This is poor reporting due to failure to distinguish correlation and causation. When both sugar sweetened and non-sugar sweetened drinks are correlated to shorter life span what do you conclude? Did they test sour or bitter beverages, or just soda water? What are their correlations? Maybe it’s the bubbles.
It may be that the consumption of sugary drinks directly increases your risk for diabetes or cardiovascular disease. It may also be that it is a sign of people who don’t care about their diet and those people eat lots of other unhealthy stuff too and that does the main damage. There are many possibilities.
A great story from statistics 101. During WW2 there was a good deal of analysis of the effectiveness of allied bombing on occupied territories. They discovered that superior bombing results were correlated with bad weather over the target. But but but said the bomb aimers, that’s ridiculous.
It turned out that freedom from enemy fighters was more important than clear vision over the target. In bad weather the fighters often couldn’t find the bombers (no radar) and sometimes didn’t even bother taking off to conserve fuel rather than go up and find nothing. The initial correlation in itself does not explain anything.
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I’m sorry I can’t see anything which points to this in the report. On what do you base this?
I don’t know. I am assuming that they were talking more generally than just soft drink using anything with sugar or artificial sweeteners.
The studies were using nurses and doctors over many years, so yes they probably had a wide range of diets.
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An article by Dr Michael Mosley warning that artificial sweeteners are actually worse for health than natural sugars.
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Also in the article it was noted that Stevia is not one that seems to have the detrimental effect:
“there is one newly developed sweetener that, in studies, doesn’t seem to have a detrimental effect on the gut.
Leaves of the stevia plant have been used as a sweetener for centuries in countries such as Brazil. Powdered stevia is now widely available in supermarkets. As it’s intensely sweet, you need only a pinch”
Also that “Fizzy” drinks also contribute to feelings of hunger so drinking non-fizzy is also better than drinking the same drink but “fizzy”.
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I am having trouble finding the article in JAMA that he refers to (apparently their publications are a week behind) so this is limited to the linked article.
Mosely is apparently a medical doctor but whether the has ever practiced is unclear. He is not trained as nutritionist or any allied field, he is best known as a journalist, producer, broadcaster and author. He may be an autodidact who is doing brilliant work in the field but until I see what his peers say I reserve judgement.
On the study he refers to: it is a correlation of self-reported dietary habits with morbidity and mortality which is not the best way to discover the causes of illness and death. People do misreport what they eat and correlation is not causation. The mechanism that he proposes for artificial sweeteners doing harm is that they interfere with the health of the gut microbiome. There is no doubt that healthy population of gut bugs is beneficial but he gives no evidence of the link from that to sweetners.
I will wait and see what else I can find but I would be more sanguine about his motives if he didn’t conclude that “going cold turkey” is the way to lose weight and sell diet books that say the same.
For complete article while still free use the following link
& possibly this is what Mosley used as well
Also of interest may be:
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Thanks @grahroll, your google-fu is strong.
I found this comment about the paper interesting:
Confounders and reverse causality?
J David Spence, M.D. | Robarts Research Institute, London, Canada
Observational studies of this kind are fraught with hazards of reverse causality and confounders (both measured and unmeasured); they need to be taken with a grain of salt. In this study, people who drank more sweetened soft drinks weighed more, were less educated and smoked more. Aren’t obese people more likely to consume sweetened beverages of both kinds? Can adjustment for known confounders really compensate for such differences? Does this study simply mean that obesity is a risk factor?
Also the authors (Mullee et al) have nothing to say about the mechanism(s) by which these correlated increases in mortality might come about. The claim about it being through damage to gut biome is from Mosley and without backup.
In the absence of more compelling material I rate this as not a particularly valuable addition to the huge amount of noise generated about artificial sweeteners.
I don’t know about the general reputation of the UK Daily Mail but publishing this kind of material (an opinion piece) as if it was factual does little to further the debate.
