The difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke is that one uses the Coca Cola Classic formula, and the other one is Coke. The name difference is to signify the flavor profile.
Yes, I prefer it. Coke Zero does taste closer to Coke but in an "uncanny valley" sort of way. I drink Diet Coke often, I like it. It isn't really supposed to taste like Coke.
Strangely enough, I'd rather have Coke Zero than regular Coke now. After getting used to Coke Zero, if I pick up a regular Coke and drink it, it tastes wrong.
Not sure about the downvotes on this one. My recollection is that Coke Zero was introduced to compete with Pepsi Max, and that the primary reason was that men were reluctant to buy things marked as "Diet" (plus there was a long history of Diet Coke being marketed almost exclusively to women [eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Sre-wpGHE ]).
Not saying any of this is a good thing... but it's a thing.
Thanks for this! This was a huge shocker and I immediately had to go confirm it. Because of the way the branding is, I had assumed that Zero would have more caffeine.
Coke Zero uses a combination of aspartame and ace-K. The two have a synergistic effect which results in lower amounts being used and less of the artificial sweetener taste.
Diet Coke (last time I checked) just uses aspartame.
In many countries (such as Germany), Coke adds sodium cyclamate to the usual aspartame + acesulfame-K. I find that cyclamate improves it immensely, and eliminates the bitter aftertaste of aspartame. Unfortunately, in the US it's still banned, even though the consensus is that it's harmless.
I don't really understand the popularity of artificial sweeteners. They all taste totally teh ick to me. I would much rather have something that is not sweet than something that is artificially sweet.
But judging from the beverage selection available at just about any convenience store, I'm possibly the only person in the USA who would rather drink something that isn't sweet than something that contains 0 calorie sweeteners.
I think that a lot of it is what you're accustomed to drinking. I used to only drink regular colas and hated the taste of diet. I now drink only diet, and regular tastes too sweet to me.
I'll admit that I do enjoy the occasional sugary soda, but I try to keep that to a minimum. I find that I prefer flavored sparkling water like La Croix (which does not contain any sweetener) over diet soda. I still don't find La Croix in restaurants hardly ever, but it's becoming more and more common in grocery stores.
I used to feel that way too, but years ago I dated someone who only ever drank Diet Coke, and I started to like it after repeated exposure. For a long time after that, real sugar drinks were way too sweet tasting and gross to me, though now I can enjoy a regular Coke now and then.
i did a lot of chemistry at uni - your question made me think. it's a little like programming - the field is so vast and fundamental that you may as well start with a topic you're interested in and then dig deep every time you find a word/phrase/assumption you don't get (heads up: there will be a lot).
i'd actually say that chem is a difficult subject to learn independently. it is one of those subjects that is best learned with other people and those that know - you learn lots of seemingly disconnected things that only slowly coalesce into a broad understanding. IME for most people, that coalescence takes the first several months of a post-grad project - there's something about being in a lab and discussing chemistry that blends all the bits together.
it's been 20 years but the text books at Uni of Auckland were McMurray for Organic chem, Atkins for physical chem and Atkins, Shriver and Langford for Inorganic. Personally I found Atkins a difficult read and would recommend hunting around for an author that you enjoy reading. read In the Pipeline regularly - it's a blog by a medicinal chemist that is quite excellent (his 'things i won't work with' posts are brilliant ;-). there's also a saying in chem that you learn it through your fingertips - pen and paper sketching structures and working with glassware. it's a strange blend of theory, practice and intuition - that's either its biggest appeal or its biggest turnoff... YMMV.
if you really are keen, drop me a note - i'm intrigued to see if i could design a curriculum using open source pubs and edX.
It's good to see that Splenda isn't the potential toxic substance we began to wonder it was, but I agree that it tastes icky.
That said, I wonder why Stevia isn't considered to sweeten drinks? It's very sweet, it's natural like sugar (meaning it's not synthetic or lab-grown), it also has zero calories, and it doesn't taste icky!
I've always assumed Stevia hasn't taken off yet because that means companies have to spend money on trying to rework "flavor profiles" to work with Stevia.
I long for a Stevia-powered Coke Zero...until they realize Stevia also causes horrible things in humans :-/
Stevia is HUGE. It's biggest benefit is that it can be marketed as "natural" allowing you to put "no artificial sweeteners" on the package. Pretty much everything sugar-free or reduced-sugar in Whole Foods has stevia in it. One of the reasons why you don't see it EVERYWHERE is that it's much more expensive compared to Ace-K and aspartame.
Please just be cautious not to fall into the trap of the 'vital principle'[1]. If you had a bottle of L-ascorbic acid ("vitamin C") in your right hand synthesized in a laboratory and a bottle of L-ascorbic acid in your left extracted from rose hips, you'd agree that except for making arguments about impurities (certainly as likely in the 'natural' extract) that the molecules are identical in every sense in both cases..?
I've always taken the "natural is better" argument to be based on what else is in the product. The drug industry has a long history of taking a complex natural product and isolating out specific chemicals, then patenting a manufacturing process for those chemicals to sell them as drugs. Sometimes that's fine, but there are many cases where the drugs have side-effects that the natural product doesn't have and that's due to the other stuff in the natural product.
So your analogy really should be between lab-synthesized vitamin C and a piece of citrus fruit. The fruit is going to be better for your overall health because it's got more in it than just L-ascorbic acid. For example, it's got fiber, which is likely to slow down the passage of the vitamin through your digestive system, which will help you absorb more of it for an equal dose.
no... my analogy would be fundamentally a different analogy if i compared a bottle of vitamin C to a whole piece of fruit (quite "apples and oranges" in fact). I wanted to underscore that two pure substances, one synthetic and one extracted from nature are indistinguishable. When i teach biochemistry i'm always struck by the resistance to the pivotal biochemical scientific experiment of Friedrich Wöhler who synthesized urea and showed that it's identical in every sense to the urea extracted from urine. Thereby ending the notion that there is a vital principle. One may always quibble about contamination, but carbon atoms linked to other carbon atoms are the same whether made in a cell or made in the laboratory.
I agree with you that the two chemicals are indistinguishable; I just think that that's not really the issue when people prefer 'natural' products. Now, most people also don't get the distinction you're making, because they're not chemists. What they see, and what they're reacting to, goes more like this:
Joe Public> I have a headache.
Folk Medicine Dr> Here, drink some willowbark tea.
