What works for me here (judging from the angry reactions I am getting it is a powerful argument) is listing various naturally occuring poisons and toxins.
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Youâre right, and Iâm hot and tired, so Iâm not writing well. Weâre at the tail end of a heat wave in L.A. (which is why Iâve been gone a lot, too hot for the computer!) You have my sincere apologies. Stevia is indeed a glycoside made by binding glucose to steviol - but itâs bound in such a way as to not be a sugar anymore at all. It just tastes like one.
How is SteviaSugar broken down by the body?
Sugar and Stevia (steviol glycosides) are broken down in different ways. Sugar is split by digestive enzymes to glucose and fructose, both of which are absorbed into the blood from the gastro-intestinal tract. They are then metabolised further providing the bodyâs cells with energy. Steviol glycosides are larger molecules that cannot be broken down by the enzymes. However, bacteria in the large intestine break down the steviol glycosides to steviol; most is absorbed and excreted in the urine (as steviol glucuronide). The remainder is excreted in the faeces. This is why steviol glycosides do not contribute any energy.
@redesigned has already stepped in and cleared up even more of the Stevia fun. You need to check the packet. The âSteviaâ part of Stevia, isnât a sugar product anymore, but the added fructose still is.
As I said already, my main concern was warding people away from the idea that glucose in general is somehow not needed at all (we do need it, albeit in small amounts) and promote the understanding that there are different types of sugar. People do switch to honey or agave nectar as a sugar substitute thinking theyâll be better for them. Agave nectar is even sweeter than HFC, and higher in fructose. None are âartificialâ - they all also have no food benefit. So changing out your sugar - even for a natural substitute - can still be a problem.
sorry to hear about the heatwaveâŚuggh, I know how taxing that can be.
glucose is the most usable form of sugar for the human body, and the safest sugar, so long as it is consumed in small amounts. the body can make glucose and ketones from fats though, so one doesnât need to consume sugar per se despite it being necessary for metabolic functions.
I personally avoid almost all sugar and am on a cyclic ketogenic diet for health reasons, which is why Iâm all read up on this stuff, my body made me ;-P.
I do understand and empathize with peoples attraction to sweet foods and their desire to find loopholes that allow them to still have them, it is unfortunate that many of those loopholes have their own costs that are often not considered or well enough studied.
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It doesnât take a study to know that nothing in those products has any legitimate business in anyoneâs body.
Sucralose or Splenda started giving me anxiety attacks recently. I had used it without incident for years and then it suddenly started having anxiety whenever I ingested it. I avoid it as much as possible now, but some products sneak it in there, like Fuze Iced Tea (found that out the hard way).
Sensationalism is how you get an audience and money. Please let me know what you find from the actual paper.
Thanks 
Itâs been nasty here, and I live without a/c.
Well, we can make glucose from fat, but it isnât easy and only happens when you stress your body. At rest during the day, fat stores wonât produce glucose at all. If it happens during exercise, youâll know youâre getting close if you feel lactic acid building up in your muscles. Thatâs a precursor to gluconeogenesis.
Every person has different health needs, and I would never suggest every person try to follow the same diet - thatâs just a way to get people sick. I do agree that we have far too much sugar in our diets - mainly in hidden places like jarred spaghetti sauces - that people should be paying more attention to.
@crashproof: Sorry I missed your post! Diabetics rely more heavily on their livers than a person with a healthy pancreas does. Your liver really only will store quantities of glucose larger than happily float around in your blood, but youâll have more trouble replacing/using the glucose in your system. Type 1 diabetics canât process the sucrose into their systems (pancreas wonât produce insulin and process the glucose). Type 2 diabetics have a tolerance to insulin, so you may get glucose, but may not be able to use it. Each type of diabetes has its own problems.
Sleeping for extended periods is actually really hard on your system. The âdawn phenomenonâ is basically a bodyâs response to an alert about low blood sugar count. Your sugar gets kicked into really high early morning production in response to some really low late night sugar numbers. Even non-diabetics who are dieting or otherwise stressing their bodies can have that problem!
I had to give up my consoles thanks to epilepsy. I feel your pain.
Then quoting the American Diabetes Organization:
Looks to me like the ADA agrees that high sugar consumption is linked to type II diabetes. After all, sugary drinks are the single largest source of sugar in consumersâ diets:
In the U.S. diet, the major source of âadded sugarâ â not including naturally occurring sugars, like the fructose in fruit â is soft drinks. They account for 33% of all added sugars consumed, says Kristine Clark, PhD, RD, a spokeswoman for the Sugar Association.
So stevia [which Iâve avoided] causes the same intestinal pain as sorbitol and other alcohols? and as fructose?
Thanks for that. I also saw this:
http://acsh.org/2014/09/israeli-study-sugar-substitutes-complete-bullsweet/
Dr. Bloom explains, âThe premise of this studyâthat artificial sweeteners affect the microbial composition in the gutâmakes absolutely no sense chemically, physiologically, or pharmacologically. The authors are taking chemicals that have exactly one thing in commonâsweetnessâand trying to correlate this with changes in gut bacteria that may be responsible for raising blood sugar â and in mice, no less!.â
âThere is a wide variety of chemicals that are sweet, both synthetic and naturally occurring. They have exactly one thing in commonâtaste. What can this possibly have to do with an effect on gut bacteria? Nothing.
