Is diet soda more dangerous than sugar-sweetened beverages? : LC Research/Media Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

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Sun, Oct-20-19, 09:12

GRB5111

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Is diet soda more dangerous than sugar-sweetened beverages?

I receive Peter Attia's newsletter by email. This week's topic is the evaluation of an observational (epidemiological) study with the title, "Is diet soda more dangerous than sugar-sweetened beverages?"

Given the number of times we've discussed this on the forum, I thought it might be of interest, particularly Attia's conclusion in the following summary. However you think, there is no conclusive evidence one way or another, as Attia observes. There are some who do very well with artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs) and some who don't.

The real focus is on whether we should believe studies and why, which ones are more evidential, and how to tell the difference. Richard Feinman, a poster on this forum, wrote the book, "The World Turned Upside Down," with similar observations, also an excellent resource to help people sort through the babble that gets published and reported. It's a crazy world out there with much poorly founded information floating through the ether masquerading as facts.

Summary of study by Attia:

Quote:

Is drinking diet soda going to lead you to an early grave? This study does not answer that question nor does it bring us any closer to answering that question. Nor will “more research” on the long-term effects of consuming artificial sweeteners if “more research” means more observational epidemiology. We can apply the same point here that one of my mentors made to me in explaining meta-analyses: “a hundred sow’s ears makes not a pearl necklace.” Piling up inadequate studies that can’t determine cause and effect while bemoaning the expensiveness of RCTs suggests to me we need to think about how we’re allocating our resources. Yes, long-term clinical trials are expensive, difficult to conduct, and will have limitations. But there’s one very important distinction between RCTs and the vast majority of observational epidemiological studies on diet and health: at least RCTs are not dead on arrival.

Link to study report:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/ja...319&appId=scweb

Link to Attia's detailed article about studies:
https://peterattiamd.com/ns003/