DrugCo Chemist> No, take this aspirin. It's chemically identical to the active substance in willowbark tea, but much more convenient!
Joe Public> My headache is better, but now my stomach hurts. That never happened with the tea.
DrugCo Chemist> Oh, you have an ulcer. You're a sick person. Take this antacid medicine!
Joe Public> My stomach feels better, but now I'm constipated.
DrugCo Chemist> Wow, you're really sick... here, take this laxative!
Folk Medicine Dr> All these unnatural drugs are killing you. You should really just take the tea.
Joe Public> Yeah, I think you're right. Natural is better.
yes, and the relative merits of well defined substances versus macerated hot water plant extracts will be discussed to the end of time. just don't ascribe magical 'vital' properties to either one. by the bye, drink enough willowbark "tea" and you might succumb to salicin poisoning. it's said to have shortened Beethoven's life. (next up: homeopathy doesn't cause any side effects)
You seem to think I'm arguing with you. I'm not. I'm trying to explain why people claim that "natural is better", even if they understand that the active components are the same.
Also, you're the one talking about magical vital properties, not me. It's a well-established fact that substances in combination can have a different overall effect than they do in isolation. There's nothing magical about it.
Homeopathy is an absolute scam. And yes, there are scammers who take advantage of the 'natural is better' idea to sell useless products.
Is vitalism actually discredited though? Sure, urea & synthetic urea are chemically the same and behave identically in a chemical sense — but wouldn't a vitalist argue that there's more than just chemistry at play?
The problem with vitalism is that it's unfalsifiable; that doesn't mean that it's wrong, simply that science doesn't have the ability to refute it.
This reminds me of a student's comment: "oh but that's only true within the confines of logic". That is, i'm sure a 'vitalist' would argue: "oh that's just chemistry, what of beyond chemistry?" to which i'd be forced to ask: are we talking about concepts where science isn't accepted? isn't that the realm of spiritualism? ("this protein is imbued with an ineffable living essence; whereas the one you synthesized must necessarily lack it") There are certainly folks who believe that things go on in a living system's metabolism which transcend chemistry, but on that point we part ways and i wish you well. and/or for me vitalism was forever falsified when a synthetic molecule and a 'natural' molecule co-crystallized.
So what's the point of saying it's not synthetic then?
Cyanide is a very good case in point; bitter almonds will kill you in a relatively nasty way (confusion -> vertigo -> seizures -> apnea -> cardiac arrest) if you eat 30-50 of them. At lower doses, chronic exposure causes paralysis, hypothyroidism and liver and kidney damage.
Why is that relevant? That's orthogonal to whether it is healthy or unhealthy. There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda. I mean, the wrong 100% natural mushroom will kill you pretty dead.
Most things can be toxic in high doses. Yes, being natural doesn't say much but I wasn't trying to relate that it's healthy for you just because it's natural.
Sure, I'm just wary of the term 'natural' when it comes to food. As far as I know it confers no benefit on the food item except making consumers feel good about it; i.e., as a descriptor it has little beyond marketing value.
To stay on topic, I'm calling Stevia natural as a comparison to sugar coming from sugar cane, which grows in nature and not in a lab. No marketing speak here.
I'm not a chemophobe by any means. I'm also not anti-lab grown products. Providing for a world with 7+ billion population requires some of this. However, we have decades of studies proving what natural food does to the bodies and we're still learning what synthetic and lab-grown foods do. And yes, I realize this statement can't really apply to Stevia considering the lack of studies into its health on the human body. But I'm responding to your general idea, not specifically to Stevia.
> we have decades of studies proving what natural food does to the bodies
You are making the false assumption "natural" foods are a correlated group as far as health goes. This is empirically false (ignoring the fact that natural has no scientific definition to begin with). Studying sucrose won't inform you of the dangers of cyanide though both are "natural".
To stay on topic, I'm not talking about anything other than stevia coming from leaves of Stevia rebaudiana whereas sugar comes from sugarcane. The process by which these two plants grow is natural and not synthetic. I'm not getting into the pointless debate about food being "natural", which I think is complete marketing hype.
The point is that research on sugarcane has little to no bearing on what research on stevia would uncover. The fact we think sugarcane is safe is not evidence in favor of stevia. Just because both happened to evolve with little human interference doesn't correlate their effects on the body in any way.
The exception is if we can prove the two operate under the same fundamental mechanisms within the body. But there's nothing different about natural growing plants and man made substances under this sort of research. A molecule is a molecule.
> There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda.
The fact that it's present in large quantities in at least one living organism shows that it's not fundamentally incompatible with life. And that's especially true in this case, where (according to Wikipedia) there is a 1,500 year history of human use. So all else being equal, I would expect it to be more likely to be safe than some random chemical with no basis in nature.
Out of the 2,000 species of mushrooms in North America, there are maybe 10 that are deadly poisonous. You think your chances of dying after randomly mixing up some unknown chemicals in a lab are really less than 1 in 200?
Well that's not true. Saying it's natural suggests that we have atleast evolved with it in the environment, likely interacted with it at times and have developed biological means of interacting and dealing with it. If something is not natural (i.e. doesn't normally exist in nature), then we would not have developed a biological response to it yet, which means it frankly more dangerous because the body does not know how to deal with it.
I get your point, but as the above poster said, often the body's way of dealing with things is to suffer and/or die. So...how is having an existing way to "deal with it" terribly helpful?
Yeah. I think the "natural" people aren't saying all natural things are better than all man-made things. e.g. Poison ivy tea isn't better for you than Pepsi.
But, looking at what generations of long-lived people tend to eat[1] is probably a reasonable guide to nutrition and health. Manufactured/artificial stuff simply isn't on that list since that stuff hasn't been around long enough to be part of a multi-generational study.
Actually, zero calorie stuff is pretty much by definition stuff we haven't decided to "deal with". It doesn't get absorbed directly, and we never created a means to break it down into something that could be absorbed. The goal for a non-caloric sweetener is to be noticed by receptors on the tongue by chance while the rest of your body explicitly ignores it. Biological response is the "problem".
> Saying it's natural suggests that we have atleast evolved with it in the environment, likely interacted with it at times and have developed biological means of interacting and dealing with it.
The post you replied to has already refuted your argument. We evolved with poisonous mushrooms in our environment and our body's "means of dealing with it" are to die. That's hardly the gold standard for biological responses, don't you think?
