-
-
Show this thread
-
This is basically yet another very problematic epidemiology study that has shown that people who drink artificial sweeteners are less healthy than people who don't
Show this thread -
I've written about this before several times: https://medium.com/the-method/diet-drinks-arent-killing-you-54c9e5d06c30 … https://medium.com/the-method/stop-freaking-out-about-artificial-sweeteners-9a53caf9d0e5 … https://medium.com/@gidmk/artificial-sweeteners-arent-killing-us-all-2730f7ad86c0 …https://medium.com/@gidmk/artificial-sweeteners-arent-dangerous-a06c28385f7c …
Show this thread -
In this new study, the researchers basically took a large sample of kids, asked them to recall what they ate in the last 24 hours, and then compared them in terms of their beverage intake
Show this thread -
They put kids into 4 groups: 1. Water 2. Artificially sweetened drinks (i.e. Diet Coke) 3. Sugar sweetened drinks (i.e. Coke) 4. 2+3
Show this thread -
They found that kids who drank diet drinks ate more calories than kids who only drank water They also found that kids who drank any sugary drinks consumed far more calories than either of those groupspic.twitter.com/uFy2HQ1thI
Show this thread -
So water was best, but diet soft drinks were MUCH better than sugary ones Not exactly what the headlines imply so far
Show this thread -
But then another wrinkle - this was an observational (cross-sectional) study What this means is that the researchers took one time-point, asked the kids questions, and based all of their results on that
Show this thread -
The problem is that there is no way to determine causality from a study like this Maybe Diet Coke causes kids to eat more Maybe kids who eat more tend to drink more Diet Coke Maybe kids who are poor tend to both eat more AND drink more Diet Cokepic.twitter.com/ho4S1ourNZ
Show this thread -
And at least one of these things is true, because kids who drank more artificial sweeteners in this study were poorer on average than kids who only drank water
Show this thread -
Also, in studies like this, you usually control for dozens of factors There are literally hundreds of things that can influence complex associations like beverage drinking and obesity In this study? They controlled for 5
Show this thread -
As I've said before; we can control for the things we know about, but we can't control for things we don't know or don't measure In this study, that included MOST THINGSpic.twitter.com/UVfTKLpTIX
Show this thread -
The only thing we can say from this study is that kids who drink more diet coke are also unhealthier than kids who drink only water WHAT A FUCKING SURPRISE
Show this thread -
Maybe they're drinking Diet Coke BECAUSE they're unhealthy It's entirely possible - even likely - that this is the case
Show this thread -
And even more than that, it's worth remembering that Diet Coke usually REPLACES something If these kids weren't drinking Diet Coke, they'd probably be drinking...Cokepic.twitter.com/8b13x4Bi4K
Show this thread -
Guess what was worse for kids IN THIS STUDY than Diet Coke? Coke This is also unsurprising
Show this thread -
Too much sugar is bad for you It's probably bad for kids as well It seems, based on the evidence so far, that replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners is at the least safe if not necessarily effective
Show this thread -
Will artificial sweeteners make you lose weight? Maybe. Maybe not Will they make you (or your kids) GAIN weight? Probably not, especially if they're REPLACING sugar
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.