Trust me I'm a Doctor

[Vicsetter]

Michael Mosley is back again. Interesting program tonight, an experiment into artificial sweeteners:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/art...PF0LGL3G/are-artificial-sweeteners-bad-for-me

The result from a very small study was that saccharin kills of gut bacteria and has a bad effect on blood glucose. They extrapolated this to other artificial sweeteners, but Stevia did not exhibit the same effect.

 

[robert@fm]

All they have proved is that saccharin is bad for those people -- other sweeteners are very different. Their claim is tantamount to claiming that because <insert football team name here> have been knocked out of this year's FA Cup, the same must be true of all other teams. 🙄 I especially doubt that the study is true of sucralose (sucrose altered such that the metabolism doesn't recognise it as a carbohydrate) or aspartame (an artificial protein constructed from two amino acids which are very common in nearly all foods). Looks like a bad case of confirmation bias, as is usually the case with artificial sweeteners. 🙄

 

[trophywench]

They only applied the test to 12 people , but the results condemning saccharin were pretty conclusive but there again they only did it for a week, we have no idea what else they were eating - and two out of the 6 weren't affected at all!

They would have to test the gut bacteria before the experiment as well as at the end, to even draw the conclusion that eg if your gat bacteria are in 'this' state, then you shouldn't consume saccharin. However I'll repeat myself - what was their 'normal diet otherwise' and had that affected their gut bacteria in the first place?

Too many 'what ifs' !

 

[Lynn Davies]

Yes but Jenny - if they conducted proper controlled test then they wouldn't get the results they want!🙄

 

[Robin]

It was an interesting programme altogether (proper scientific methods or not). The article on eating too late at night was interesting, my parents always had main meal at midday, tea at 6pm and didn't eat thereafter, and I expect that was true for rafts of people from their generation. I don't eat after my main meal at 6pm, but my Blood sugars always rise between 10pm and midnight, before plunging towards 3am, which would confirm the pattern they were talking about, of your body gearing up for doing some repair work during the night.
I was also interested in the item on too much Limonene in cleaning products. I always knew housework was bad for you!

 

[Lynn Davies]

I always knew housework was bad for you!

Who says it isnt! My sister-in-law has just spent 2 weeks in hospital with a badly broken leg after tripping over the vacuum cable!!

Dangerous stuff that housework!

 

[Northerner]

They were a bit lax in mentioning Type 2 whenever they spoke about the risks of diabetes. Apart from that, interesting - I was particularly interested in the rise in blood fat levels overnight when eating late. I usually eat my main meal around 5pm, although I do snack around 8-9pm. I'd struggle with the 10-hour eating window as it just wouldn't fit in with my day. Nor would eating my largest meal in the morning, as I only have a slice of toast - any more and I would be too full/bloated for my morning run/exercise. Also, eating two meals two hours apart would cause problems with insulin-stacking! I imagine everyone on the programme is totally unaware of the different considerations when you have diabetes! 🙄

 

[Cowboy Bob]

I don't get home until 7:15pm. Luckily my missus has my dinner on the table (got her well trained 🙂), but can't eat any earlier than that. Breakfast is at 6am, and lunch is at 12. Nothing I can do about it, other than change jobs or move house

 

[trophywench]

Well Bob - as a commuter for 3 months solid during the winter, I only saw my home in daylight at weekends however when I got in - I had to start making the evening meal so it would be ready just after my husband got in from HIS work - and he left before me. We both had jolly good jobs - and we both loved them and our colleagues - but in different directions from where we lived so moving house wasn't feasible.

Therefore I couldn't possibly do it either.

Now we are retired we could if we wanted to - but I wouldn't want to anyway, for the reasons Northerner has outlined !

Interesting though !

 

[pottersusan]

Also, eating two meals two hours apart would cause problems with insulin-stacking! I imagine everyone on the programme is totally unaware of the different considerations when you have diabetes! 🙄

Welcome to my world! I do most of my eating in the evening,'cos my body objects earlier in the day. Stacking is a big problem for me.

 

[nolly1953]

Whilst putting a well known sugar substitute in my coffee today I was confronted by a friend with the remark - "They are bad for you - I saw it on Trust me I'm a doctor". I have just watched the programme. For a start, it wasn't saccharin that I was taking - it was Candarel which is Aspartame.
Secondly, how much sweetener was actually given to the participants? At 3:03 into the video, we are told that the participants were given the "daily safe limit".
For Saccharine the Acceptable Daily intake is 5mg/kg of body weight which is 350mg for a 70kg person. I think that amounts to about 28 tablets. I can't help thinking that even 28 tablets would be safer for me than the equivalent 168 g sugar.
For Stevia, the Acceptable Daily intake is 91 tablets.
For Candarel, "the ADI set for Aspartame by the Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives, is 40 mg/kg of body weight per day. For an adult weighing 70 kg can safety consume 184 Canderel original tablets a day for the whole life." according to their website.
At 4:47 in the video we hear "Saccharin set some people's blood glucose sky-rocketing". The graph shows an increase of about 2mmol/l. Could this be classed as sky-rocketing?
I'm not sure how we are supposed to react to the programme - change to Stevia? Perhaps some viewers will revert to sugar to avoid the pit-falls of artificial sweeteners.
As for me - I really don't think that 2 Candarel in my coffee will do me much damage.

 

[robert@fm]

Welcome to the forum Holly! 🙂 See the rest of this thread, particularly the post of Lynn's which I liked. Also bear in mind the old proverb, "if you avoided all the foods which are said to be bad for you, you would starve to death". 🙄 As you say, whatever the (supposed, probably imaginary) hazards of artificial sweeteners, they're almost certainly safer than sugar. 🙂

 

[Copepod]

Welcome to the forum nolly1953. Many of us on these boards take care, like you, to check claims carefully.

Please introduce yourself in Newbies section, if you'd like.