Well that's definitely not true. Many of the most potent toxins known to us are produced by living organisms – for an example, actually read the comment you replied to. You can find examples of substances that are spectacularly lethal to us from all of the five major kingdoms of life. Merely saying something is natural does not imply we co-evolved with it at all, and even if we had, it doesn't automatically follow that selection always gives us the means to "deal with it" in the way you suppose.
It's relevant because being able to say you use a natural sweetener will greatly increase your potential customer base. Regardless of the actual merits of "natural," a whole lot of people believe in the merits.
I disagree. Natural doesn't mean healthy, but all else being equal I would prefer to eat something that wasn't synthesized and consider a non-synthetic option to be "healthier" by my definition of what is healthy. And what makes something healthy is more than just the effects of consuming it.
In strict moderation and control, both of these can be used to treat various problems with our bodies without severe side effects. I wasn't arguing that it's necessarily healthy because it's natural.
You should consider getting some liquid sucralose. I agree that splenda is yucky, but that's largely because of the fillers that make the volume measurement manageable. Pure liquid sucralose, which is nothing but sucralose and water, tastes exactly like sugar to me. Seriously, put both in some lemonade and I'd never be able to tell the difference.
That doesn't sound right to me. Pure sucralose does not taste like sucrose. Splenda bulks up their dry packets with dextrose and maltodextrin, both glucose-based compounds that don't have any of the artificial flavour of sucralose. There are also a lot of sodas containing sucralose, all of which have that artificial sucralose flavour.
What can I say? They taste identical to me. Splenda tastes nasty to me, but I can't identify any flavor differences between sucrose and sucralose. Perhaps it's a genetic thing, like cilantro tasting like soap to some people.
Stevia (the plant) naturally has kind of a slight bitter-ish anise aftertaste in the background. Not something I mind personally, but I'm sure others do.
Personally I don't know how much this taste is in the purified compounds themselves. I know many of the early "stevia packets" also exhibited these same sort of characteristics, but it seems to have lessened over time. (Then again, some of this may be due to reformulation. For instance, Truvia switched away from pure stevia-compounds to stevia-compounds-plus-erythritol several years ago if I recall.)
You beat me to the punch on the mention of anise (licorice) aftertaste.
IME, the liquid stevia preparations produce better results than any of the powder forms. I use it in my coffee exclusively and have tried 'em all.
WRT the question, then, about stevia's relative lack of popularity: I think it comes from the aforementioned anise-like note, which seems to operate below a threshold in smaller amounts (such as to sweeten coffee), but at larger amounts (such as soda (pop)) this secondary flavor presents clearly.
Since, for example, one 12oz (355ml) Coca-Cola has 39 grams of sugars (!), the amount of stevia required to equal this level of sweetness goes well into the range where the undesirable anise note becomes present.
I've tried a couple of different stevia sodas and, yeah, they just aren't that great. (Since I rarely drink soda, when I do partake I usually go "full leaded," as they say. Life's too short, and all that...)
That's just my working hypothesis as a stevia fan. YMMV.
I wonder if that would make it a good choice for something like Moxie, that already has a sort of licorice-y flavor from the gentian root it's flavored with.
Because you're wrong. Stevia tastes nasty, like some kind of nasty unsweetened licorice or something.
And they do use it to sweeten drinks. Go to any higher-end grocery store and you'll find weird-brand drinks with it, for weirdos like you who apparently can't taste the ick.
What does cilantro taste like to you? To some people, it tastes like soap, to others it doesn't. There's a gene which controls this.
I've tried several, as my ex-wife was into that kind of thing. They all taste terrible to me. Some other things that taste terrible to me that other people claim are sweet: aspartame and saccharin. They don't taste sweet to me at all, just nasty. Sucralose tastes bad too, though it at least tastes sweet, just in a really nasty way. Stevia tastes sweet too, just in a nasty way.
I wonder how much of this is how much people are used to: if you keep drinking diet soda for years and years and "acquire" a taste for it, maybe then real sugar will taste weird to you.
To me, it tastes extremely icky. It immediately and unpleasantly overpowers anything I put it in, even though I'm fine with every other sweetener I've ever found. It's probably one of those weird genetic things, like how some people can taste PTC or PROP and others can't.
As said, differences and all. To me Splenda tastes like sugar. No aftertastes at all. Stevia on the other hand is awful with a bitter taste that I can't even take.
For anyone considering taking Splenda as a form of weight control: It's true that Splenda has 0 calories, but it also causes your body to develop greater cravings for sweet (sugary) food/drinks. In the long term, this can cause you to eat/drink in a more unhealthy manner, undoing all the caloric benefits you thought you were getting from Splenda.
"Since the stuff is synthetic, it’s guaranteed that Joe Mercola and the rest of the anti-chemical Internet dopes are going to try to scare you, and they’ll probably succeed. I didn’t even bother to look."
I remember learning about sucralose along with the rest of saccharides, in college biochem back in the 00's.
Even then it was taught that sucralose is a relatively inert compound that doesn't get taken up through the intestine, and doesn't pose a threat - though the prof did cite some study that sucralose accumulated in rat's liver if they ate huge quantities of it. I don't think chemists have been thinking sucralose is toxic for a while now.
I also remember that if anyone could figure out how to cheaply synthesize L-glucose, they will be billionaires.
> I don't think chemists have been thinking sucralose is toxic for a while now.
Sucralose is, without any doubt, the most extensively studied artificial food additive of all time. I'm reticent about consuming food with artificial additives and preservatives, but I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about ingesting sucralose. I have a huge bottle of liquid sucralose in my otherwise largely organic kitchen.
I know HN hate anecdotal stories, but here goes anyways. 6 months ago, despite my regular exercise routine, I was about 20 pounds over my college weight and prediabetic. Instead of following my doctor’s recommendations and going on Metformin, I cut all nearly sugars out of my diet and replaced it with sucralose, fat, and fiber. Now, exactly 5 lbs sugar equivalent of sucralose later, and I’m back to my college weight.
While I hate the idea of artificial sweeteners, I hated the idea of a lifetime of medications and being overweight. Everyone's body is different, but for me they played a huge role in getting my health back.
Don't take this as a personal attack on your opinion, but I just don't understand this. The distinction that we make between artificial chemicals and natural chemicals seems to be whether it was invented by humans or invented by evolution. That's a fine distinction to make, but why are human invented chemicals seen as the _worse_ of the two? When evolution invents a chemical it's completely random and untested. When humans invent a chemical they vet it through rigorous study and testing. Given a random chemical from nature and a random chemical from human labs, I'll take my chances on humans.