âThe authors really should have dug up a chemist before they got involved with this silly study. There are plenty of us aroundâmostly unemployed. Because he/she would have pointed out the gaping hole in the logic of the studyâthat you cannot group a chemically diverse group of chemicals simply because they are sweet, and draw any conclusion whatsoever about anything other that the taste.
Dr. Bloom continues, âIt might be possible (although still highly unlikely) that any single sweet chemical could have some effect on (you name it), but to then lump in other chemicals that have nothing in common structurally or chemically is ludicrous. You might as well take random chemicals out of a lab and test them, because chemically, this is essentially what they did.â
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Stevia isnât a sugar alcohol, and itâs not chemically related to Sorbitol or Xylitol or any of these. So you donât have to worry about having reactions you have to that type of sugar delivery. Sugar alcohols are known to cause both abdominal camping and diarrhea.
Thereâs no way to know unless you try it if youâll have any problem with Stevia, and there are competing arguments on its safety. Stevia itself wonât be recognized or used by your body as though itâs a sugar. However, if you buy a product that claims itâs âSteviaâ on the front - check the fine print. You may find added ingredients you arenât expecting - like fructose or dextrose (both sugars). (Thereâs dextrose as the lead ingredient in âStevia in the Rawâ.)
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For what itâs worth, for the portion of the study where they gave seven people saccharin for one week and saw impaired glucose tolerance in four subjects, the researchers used the maximum acceptable daily intake of 360mg saccharin, the equivalent of 10 Sweetân Low packets. So, small sample size and somewhat extreme conditions.
Also, they did not have a control group that ingested an equivalent amount of the non-saccharine ingredients (dextrose, at 4 calories per packet, so 40 calories extra per day would be required, cream of tartar and calcium silicate). Probably wouldnât account for it, but we donât know and thatâs why weâre supposed to use controls.
One assumption of the study is that the mice, some being given water, other natural or artificial sweeteners, are otherwise equivalent. Although they say in the text that âMetabolic profilingâŚin metabolic cages, including liquids and chow consumption, oxygen consumption, walking distance and energy expenditure, showed similar measuresâŚâ they show in the extended data that the mice of the different groups are eating and drinking different amounts. For example, in the course of 80 hours, mice raised on regular water drank about 5mls of water, whereas mice raised on saccharine drank 80mls.
Similarly, the water-raised mice ate 10g of food and the saccharine-raised mice ate only 4 (Extended Data Fig 3). Only four mice were in each of these groups, so who knows what the true value is, but those donât seem very âsimilarâ to me. In no case was any formal test for statistical equality described. Curiously, these differences are not present in mice fed a high fat diet and then given the sweeteners (Extended Data Fig 4).
All of that is to say that making any lifestyle change based on this is, IMHO, premature.
I wouldnât call myself an expert in metabolism and nutrition, but I have published in the field of obesity in Nature.
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I recommend you visit this page. Eran Elinav is a serious scientist, and is not seeking to be approved without question. If you check that page, youâll find a âRelated Audioâ link of a short interview with Elinav. He has this to say.
âOf course, our results, and the conclusions that may be drawn from these results are quite striking and are, uh, open for public debate, I think.â
The mouse and one-week study are two of the studies being done. Thereâs also an ongoing study involving nearly 400 people. That study has been showing the same results.
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Yeah, as is almost always the case, what the scientists say, what gets related in the press, and what commenters pick up on are only loosely correlated. The actual paper is pretty restrained and nuanced, and I would not say that theyâre over interpreting their results.
WRT the 400-person study. They even say it themselves:
The researchers noted a correlation between clinical signs of metabolic disorder â such as increasing weight or decreasing efficiency of glucose metabolism â and consumption of artificial sweeteners. But âthis is a bit chicken-and-eggâ, says Elinav. âIf you are putting on weight, you are more likely to turn to diet food. It doesnât necessarily mean the diet food caused you to put on weight.â
Like all good science, the final interpretation does not hinge on any single experiment, but comes from the totality of the evidence. They have surely built a compelling argument for further digging into the effect of NAS on the microbiome, its transcriptome and the interplay with the host, and I eagerly await the results of additional experimentation in this regard.
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Not a single mention of low carb/paleo/locavore/[fashionable diet or lifestyle guideline that suggests added sugars and/or artificial sweeteners have something to do with oneâs health] and the inevitable rabid backlash saying [fashionable diet, etc.] is a bullshit homeopathy-style fad and so on and so forth and nuh-uh and YOUâre the stinky one?
Something is changing around here. Maturing, perhaps?
I think itâs more likely that âpaleoâ as a trend has become old enough to be unfashionable. Which is sort of funny I guess.
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