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lol don’t use google for my searches but Ty 
Sugar sweetened drinks
“were associated with deaths from digestive diseases”
Artificial sweeteners were
“positively associated with deaths from circulatory diseases”
What I think the study actually supports is the reduction of all “soft drinks”
" Higher all-cause mortality was found among participants who consumed 2 or more glasses per day (vs consumers of <1 glass per month) of total soft drinks[my highlighting] (hazard ratio [HR], 1.17; 95% CI, 1.11-1.22; P < .001), sugar-sweetened soft drinks (HR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.01-1.16; P = .004), and artificially sweetened soft drinks (HR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.16-1.35; P < .001).
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The Mullee study has reached the mainstream who did more than just paraphrase it without comment. Death by sugar-free soft drink?
Those whom they consulted were not enthusiastic “This is a huge study, with a half-million people in 10 countries, but I don’t think it adds to what we already know.”
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Yet not all were against the idea, ““Gosh, at this point, you probably want to go with water, tea or unsweetened coffee and not take a chance on beverages we don’t know much about,” he said. “Certainly, you don’t want to drink sugary beverages because we know that these aren’t good for you.””
&
"Still, scientists say the alternative to observational studies — a clinical trial that randomly assigns participants to a sugary drinks group or a diet soda group — isn’t feasible.
“Clinical trials are considered the gold standard in science, but imagine asking thousands of people to stick to such a regimen for decades,” said Malik of Harvard. “Many people would drop out, and it would also be prohibitively expensive.”"
There was support for and against the study. I think the reality is that like many things we perhaps should err on the side of caution than simply dismissing the idea. Other studies have linked some sweeteners to increased insulin responses similar to when carbohydrate loads are ingested. While the study may have issues one of the authors also points out that ““Right now the biological mechanisms are unclear but we’re hoping our research will spark further exploration””
The sweetened drink & sugar manufacturers have for years been supportive of low fat but high levels of sugar in our diets to the point that sugar is added to so many dishes that previously it would have not been. Do I trust an industry that has for a long time involved itself in promotion of product despite evidence that it was of concern to our health. Are we seeing a similar bias to what we saw with how the tobacco industry used it’s muscle to diminish the adverse findings against tobacco? I am not so sure that artificial sweeteners aren’t in the same boat as sugar & tobacco. I hope I am wrong but my uncertainty increases as more reports seem to support this idea.
Also perhaps of interest is whether the possible effect of carbonation was included in this and other studies. There has been study on rats and ingestion of carbonated fluids that resulted in a positive correlation of increased ghrelin levels (the hormone that is called the hunger hormone). A paper that may be worthy of a read in this regard:
Also a study into how Artificial Sweeteners may cause Gut Bacteria to change to induce Glucose Intolerance (again something that Dr Mosley may have been pointing to):
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A problem that I have is that the various sweeteners (sugar and non-sugar), both natural and artificial, are a wide variety of different classes of compounds, they are different sized and shaped molecules with different elements and subgroups, that are used in widely different concentrations depending on how sweet they are. About the only thing that they have in common is that we perceive them as sweet. Even stereoisomerism $$$ is significant to sweetness. Some products have more than one sweetener and those who use them may consume various products with several different sweeteners in their diet.
Given all that variety of chemistry and uncertainty what is being consumed it is hard to see how any aggregate study that lumps them all together or into the classes of sugar and non-sugar is going to detect and identify common modes of action. There could be a whole lot of effects going on (or none) caused by different substances that are all overlaid together obscuring relationships and causes, and confounding statistics. If you say it quickly it looks a bit like they are studying one thing, in fact they are studying many things simultaneously and in combination.
$$$ Stereoisomerism is where molecules have different 3D spatial arrangements of their parts despite having identical formulae, components and bonds between those components. Some sweeteners occur in left-handed or right-handed versions (but otherwise identical) where one is sweet and the other is not.
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An article advising that diet drinks are just as unhealty as full sugar drinks.
The linked article does not give any references so it is hard to find the study they are referring to. The lead author Chazelas has produced at least two papers from the dataset, one about soft drink and cancer the other about soft drink and cardiovascular disease. AFAIK the author(s) did not conduct or control the data collection just analysed it.
The studies are epidemiological analysis of self reported consumption and health data over a period of time. Self reporting is not necessarily accurate, even when large datasets are collected they can be biassed. Also the analysis is of associations and says nothing about mechanisms.