Real-life examples of evolution engineering... heart conditions, dementia, HIV, anemia, etc. Anemia is a good example, because it makes humans immune to malaria. Just a few side effects though...
I feel like our track record is stellar compared to all the follies of evolution. So why are our chemicals viewed in such a negative light compared to these Loki designed chemicals? It's absurd.
Speaking specifically about sugar versus artificial sweeteners, all our studies to date have indicated that sugar is decidedly toxic at average consumption levels, whereas sucralose/aspartame is non-toxic. Again, it seems like nature designed a worse chemical than us.
I think it comes down to trust. We're part of nature, created by it and in it. The naturally created chemicals we deal with have been around for longer than we have. We have generations of people who have tested them for both short-term and long-term effects. When things previously thought safe start to harm us, it's usually because of changes in processing, like adding sugar to everything.
Human-created chemicals are much more of a risk. They might only have existed for a few years, and the amount of testing done is nothing compared to the history of evolution on Earth. We are creating them with an imperfect understanding of chemistry and biology. Many people simply prefer an imperfect but reliable solution over a potentially much better but also riskier option.
Not everyone is going to be able to personally vet the safety of new chemicals, so they have to trust the manufacturers who often prioritize profits over safety, confident that they will be able to pay for damages. Consumers need a better reason to trust the people pushing artificial chemicals in food because right now it's hard for them to see their interests as aligned with the companies that make them.
I can certainly see that, especially the corrupt companies side of things. But the argument doesn't make sense for anyone over 30 years old. Pre-industrial humans had a lifespan of about 30-50 years (30 years in-city, 50 years outside of city for most all of human history). Those are the humans who vetted all these natural chemicals; people who died at 30. If you're over 30, you're in unknown territory when it comes to natural chemicals.
Human derived chemicals and engineering have given us over 40 extra years of life. That's more than double our previous lifespans. So on the one hand you can trust nature and live for 30 years (which would mean most everyone on HN is either now dead or getting ready to die), or you can trust humans and live for 70 years. That, to me, is clear evidence that despite the rare incidences of human negligence and corruption our batting average far exceeds evolution's.
> Human derived chemicals and engineering have given us over 40 extra years of life.
Yeah well to some degree of participation.. chiefly we have reduced maternal death rate & early childhood mortality; (re)discovered/refined/improved-upon/better-understood what compounds at what dosage made traditional/herbal/ancient antiseptic/antibiotic/antifungal tinctures actually work and how to turn them into more reliable pharmaceuticals, developed ever better understanding of nourishment and hygiene and surgery, and figured out intravenous saline/nutrient infusions.
Those are the major contributors to "moderns' longer lives", and any pre-moderns who managed to circumvent all the above health hazards lived pretty much almost as long as us today (and was greatly revered admired respected and consulted for it by all). "Human derived chemicals and engineering" clearly contributed quite a bit here, no argument. But it's not like some chemists churned out a formula that added 40 additional years to an otherwise-strictly-30-year-lifespan just-like-that.
Citation needed. All credible research I've seen indicates that age specific mortality has decreased over the ages (from city living onward) across the board, not just infant mortality.
For starters, the "people lived shorter lives long ago" argument is based on high percentages of infant mortality. While quality of life wasn't always great, the idea that folks only lived to 30 or 40 is pretty easily demonstrated to be false.
That seems to indicate that age specific mortality rates _have_ decreased across the board, not just infant mortality. And it also backs up that our in-city lifespans used to be ~30-35 after juveniles. To be clear, that's exactly the figure I'm interested in, not maximum lifespan. If, on average, most adults die around 30-35 2000 years ago and today most adults die around 70, then that, to me, is a clear indication that human driven engineering/science is succeeding on average compared to evolution and that our technologies (in particular, our synthetic chemicals) are more trustworthy than nature's.
> While quality of life wasn't always great
We've eliminated or nearly eliminated a great number of diseases in the modern age. These are diseases which don't reduce quality of life; they kill. You don't go from a bacterial infection to "Well, I'm alive, but my quality of life is worse". You just die. You don't get tetanus and have a sore jaw for the rest of your life; you die. You don't get diabetes and just live the rest of your life with high/low blood sugar. You pass out and die one day. These are all diseases which have existed through all of human history which by necessity of their mortality rates and incidences of occurrence must have increased the age specific mortality rates for all ages. We've cured these, and so age specific mortality rates must have decreased. If today we replaced all sugars with artificial sweeteners the same thing would happen; lower age specific mortality rates.
I'm on the fence on this one. Here's the logic of the anti-artificial crowd, as best I can put it...
Humans have evolved alongside natural systems. And if humans have been eating something for a very long time, it's probably alright to eat. If a new sugar-like substance came into existence, it would probably come into existence as incremental changes to an existing system. Let's say that existing system was a staple food source for humans. Humans would gradually change as their food source changed, and adapt to it... Or, that food source would gradually become toxic to humans, and we would stop eating it.
Now, take human-invented stuff. You have a sudden new thing which hasn't had generations of humans munching on it. Some lab tests show that it's great. But who really knows? Biology is super complex. And lab tests often have questionable funding and incentives.
Consider the day that wonder-bread was introduced to the world. Old-school fermented sourdough bread had been eaten for a very long time by healthy humans. Wonder-bread had various chemicals tested in isolation which had proved to be positive for health (iron, calcium, etc). But now that enough time has passed, I don't think anyone looking back would suggest that wonder-bread is preferable to traditional sourdough fermentation.
Asbestos is another good example. We thought the stuff was just the best thing ever. Turns out, in the very long run, it's pretty bad news.
So, there's a certain logic to trusting evolved-systems over human-designed systems.
Soft white sandwich bread was an aspirational food. People didn't start eating it because they were excited about the health benefits of fortified flour, they started eating it because they had been taught to believe that white flour was a sign of wealth. The government decided to fortify flour because deficiency diseases are pretty stupid to put up with when you know how to prevent them. This happened quite some time after modern milling brought nutrition-less white flour to the masses.
>Asbestos is another good example. We thought the stuff was just the best thing ever. Turns out, in the very long run, it's pretty bad news.
