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Anecdotally, artificial sweeteners started getting linked to cancer and sugar in the raw emerged as a product aimed at consumers who would consider choosing it over sweet n low to be a healthy choice.
The reports of them causing cancer were based on studies of rats that were given the equivalent of 600+ servings of sweetener and had other issues such as how the autopsies of rats were conducted. They were basically guaranteed to find something. If you did the same study with table sugar or honey, those rats would have died of hyperglycemia long before reaching the equivalent number of servings.
TLDR: these studies are utter trash
I remember that now that you mention it, but people being people only read the headlines then as they do now and the public's perception was still changed.
I mean the cancer ones are, loads of things are a carcinogen in high enough quantities, but that doesn't mean they're healthy, eg. there's a fair few studies that show that overconsumption of sugar and the equivalent with sweeteners lead to similar levels of obesity
How about rather than being addicted to oversweetened trash and (likely unsuccessfully) trying to cheat the side effects people just eat a healthy diet?
People are going to eat and drink things that arent the best for them. Thats the reality. And if theyre going to do that, it makes sense to minimize the harm in a practical way.
As for artificial sweeteners being harmful, testing them at levels hundreds, thousands of times what is actually used is not the way to do it. Give me a mechanism for harm to occur that makes sense and evidence of harm that reflects their actual use.
Eating sweet things triggers a subconscious urge in the brain to eat more regardless of whether what you're eating next is sweet in the hope that you get to eat more sugar for energy. This is seen with both sugar and sweeteners, so eating or drinking sweetened things make your appetite significantly bigger and so you eat more energy than you use and gain weight... Sounds like a mechanism for harm to occur to me, but whatever
How about letting people eat in moderation? If I go out for a meal with family and get a dessert then so long as I'm not doing that regularly then I'm not going to become a fat fuck.
That's not an addiction then?
Moderation is literally the opposite of addiction so what you say is fine. What I'm talking about is drinking sweetened drinks with every meal and/or eating sweetened snacks inbetween every meal and/or having every meal be over sweet... Even eating dessert daily after your main meal of the day is fine as the biggest issue is eating sweetened food when you intend to eat after, so as snacks or during the main parts of the meal