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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Maybe they're drinking Diet Coke BECAUSE they're unhealthy It's entirely possible - even likely - that this is the case
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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
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Guess what was worse for kids IN THIS STUDY than Diet Coke? Coke This is also unsurprising
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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
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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
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