Asbestos isn't manmade, its a naturally occurring set of minerals [1]. It was obviously put into various man-made objects, but the fiber itself is naturally occurring.
> When evolution invents a chemical it's completely random and untested.
This is where I think your argument breaks down a bit. Let's take your example of sugar: humans have been consuming sugar since before it would be reasonable to call them humans. That's why our bodies have adapted to crave sugars and seek them out--because they have been tested by evolution and found to contribute to survival and reproduction.
And when you say that sugar is decidedly toxic at average consumption levels, you're correct, but that's a human-created problem: the levels of sugar naturally occurring in the fruits a person could obtain, say, 10,000 years ago, were much, much lower than the levels we can obtain by harvesting massive fields of sugar cane, sugar beets, and corn, and refining the sugar from them.
So evolution did test sugars, and then humans refined them to a far greater extent than nature did and, without adequate testing, integrated sugars into our diet to an extent that's culturally very difficult to reverse even though we now know it's deadly.
And the same goes for a lot of things: coca, consumed in leaf form, is relatively safe and effective for treating altitude sickness, but when refined and mass produced becomes cocaine. Alcohol when consumed from rotting fruit has little danger until it's produced in quantity and consistency that enables alcoholism. Chances are, if there's a whole chunk of plant that humans have been interacting with for millennia, it's pretty safe because it has been tested, but refinement processes invented by humans bring otherwise safe chemicals into concentrations and quantities that become unsafe. And while we do test these things, it's often after-the-fact, too late, or just completely ignored.
To be clear, I'm not advocating a "things from nature are better" stance. GMO grain has saved millions of lives. Most of the medicines out there are the results of human innovation. And there are plenty of poisonous plants out there which are perfectly natural.
What I am advocating is that the human track record versus evolution track record is pretty bogus, and vulnerable to selection bias. The fact is, that's just not even a good way to choose whether to consume something. We rarely have enough information to make an informed choice. Even when we study something for a decade we don't completely understand that. So in the absence of information, basing our decision on "organisms pretty biologically similar to me have survived by interacting with this other organism for millions of years" is not a metric to be dicarded.
My take? Zero-calorie sweeteners have no practical reason to exist. It is a marketer's pursuit to make us consume food in ever vaster quantities while being guilt free.
What we should be doing is reducing our sugar intake given that most of us are no longer living on the edge of caloric survival. But that's hard, and not doing it comes with guilt and health issues. So instead we create a chemical that provides all the pleasure of eating with none of the caloric benefits.
Calorie-free food is pure hedonism. Not bad in and of itself, but to the extent we in the developed world have taken it, something to be just a little bit ashamed of.
If I'm reading you correctly, you eat nearly a pound of sugar per month? And your doctor recommended something called "Metformin" instead of saying "don't eat so much sugar"?
Maybe you need a new doctor to go along with your new sweetener =)
Not raw sugar added to food, which is sort of implied in the ggp comment. It's at least not clear if they mean a 5 pound bag of sweetener or 5 pounds net.
Sucralose is 600x sweeter than sugar so it's sold by equivalent volume serving. I consumed the equivalent of 5lbs of sugar by volume in 6 months. This may sound like a lot if you eat out every meal, but I eat breakfast and dinner at home. I use/d sucralose/sugar in my coffee, oatmeal, iced-tea and homemade desserts.
A lot of people here say I should have just cut sugar and dealt with it. I missed it way too much. Before the first week of my low/no sugar diet was over, I was about to throw in the towel. With sucralose, I've made it 6 months now.
Ok, here's my anecdotal story: about 12 years ago, I was probably 40 pounds over my college weight. So I stopped drinking sodas every day, and drank water instead. I also got more exercise. (I also cut out stuff with hydrogenated oils, trans fats, etc.) Now I'm back to my college weight. I don't use sucralose, and I really don't see why you need to.
Potentially interesting article that gives up half-way through at the most interesting part to digress into an anti-anti-synthetic chemical rant. Not that I'm against that, but I was really intrigued to learn why a chemical that has the properties of being reactive isn't reactive. The article just says that your body doesn't break it down. What does digestion have to do with it? If a molecule is reactive, then its reactive and should potentially react within the digestive system. So why doesn't it? That's the interesting bit that I was hoping to have answered and what the article seemed to be leading to until it stopped.
In other words, imagine an article about cyanide that spent half of its time explaining all the parts of cyanide that could potentially react with organic chemistry, and then abruptly ended with "and your body absorbs it through the digestive system, so that's why it's bad." Unsatisfying, right?
Also, why does the molecule look like insecticide or flame retardant? That isn't explained either. Does the fact that it has hotspots make it look like that? Or is there something more about its structure.
I'm not sure. I'm not a chemist, so I went and looked up a table of bond energies to see whether chlorohydrocarbons should actually be more reactive than the corresponding hydrocarbons, and it seems like the answer is actually yes, because the bond-dissociation energy isn't determined purely in isolation; the rest of the molecule affects it. A Cl-CH₃ bond has an energy of 339 kJ/mol, while the H-CH₃ bond has an energy of 431 kJ/mol, and the outrageously stable F-CH₃ is 452 kJ/mol. In isolation, the C-Cl bond has an energy of some 397 kJ/mol, while C-H is only 337 kJ/mol.
I think typically the issue with reactive molecules is not that they react within the digestive system — if they're reactive enough to do that, then they may burn your mouth or even stomach, but they're unlikely to make it to your intestines without reacting with the rest of your food. The issue is typically that, if they get absorbed into your bloodstream, they can find their way to all parts of your body, and then wreak havoc on the one or a few particular molecules they react with. So apparently sucralose doesn't get absorbed into your bloodstream, and it's not so reactive that you get chemical burns, so it's harmless. And it doesn't get absorbed because it doesn't react with sucrase (or invertase), maybe because the big chlorine atoms bumping around there result in steric hindrance that keeps it from binding to the enzyme properly.
As for insecticides and flame retardants, there is a large family of organochloride insecticides (including DDT), and organohalogens are common flame retardants, including the famous PCBs, but also things like HBCD. Both DDT and PCBs are notable not for being reactive but for being unreactive.
I don't consume sucralose if I can avoid - not because I believe it's toxic, but because I've observed that my short-term memory is significantly deteriorated after consuming it.
It might be the placebo effect, but I'm fairly confident it's not. Placebo effect or not, it has a discernible impact on my cognitive ability, so I avoid it.
