteners are harmless at the doses most consume. Sweeteners might not help you lose weight. But this is because to lose weight you must lower insulin and insulin resistance. With sweeteners, there is a small increase, though usually much smaller than glucose. However, you will gain weight if you eat excess sugar, over a long period of time. The comparison to sweeteners must be to the sugars people actually consume.

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You will gain weight if you eat excess anything

sugar or sweeteners is just easier to eat excessively

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The insulin response of eating too much sweetener is not the same as too much glucose. (This isn’t a perfect study either). It’s much less, sometimes none. It is insulin that causes obesity. Not calories in. Not calories out. The variable metabolic rate and hunger hormones generally compensate for calories.

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personally I am throwing quest protein bars off my list which have suclarose. yes, they are low in net carbs, but typically i have some sort of fruit or coffee/maple syrup with them. looking for alternatives TBH. not abandoning my occasional diet mountain dew (which is aspartame)

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Terrific study, thank you!

I really appreciate your posts.

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those 2 studies do contradict each other, and this has to be taken into account; i have to say chatgpt 4 is great (if you willing to ditch 20 usd)

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Contradictions

• Contradictory Points:

• The first study reports that NNS, including sucralose, do not have significant effects on metabolic responses (e.g., glucose and insulin) when consumed alone or with carbohydrates, suggesting their safety and utility as SSB replacements.

• The second study finds that sucralose, when consumed with carbohydrates, significantly impairs insulin sensitivity and reduces neural sensitivity to sweet taste, indicating potential metabolic harm.

• Resolution of Contradictions:

• The discrepancies may stem from the specific conditions and methodologies of the studies. The first study aggregates data from multiple studies, providing a broad overview but potentially overlooking nuanced interactions.

• The second study provides a controlled experimental setup focusing on the specific combination of sucralose with carbohydrates, highlighting a potentially adverse interaction not extensively covered in broader meta-analyses.

TL;DR

• The first study finds non-nutritive sweeteners like sucralose safe and effective as sugar replacements with no significant impact on postprandial metabolic responses.

• The second study reports that sucralose, when consumed with carbohydrates, impairs insulin sensitivity and neural response to sweetness, suggesting potential metabolic risks.

• The studies appear contradictory due to differences in focus and methodology: the first is a broad meta-analysis, while the second is a specific controlled experiment.

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Hard boiled eggs, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, meat, pretty much any non-processed protein source without a frankenfiber in it.

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The whole science of nutrition is a mass of contradictions. Studies sponsored by food companies are 700% more likely to report positive conclusions regarding specific interests.

There are also a few studies that suggest some sweeteners do raise insulin but not blood glucose levels (still not great), and that switching from sugary beverages to diet drinks reduced sugar consumption in children but did not affect rates of childhood obesity. It matters what you consume with your diet drink. And when you use it. Sweeteners are certainly not a complete solution to obesity.

My take on the evidence is diet drinks do not seem to much reduce total caloric intake or cause weight loss. No one understands the gut microbiome well enough to make any meaningful conclusions about this, though many try. Just drinking water is probably healthier than using diet drinks.

But I don’t think most sweeteners are very dangerous in reasonable doses. They are best used in moderation to replace sugar, and eating excessive sugar from other sources anyway defeats their purpose. If diet drinks allow more consumption of better macronutrients like more protein, non-trans fat, unprocessed complex starches and fibre they do help. If you still eat the sugar, it is probably still a little better than eating that sugar plus the amount you would have consumed in sweetened soda.

ChatGTP could be expected to reflect its training data, what people say most often on the Internet. This is not the same as good analysis because of the first paragraph of this post.

Also, to say the obvious, gaining weight is not the same as gaining fat. And big studies do not specialize in weightlifters who are often trying to gain weight, hopefully lean muscle. If you know long term quality studies just using lifters, over a period of years, and with hundreds or thousands of participants, please bring these to my attention. I doubt there are many, but meathead logic is better than nothing. Studying weight gain and obesity in lifters and muscular people probably also means using a definition other than BMI for obesity.

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I would agree with most of you statements. now in terms of chatgpt, while I do not fully know how it data is trained, the summaries I posted are based on pdf files I uploaded which are the studies themselves, so while there is outside data feeding into the responses for sure, i would not expect too much of people opinions feeding into the responses. if anyone has time (and i dont) you could drill deeper into this, uploading every single study from the large meta-analysis and i’m sure you would find more issues why they missed the suclarose connection. the reality is that in those type of forum conversations people often throw studies at each other ‘see this proves my point’, while in reality no one here has the time, capacity or technical skills to truly read or interpret them (i definitely don’t). if you go back to the original video by Horowitz (smarter guy then most of us in this field), he mentioned that the insulin spikes in adolescents were so bad, that they had to abandon the study based on ethical grounds. now does this mean that all sweeteners are bad? absolutely not, but with new evidence like this coming out it is important to distinguish between them. some of them, like allulose even seem to do the exact opposite to ones like suclarose, and i paste a study below. others might be neutral, like stevia or erythritol, but i have no evidence on this, just have not seen good data. so when going to the store and having a choice between different products with different sweeteners, the choice seems very easy and obvious to me.

Allulose has demonstrated promising benefits in reducing postprandial blood glucose levels and supporting insulin sensitivity. Its mechanisms of action, including the inhibition of carbohydrate absorption and stimulation of insulin-regulating hormones, position it as a valuable dietary addition for managing blood glucose levels and improving insulin sensitivity, especially for individuals with prediabetes or those looking to prevent diabetes.

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The beverage was sweetened with Sucrose which is glucose and fructose. Fructose does not directly stimulate insulin.

It has a GI index of 65.

Maltodextrin is glucose and has a GI index of 106 to 136.

That is why there was such a big difference in the fasted test. There was nothing there to blunt the response.

They never figured to look into that?? Wow.

I guess ChatGPT can’t pick that up.

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while I agree that they should have utilized the same sugar for the non-suclarose test, this is also disproven here, page 5:

No Evidence that Maltodextrin Changes Insulin
Sensitivity
Since the Combo group was included as a control group, we did
not consider including a control group exposed to maltodextrin
alone in the initial study. However, given that consuming the
Combo stimulus unexpectedly produced changes in brain and
insulin response to sugar, we performed a follow-up experiment
to determine if consuming maltodextrin alone caused changes in
the insulin response during an OGTT. We found no evidence that
consuming maltodextrin-containing beverages alters insulin
sensitivity for either the first phase insulin response (time 0–
30 min, t(14) = 0.86, p = 0.41) or the full 120 min OGTT period
(t(14) = 0.55, p = 0.59) (Figure 2D). These results rule out the possibility that consuming maltodextrin alone accounts for the
changes in insulin sensitivity observed in the first experiment

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The biggest difference where “the insulin spikes in adolescents were so bad, that they had to abandon the study” was in the fasted testing.

The difference was little to none in the OGTT measures which is what they used for the follow up testing with maltodextrin. They were not fasted.