- cross-posted to:
- science@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- science@lemmy.world
What I don’t get is why it took them decades to figure this out. Why have they been giving us sugar substitutes without understanding what they have been doing to us? Why were these approved for use in the first place?
I’m not sure why people expected all these sugar substitutes to be harmless
The entire notion of sugar substitution in the first place should be such an insane concept to everyone but somehow we’ve instead created a diet soda and junk food entitlement
They have been used for decades without issue.
It takes decades to do the research or develop the issues
Genotoxicity of aspartame
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4235942/
Cancer risk of Erythritol
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250718035156.htm
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/sugar-substitutes-new-cardiovascular-concerns
Hope you dont use salt, that can cause cancer
Sugar isn’t harmless.
It is if you don’t eat too much
But aspartame will literally damage the DNA in your colon because it’s inherently genotoxic to our cells
The DNA damage comes from the formaldehyde that the body produces when metabolizing aspartame, but guess what? The body makes formaldehyde anyway, just from its natural metabolic processes. As long as you don’t consume too much it’s fine.
The problem is over-consumption, which is the basis of having a consumer economy. If everyone ate less the food industry would collapse. They need us to overeat and if we ever stopped they’d have to reconcile with the fact that they can’t just keep growing their profits infinitely. Plus, when we overeat, they can make even more money by treating the sicknesses it causes. Win/Win!
Don’t consume either. Artificial sweeteners are UPFs and sugar in all its forms have no place in the human diet.
Indeed, we should all be trying to reduce even sugar to 0
If there is a food Overton window it’s a solar system away from a normal diet
If you remove sugar in all its forms from your diet then you’d better forget about eating any plants whatsoever. Cellulose is sugar, carbs are sugar. Where do you think we get our energy from?
Amino acids and fat. Why do we need sugar? It’s not an essential nutrient.
Lipids (fat) also gets converted into glucose before your body can use it. If we’re cutting out sugar in all forms then that counts too.
That is also my understanding. We needn’t consume any exogenous sugars in any form, since the body is able to make all it needs.
That’s nothing near to what I said. To reiterate my statement, there is no requirement for sugar in the human diet.
Your previous comment definitely says “sugar in all its forms”
I can tell you know a lot about biology.
Is your objection to substitutions? Because that’s a very arbitrary line. Why is it that we call sorbitol a sugar substitute instead of calling sugar a sorbitol substitute? Grind up some plums to make juice, remove the sorbitol, add some sucrose in its place. Doesn’t sound all that different.