I don't know exactly why - but I've read that drinking artificial sweeteners may trick the body into anticipating an energetic food causing it to release insulin. The resulting mild hypoglycemia causes headaches.
Anything that is derived from something else, distilled, converted or chemically altered is not good for you. Can't be.
It's been my experience that these companies don't care about your health and never will. They just want a compound that will make you addicted to it, so you can keep on buying and consuming it.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadBut I still don’t use it; not due to safety concerns, but because I think it tastes icky.
I figured the difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke was branding for people who don't want to drink something labeled as diet.
EDIT: I drink both regularly (including today), and I personally do not perceive difference in taste. YMMV.
Coke Zero => Men
Not saying any of this is a good thing... but it's a thing.
They taste extremely different
Which doesn't help because most places only serve Diet Coke (which I hate) instead of Coke Zero (which at least is available in most supermarkets)
Diet Coke (last time I checked) just uses aspartame.
But judging from the beverage selection available at just about any convenience store, I'm possibly the only person in the USA who would rather drink something that isn't sweet than something that contains 0 calorie sweeteners.
Maybe I'm just really picky.
Makes me want to study more chemistry. Any suggestions from this audience of how to get into it? Pick up a Chemistry 101 text book?
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/03/chemistry-very-sho...
i'd actually say that chem is a difficult subject to learn independently. it is one of those subjects that is best learned with other people and those that know - you learn lots of seemingly disconnected things that only slowly coalesce into a broad understanding. IME for most people, that coalescence takes the first several months of a post-grad project - there's something about being in a lab and discussing chemistry that blends all the bits together.
it's been 20 years but the text books at Uni of Auckland were McMurray for Organic chem, Atkins for physical chem and Atkins, Shriver and Langford for Inorganic. Personally I found Atkins a difficult read and would recommend hunting around for an author that you enjoy reading. read In the Pipeline regularly - it's a blog by a medicinal chemist that is quite excellent (his 'things i won't work with' posts are brilliant ;-). there's also a saying in chem that you learn it through your fingertips - pen and paper sketching structures and working with glassware. it's a strange blend of theory, practice and intuition - that's either its biggest appeal or its biggest turnoff... YMMV.
if you really are keen, drop me a note - i'm intrigued to see if i could design a curriculum using open source pubs and edX.
That said, I wonder why Stevia isn't considered to sweeten drinks? It's very sweet, it's natural like sugar (meaning it's not synthetic or lab-grown), it also has zero calories, and it doesn't taste icky!
I long for a Stevia-powered Coke Zero...until they realize Stevia also causes horrible things in humans :-/
http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/news/companies/coke-pepsi-st...
Wouldn't be surprised if sugar companies had something to do with that.
cyanide is also natural
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
So your analogy really should be between lab-synthesized vitamin C and a piece of citrus fruit. The fruit is going to be better for your overall health because it's got more in it than just L-ascorbic acid. For example, it's got fiber, which is likely to slow down the passage of the vitamin through your digestive system, which will help you absorb more of it for an equal dose.
Joe Public> I have a headache.
Folk Medicine Dr> Here, drink some willowbark tea.
DrugCo Chemist> No, take this aspirin. It's chemically identical to the active substance in willowbark tea, but much more convenient!
Joe Public> My headache is better, but now my stomach hurts. That never happened with the tea.
DrugCo Chemist> Oh, you have an ulcer. You're a sick person. Take this antacid medicine!
Joe Public> My stomach feels better, but now I'm constipated.
DrugCo Chemist> Wow, you're really sick... here, take this laxative!
Folk Medicine Dr> All these unnatural drugs are killing you. You should really just take the tea.
Joe Public> Yeah, I think you're right. Natural is better.
Also, you're the one talking about magical vital properties, not me. It's a well-established fact that substances in combination can have a different overall effect than they do in isolation. There's nothing magical about it.
Homeopathy is an absolute scam. And yes, there are scammers who take advantage of the 'natural is better' idea to sell useless products.
The problem with vitalism is that it's unfalsifiable; that doesn't mean that it's wrong, simply that science doesn't have the ability to refute it.
Cyanide is a very good case in point; bitter almonds will kill you in a relatively nasty way (confusion -> vertigo -> seizures -> apnea -> cardiac arrest) if you eat 30-50 of them. At lower doses, chronic exposure causes paralysis, hypothyroidism and liver and kidney damage.
Why is that relevant? That's orthogonal to whether it is healthy or unhealthy. There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda. I mean, the wrong 100% natural mushroom will kill you pretty dead.
[1] http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrs...
Honestly, other than fear of 'teh chemicals,' I can't think of a reason.
You are making the false assumption "natural" foods are a correlated group as far as health goes. This is empirically false (ignoring the fact that natural has no scientific definition to begin with). Studying sucrose won't inform you of the dangers of cyanide though both are "natural".
The exception is if we can prove the two operate under the same fundamental mechanisms within the body. But there's nothing different about natural growing plants and man made substances under this sort of research. A molecule is a molecule.
The fact that it's present in large quantities in at least one living organism shows that it's not fundamentally incompatible with life. And that's especially true in this case, where (according to Wikipedia) there is a 1,500 year history of human use. So all else being equal, I would expect it to be more likely to be safe than some random chemical with no basis in nature.
Out of the 2,000 species of mushrooms in North America, there are maybe 10 that are deadly poisonous. You think your chances of dying after randomly mixing up some unknown chemicals in a lab are really less than 1 in 200?
(Not trolling, seeking honest clarification)
But, looking at what generations of long-lived people tend to eat[1] is probably a reasonable guide to nutrition and health. Manufactured/artificial stuff simply isn't on that list since that stuff hasn't been around long enough to be part of a multi-generational study.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100...
The post you replied to has already refuted your argument. We evolved with poisonous mushrooms in our environment and our body's "means of dealing with it" are to die. That's hardly the gold standard for biological responses, don't you think?
www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/11/481641640/more-than-ever-americans-are-dying-by-accident
I'm kind of baffled at this comment.
In the Bay Area, they're available at Sprouts and probably Whole Foods as well.
You should consider getting some liquid sucralose. I agree that splenda is yucky, but that's largely because of the fillers that make the volume measurement manageable. Pure liquid sucralose, which is nothing but sucralose and water, tastes exactly like sugar to me. Seriously, put both in some lemonade and I'd never be able to tell the difference.