Finding that drink category A and category B both seem to have less healthy people than non consumers is a very broad statement. Saying that it shows us something useful about the health consequences of drinking either A or B is a stretch in my view.
The meaning of the results found is not at all obvious. For example, unless the control group drank soda water (there is no indication that they did) it may be that CO2 in the fizzy drinks causes both cancer and cardiovascular problems and the outcome has nothing to do with sugar or artificial sweeteners. That’s a made up example I know but it illustrates that correlation does not mean causation. You would have to see the critiques of experts in the field to know if the study is significant.
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I have just spent some time at the FDA and CDC sites. All the information there is at variance with this post. (eg https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/additional-information-about-high-intensity-sweeteners-permitted-use-food-united-states). Please give exact references if you maintain the claim.
On msg, double blind placebo testing has shown none of the claimed reactions. Go to the Mayo Clinic.
The link between animal study results to human results for artificial sweeteners are tenuous and FDA has treated the animal studies very warily.
The interpretation of the Norwegian study given is incorrect (25%??).
Most of the paper’s discussion is given over to why the apparent correlation may well not be real. To change one’s life on the basis of this study would be incorrect.
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Meltam I read the paper not just the headlines.
It showed no association with cancer and a weak cardiovascular association with >4 artificially sweetened drinks per day. It also noted that the probabilty of confounding factors was high. Or no association actually.
Hardly bad news for those imbibers.
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It sounds a bit like the food wars there have been here in Oz - margarine makers maligning butter, lamb producers having a go at beef. Everyone wants a bigger share of the market, and one way is to take a chunk away from the opposition - by fair means or foul.
I started using sugar replacements 4 years ago when I decided I had to lose weight, and keep it off. I was successful, so I will dispute any assertion that they cause weight gain. They might not be the best thing to consume - but nor is too much sugar and calories!
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While the 75 gram jar of “Stevia Sweet” (purchased at Coles, made in France) might suggest the product is basically a stevia product, it actually means that it includes the sweetness of stevia. The dominant component however is maltodextrin and I suggest diabetics need to research whether it is suitable for their needs.
The ingredients listing on the label concludes with: “sweeteners: Steviol Glycosides and Thaumatin” (whatever that means.)
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Thaumatin is a low-calorie protein sweetener and flavor modifier extracted from Katemfe, the fruit of the West African plant Thaumatococcus daniellii, and is totally natural with an intense sweetness.
I have had concerns about the labelling of stevia products for some time: when a product contains (much) less than 1% of stevia (the remainder being erythritol etc), how can it be genuinely labelled, and sold, as stevia??
I have just found this product: https://www.amazon.com.au/Nirvana-Organics-Stevia-Extract-Powder/dp/B07R6RP33W/ref=pd_bxgy_2/355-8730921-8960240?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07R6RP33W&pd_rd_r=211a73c6-c1ed-4ef8-b4b1-2478ae0bc7df&pd_rd_w=fG4fc&pd_rd_wg=Th8Tg&pf_rd_p=1cfa3607-3721-44d1-b97c-9194d593a1e8&pf_rd_r=WXNX1KKQJECFRF8XF4TA&psc=1&refRID=WXNX1KKQJECFRF8XF4TA
Ingredients:
100% Pure Certified Organic Steviol Glycosides - intense sweetener extracted from the Stevia Rebaudiana plant.
The Nirvana Organics Stevia appears to be genuinely labelled, unlike the plethora of products calling themselves stevia…
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Thank you for that great lead.
I found the Nirvanahealthproducts.com site as a result and their information is most useful for me.
Doug
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How do you measure the amount of sweetener when it is about 300 times as sweet as sugar so a teaspoon’s worth of sweetening is 1/300th of a teaspoon? The container of the Nirvana labelled product has 30g and 500 serves dividing the 30g by 500 gives 0.06g per serve. This would be an extremely difficult amount to weigh or measure in a normal household.
Erythritol (about 70% sweet as sugar, 0 carbs, and 0 calories/kj) is often used in conjunction with Rebaudiosides as it is almost entirely indigestible and bulks out the product so it is easily measured.
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