It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi).

Their involvement in developing intake guidelines represents “an obvious conflict of interest”, said Gary Ruskin, US Right-To-Know’s executive director. “Because of this conflict of interest, [the daily intake] conclusions about aspartame are not credible, and the public should not rely on them,” he added.

  • NotYourSocialWorker@feddit.nu
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    One theory is that the body doesn’t know if the sweetness is sugar or sweetener. So it produces insulin to take care of it. When the level of insulin gets too high the body tries to compensate by eating more. If that “more” is more sweetener…

    • soma@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      11 months ago

      While I’m no expert, that doesn’t sound correct to me. I’d expect highly specific binding dependent on the chemical structure of glucose would be required to elevate insulin. A quick search seems to support that. I’m sure there are lots of studies on this that you could find if interested.

    • doggle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      11 months ago

      Unless I’m missing something this seems trivial to test. Just test blood sugar before and after drinking a diet soda. If bloods sugar goes down then the sweetener likely caused a release of insulin. If it doesn’t change then it didn’t.

      It seems petty far-fetched. If artificial sweeteners caused a runaway insulin spike then I would expect them to cause a lot of cases of diabetic shock.

    • huge_clock@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      The insulin response you’re talking about is very small and it doesn’t lead to a chain reaction.