Personally I don't know how much this taste is in the purified compounds themselves. I know many of the early "stevia packets" also exhibited these same sort of characteristics, but it seems to have lessened over time. (Then again, some of this may be due to reformulation. For instance, Truvia switched away from pure stevia-compounds to stevia-compounds-plus-erythritol several years ago if I recall.)
IME, the liquid stevia preparations produce better results than any of the powder forms. I use it in my coffee exclusively and have tried 'em all.
WRT the question, then, about stevia's relative lack of popularity: I think it comes from the aforementioned anise-like note, which seems to operate below a threshold in smaller amounts (such as to sweeten coffee), but at larger amounts (such as soda (pop)) this secondary flavor presents clearly.
Since, for example, one 12oz (355ml) Coca-Cola has 39 grams of sugars (!), the amount of stevia required to equal this level of sweetness goes well into the range where the undesirable anise note becomes present.
I've tried a couple of different stevia sodas and, yeah, they just aren't that great. (Since I rarely drink soda, when I do partake I usually go "full leaded," as they say. Life's too short, and all that...)
That's just my working hypothesis as a stevia fan. YMMV.
(Disclaimer: IANA chemist|biologist|nutrition scientist|&c).
And they do use it to sweeten drinks. Go to any higher-end grocery store and you'll find weird-brand drinks with it, for weirdos like you who apparently can't taste the ick.
What does cilantro taste like to you? To some people, it tastes like soap, to others it doesn't. There's a gene which controls this.
There are various mixes and types of stevia out there. You should find the varieties.
I wonder how much of this is how much people are used to: if you keep drinking diet soda for years and years and "acquire" a taste for it, maybe then real sugar will taste weird to you.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/...
"Since the stuff is synthetic, it’s guaranteed that Joe Mercola and the rest of the anti-chemical Internet dopes are going to try to scare you, and they’ll probably succeed. I didn’t even bother to look."
Even then it was taught that sucralose is a relatively inert compound that doesn't get taken up through the intestine, and doesn't pose a threat - though the prof did cite some study that sucralose accumulated in rat's liver if they ate huge quantities of it. I don't think chemists have been thinking sucralose is toxic for a while now.
I also remember that if anyone could figure out how to cheaply synthesize L-glucose, they will be billionaires.
Sucralose is, without any doubt, the most extensively studied artificial food additive of all time. I'm reticent about consuming food with artificial additives and preservatives, but I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about ingesting sucralose. I have a huge bottle of liquid sucralose in my otherwise largely organic kitchen.
While I hate the idea of artificial sweeteners, I hated the idea of a lifetime of medications and being overweight. Everyone's body is different, but for me they played a huge role in getting my health back.
Don't take this as a personal attack on your opinion, but I just don't understand this. The distinction that we make between artificial chemicals and natural chemicals seems to be whether it was invented by humans or invented by evolution. That's a fine distinction to make, but why are human invented chemicals seen as the _worse_ of the two? When evolution invents a chemical it's completely random and untested. When humans invent a chemical they vet it through rigorous study and testing. Given a random chemical from nature and a random chemical from human labs, I'll take my chances on humans.
Real-life examples of evolution engineering... heart conditions, dementia, HIV, anemia, etc. Anemia is a good example, because it makes humans immune to malaria. Just a few side effects though...
I feel like our track record is stellar compared to all the follies of evolution. So why are our chemicals viewed in such a negative light compared to these Loki designed chemicals? It's absurd.
Speaking specifically about sugar versus artificial sweeteners, all our studies to date have indicated that sugar is decidedly toxic at average consumption levels, whereas sucralose/aspartame is non-toxic. Again, it seems like nature designed a worse chemical than us.
Human-created chemicals are much more of a risk. They might only have existed for a few years, and the amount of testing done is nothing compared to the history of evolution on Earth. We are creating them with an imperfect understanding of chemistry and biology. Many people simply prefer an imperfect but reliable solution over a potentially much better but also riskier option.
Not everyone is going to be able to personally vet the safety of new chemicals, so they have to trust the manufacturers who often prioritize profits over safety, confident that they will be able to pay for damages. Consumers need a better reason to trust the people pushing artificial chemicals in food because right now it's hard for them to see their interests as aligned with the companies that make them.
Human derived chemicals and engineering have given us over 40 extra years of life. That's more than double our previous lifespans. So on the one hand you can trust nature and live for 30 years (which would mean most everyone on HN is either now dead or getting ready to die), or you can trust humans and live for 70 years. That, to me, is clear evidence that despite the rare incidences of human negligence and corruption our batting average far exceeds evolution's.
Yeah well to some degree of participation.. chiefly we have reduced maternal death rate & early childhood mortality; (re)discovered/refined/improved-upon/better-understood what compounds at what dosage made traditional/herbal/ancient antiseptic/antibiotic/antifungal tinctures actually work and how to turn them into more reliable pharmaceuticals, developed ever better understanding of nourishment and hygiene and surgery, and figured out intravenous saline/nutrient infusions.
Those are the major contributors to "moderns' longer lives", and any pre-moderns who managed to circumvent all the above health hazards lived pretty much almost as long as us today (and was greatly revered admired respected and consulted for it by all). "Human derived chemicals and engineering" clearly contributed quite a bit here, no argument. But it's not like some chemists churned out a formula that added 40 additional years to an otherwise-strictly-30-year-lifespan just-like-that.
That seems to indicate that age specific mortality rates _have_ decreased across the board, not just infant mortality. And it also backs up that our in-city lifespans used to be ~30-35 after juveniles. To be clear, that's exactly the figure I'm interested in, not maximum lifespan. If, on average, most adults die around 30-35 2000 years ago and today most adults die around 70, then that, to me, is a clear indication that human driven engineering/science is succeeding on average compared to evolution and that our technologies (in particular, our synthetic chemicals) are more trustworthy than nature's.
> While quality of life wasn't always great
We've eliminated or nearly eliminated a great number of diseases in the modern age. These are diseases which don't reduce quality of life; they kill. You don't go from a bacterial infection to "Well, I'm alive, but my quality of life is worse". You just die. You don't get tetanus and have a sore jaw for the rest of your life; you die. You don't get diabetes and just live the rest of your life with high/low blood sugar. You pass out and die one day. These are all diseases which have existed through all of human history which by necessity of their mortality rates and incidences of occurrence must have increased the age specific mortality rates for all ages. We've cured these, and so age specific mortality rates must have decreased. If today we replaced all sugars with artificial sweeteners the same thing would happen; lower age specific mortality rates.
