Nothing stops an investor faster than being dead–or having many dead or severely injured customers due to a major problem with a product or company in which they invested.
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Zero surprise there. The sweeter things in your diet are the more you will eat. Sweetness triggers your brain to want to eat. Meaning odds are you weight more for statistical purposes.
Not quite.
The problem is the human body does not see those items (sugar substitutes) as sugars. It is unable to break them down into sugars. Thus, when eaten, the person’s body does not register it should be satisfied with the amount of food consumed based on a glucose blood sugar level because the sweetener is not being processed. Given the absence of a higher blood sugar level, the person is able to consume more because they do not feel full. Thus the person will tend to over-eat, which results in the person getting fat if he/she is continuously consuming foods containing sugar substitutes for an extended period.
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Jerry,
No it is not the sugar, I said “sweet” triggers the brain to eat. The sweeter the more of a trigger. This is well studied. The fake sugars as sweeter than sugar and cause more weight gain.
Dopamine “hits” from eating sugar
So to maximize our survival as a species, we have an innate brain system that makes us like sweet foods since they’re a great source of energy to fuel our bodies. **When we eat sweet foods the brain’s reward system — called the mesolimbic dopamine system — gets activated.**Nov 14, 2019
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It is the sugar. Once the glucose level hits “enough”, the internal “feed me !!” goes away–and the eating stops.
Just the same as the person getting fat whilst eating an excess of foods containing sugar for extended periods…or an excess of foods without sugar, come to that.
Jerry,
When we eat sweet foods the brain’s reward system — called the mesolimbic dopamine system — gets activated. Dopamine is a brain chemical released by neurons and can signal that an event was positive. When the reward system fires, it reinforces behaviours — making it more likely for us to carry out these actions again.Nov 14, 2019
The sweeter the more any of us eat. Sugar is not as sweet as the fake sweeteners. This is well studied. The brain reacts to sweetness.
You may very well be describing a weight management system that exists in the primitive state but the evidence of anyone’s eyes … whether looking around any community in the US or, yes, even one’s own mirror…this system can very easily be overridden by habituation. Especially when it starts at an early age.
Higher circulating insulin levels (as an inevitable response to high blood glucose) is definitely supposed to be an appetite suppressant. However, if that happened in the mechanistic way you suggest, the first sign of insulin resistance would work like a charm to prevent any further weight gain regardless of the source of blood glucose. I don’t think it’s possible to argue rationally that this state of affairs happens routinely.
We’re 25 years on from the publication of a study that captured the imagination of a sensationalist press and an easily duped readership… the first to show a harmful phenom that was contrary to any observation that’d gone before (or since). Not a gua-RON- tee that this bit of Science By Press Release is the same but headlines and press releases can be very misleading.
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Sweet Baby Jesus, what a thread. . .
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"Sweet Baby Jesus, what a thread. . "
Thanks for adding that ‘Baby’ in - I always enjoy that phrase better with the three-part wording!
Pete
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Fortunately erythritol coffee sweetners are rare. It might be a food ingredient but I doubt many consumers buy it.
It is the common ingredient in Truvia; what I put in my coffee most days. 
Erythritol is an alcohol sugar in the same class as sorbitol and xylitol. These two are commonly found in “sugar free” candies and have the problem that eating a lot of 'em (i.e. keeping the same habits that generated the excess adiposity etc in the first place) you get a lot of excess fermentation in the gut and end up pharting like there’s no tomorrow. Erythritol is a bit different and isn’t used so much as it has a really weird aftertaste. Well, not even an aftertaste…almost makes your mouth feel cold. Quite unpleasant. It’s sold as a baking alternative to sugar…“Swerve” is one brand. Good to use if you want to ruin a recipe, I guess.
The low carb/keto folk tout it mightily. I’ve experimented with it when we had guest, one of whom is T2D. I could taste it and so could the daughter. Husband couldn’t tell. I didn’t use it in the end.
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No dog in the fight. Haven’t reviewed the data or it’s quality to know what is more likely than not true. However, from a pure perspective of logic…“it IS the sugar” & “it IS the sweetness” are not mutually exclusive statements. Both could be true - [or both false].
:-)Shawn
Certainly we know that even babies like sweetness. Plenty of studies indicate excess consumption of sugar is unhealthy.
Sugar substitutes are another matter. Some with saccharin have a cancer warning label. Aspartame has been criticized for its methyl ester that can hydrolyze to “toxic” methanol.
In this industry health alarms seem to be normal.
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Sugar is sweet…d’oh!!! 
Fake sugars are sweeter than sugar
Fake sugars in food see greater weight gain regardless of the zero calories than the use of sugar in food.
The brain response to sweetness as a trigger to eat more food.
This article tries to water it down a bit but it shows what I am saying.
At the end of the day this has been demonstrated in humans and has a scientific basis.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that…allowing for the fact that the neurobiology of eating is a hugely complex topic.
When folk make changes to lifestyle choices…whether diet, exercise or whatever…it’s very easy to give those changes a bit too much credit for the impact they create and, as a consequence, make compensatory changes that cancel them out.
An obvious one would be exercise and daily energy balance. Most folk way overestimate how much energy they’re expending when they lurch off the couch and start working out…imagining the sort of energy expenditure that’d light up a football stadium rather than something closer to a Christmas tree lightbulb. They don’t notice the extra nibbles or the calories in the vente caramel macchiato they reward themselves with on the way home from the gym. Or the subsequent energy saved as they sit at the computer logging in their steps or the time they spent on their HIIT.
Likewise switching from sugar to a non-nutritive sweetener. This feels like a positive act … and it would be if those “saved” calories weren’t compensated for by eating a bit more of other attractive foods. Not because of activation of any primitive reward system but because of an imagined greater leeway in the energy budget.
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One of the problems with artificially sweetening beverages like tea and coffee… and in this context, I put regular sugar under the heading of artificially sweetening since those concoctions of leaf/bean and water aren’t inherently sweet…is that it tends to make the “hidden” sugars in food difficult to distinguish. Conversly, going totally sugar…and non-nutritive sweetener…free does a sort of tastebud rehab that brings a heightened awareness of “sweet”
I was a picky eater as a kid and had all manner of fads that mum indulged to a degree. I was about 14 or so when I inadvertently picked up a cup of tea before she’d put the usual two heaped spoons of sugar in (seems it was as mandatory as the tea leaves back then) I found I preferred it. Before too long, I found that other food items started to taste too sweet…including some of my favourite candies.
Over half a century later, that “fad” has stuck…along with the fall-out of a heightened awareness of “sweet” in the places you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Most commercial bread, baked goods, savoury toppings etc. As a consequence, my recommendations…both on the internet and in Real Life …is to avoid all sweeteners in beverages as a start to a tastebud rehab programme.
P.S…one objective measurement of this is that, of the 5 dental restorations I have, only 1 (a gold crown) post dates 1974 when the guy who was my “dentist” as a dental student graduated. According to our current dentist, husband and I are the only patients in the practice with restorations older than she is.
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VeeEnn,
It boils down to these things are all sweet, the sweeter the more of a weight gain. The brain responds to sweetness.
What are the 7 senses of taste?
The 7 Tastes (And Maybe an 8th?)
- Salty. This is the simplest of the tastes. …
- Sweet. Sweetness indicates the presence of sugars in foods, along with certain proteins. …
- Sour. Sour tastes let us know that there are acids in certain foods. …
- Bitter. …
- Umami (Savory) …
- Astringent. …
- Pungent.