Meaning that you either died before you got to 5 years old, or you easily got* to the ripe age of 55. Average 30, but very different lifespans.
Also, many biological features are stable until 55, for example male strength with an adequate training.
It is after 55 that everything starts to fail. What's unknown territory is living more than 70.
* disregarding external factors like wars.
Humans have evolved alongside natural systems. And if humans have been eating something for a very long time, it's probably alright to eat. If a new sugar-like substance came into existence, it would probably come into existence as incremental changes to an existing system. Let's say that existing system was a staple food source for humans. Humans would gradually change as their food source changed, and adapt to it... Or, that food source would gradually become toxic to humans, and we would stop eating it.
Now, take human-invented stuff. You have a sudden new thing which hasn't had generations of humans munching on it. Some lab tests show that it's great. But who really knows? Biology is super complex. And lab tests often have questionable funding and incentives.
Consider the day that wonder-bread was introduced to the world. Old-school fermented sourdough bread had been eaten for a very long time by healthy humans. Wonder-bread had various chemicals tested in isolation which had proved to be positive for health (iron, calcium, etc). But now that enough time has passed, I don't think anyone looking back would suggest that wonder-bread is preferable to traditional sourdough fermentation.
Asbestos is another good example. We thought the stuff was just the best thing ever. Turns out, in the very long run, it's pretty bad news.
So, there's a certain logic to trusting evolved-systems over human-designed systems.
And to be clear, at one point, refined flour was a sign of wealth and status: http://contemporaryfoodlab.com/hungry-world/2015/09/white-is... .
Asbestos isn't manmade, its a naturally occurring set of minerals [1]. It was obviously put into various man-made objects, but the fiber itself is naturally occurring.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos
This is where I think your argument breaks down a bit. Let's take your example of sugar: humans have been consuming sugar since before it would be reasonable to call them humans. That's why our bodies have adapted to crave sugars and seek them out--because they have been tested by evolution and found to contribute to survival and reproduction.
And when you say that sugar is decidedly toxic at average consumption levels, you're correct, but that's a human-created problem: the levels of sugar naturally occurring in the fruits a person could obtain, say, 10,000 years ago, were much, much lower than the levels we can obtain by harvesting massive fields of sugar cane, sugar beets, and corn, and refining the sugar from them.
So evolution did test sugars, and then humans refined them to a far greater extent than nature did and, without adequate testing, integrated sugars into our diet to an extent that's culturally very difficult to reverse even though we now know it's deadly.
And the same goes for a lot of things: coca, consumed in leaf form, is relatively safe and effective for treating altitude sickness, but when refined and mass produced becomes cocaine. Alcohol when consumed from rotting fruit has little danger until it's produced in quantity and consistency that enables alcoholism. Chances are, if there's a whole chunk of plant that humans have been interacting with for millennia, it's pretty safe because it has been tested, but refinement processes invented by humans bring otherwise safe chemicals into concentrations and quantities that become unsafe. And while we do test these things, it's often after-the-fact, too late, or just completely ignored.
To be clear, I'm not advocating a "things from nature are better" stance. GMO grain has saved millions of lives. Most of the medicines out there are the results of human innovation. And there are plenty of poisonous plants out there which are perfectly natural.
What I am advocating is that the human track record versus evolution track record is pretty bogus, and vulnerable to selection bias. The fact is, that's just not even a good way to choose whether to consume something. We rarely have enough information to make an informed choice. Even when we study something for a decade we don't completely understand that. So in the absence of information, basing our decision on "organisms pretty biologically similar to me have survived by interacting with this other organism for millions of years" is not a metric to be dicarded.
What we should be doing is reducing our sugar intake given that most of us are no longer living on the edge of caloric survival. But that's hard, and not doing it comes with guilt and health issues. So instead we create a chemical that provides all the pleasure of eating with none of the caloric benefits.
Calorie-free food is pure hedonism. Not bad in and of itself, but to the extent we in the developed world have taken it, something to be just a little bit ashamed of.
Life is short, why are you heaping guilt about enjoying something on a pleasure like eating?
Maybe you need a new doctor to go along with your new sweetener =)
You don't?
A lot of people here say I should have just cut sugar and dealt with it. I missed it way too much. Before the first week of my low/no sugar diet was over, I was about to throw in the towel. With sucralose, I've made it 6 months now.
In other words, imagine an article about cyanide that spent half of its time explaining all the parts of cyanide that could potentially react with organic chemistry, and then abruptly ended with "and your body absorbs it through the digestive system, so that's why it's bad." Unsatisfying, right?
Also, why does the molecule look like insecticide or flame retardant? That isn't explained either. Does the fact that it has hotspots make it look like that? Or is there something more about its structure.
Certain insecticides[0] and flame-retardants[1] are among the more infamous organohalides. Sucralose is also an organohalide.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrabromobisphenol_A
I think typically the issue with reactive molecules is not that they react within the digestive system — if they're reactive enough to do that, then they may burn your mouth or even stomach, but they're unlikely to make it to your intestines without reacting with the rest of your food. The issue is typically that, if they get absorbed into your bloodstream, they can find their way to all parts of your body, and then wreak havoc on the one or a few particular molecules they react with. So apparently sucralose doesn't get absorbed into your bloodstream, and it's not so reactive that you get chemical burns, so it's harmless. And it doesn't get absorbed because it doesn't react with sucrase (or invertase), maybe because the big chlorine atoms bumping around there result in steric hindrance that keeps it from binding to the enzyme properly.
As for insecticides and flame retardants, there is a large family of organochloride insecticides (including DDT), and organohalogens are common flame retardants, including the famous PCBs, but also things like HBCD. Both DDT and PCBs are notable not for being reactive but for being unreactive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_an...
It might be the placebo effect, but I'm fairly confident it's not. Placebo effect or not, it has a discernible impact on my cognitive ability, so I avoid it.
I don't know exactly why - but I've read that drinking artificial sweeteners may trick the body into anticipating an energetic food causing it to release insulin. The resulting mild hypoglycemia causes headaches.
Anything that is derived from something else, distilled, converted or chemically altered is not good for you. Can't be.
It's been my experience that these companies don't care about your health and never will. They just want a compound that will make you addicted to it, so you can keep on buying and consuming it.