January 17, 2017 • 56 mins
Artificial sweeteners have gotten a bad rap in the press for as long as they’ve been in use. But is it just the result of a fear of science or do artificial sweeteners cause real harm? A mounting body of studies is starting to paint a pretty grim picture.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. The
three Musketeers together again after so long, so many weeks
(00:23):
of holidays and time off and rest and relaxation, back
at it again, which which makes this stuff you should
know that's right hard to come back for you. No, No,
I think it was just long enough and everything was
just satisfying enough that I'm ready. I'm glad to be
back at you. You're one of those weirdos. It's like
(00:45):
I need to work right exactly, like my skin falls off.
I've always said I would be a great lottery winner,
Oh yeah, or retiree. Yeah, lottery winner is better. I
guess it's it's the same thing. It's a tree. It
doesn't have to sweat it right exactly, which is nice. Man.
I just should tell people that we were discussing with
(01:07):
Jerry um the word dulcet soar as your voice, Yes,
dulcet tones. You didn't know the definition. I looked it up.
Oh oh yes, I said sweet and soothing. But then
in parentheses says often used ironically. I don't know what
that is. It's a back in the compliment. I guess, Jerry,
were you using it ironically? She actually, she didn't even nod.
(01:31):
She's just sort of moving her face around. Her skin
falls off to when she doesn't work. That's weird, weird.
So sweet and new Guinea is what you said. That's uh,
almond Joy's that's right, Mars bars Almond Joy's coconut sweet
and soothing. Okay, I'll take that. Yeah, I still prefer
(01:54):
muppety tenor. It's the greatest of all time. It's very
eye opening for me. What oh that was it a
article about us muppet eat dinner good stuff? So chuck. Yes,
I know that you. Um, you're a health conscious dude.
At the very least you're conscious of healthiness, right, I
(02:18):
have to and for a very long time I made
the switch, and um, one of the things that I
learned was that one of the easiest ways you can
lose weight very quickly is to just cut like sodas
out of your diet. Yeah. See, my problem is I
don't even drink SODA's right, So there's like a there's
a whole step right there. Yeah, that's removed from you.
(02:40):
That's fine, that's good, but in a way, right, but
I mean there's just no low hanging fruit as it were,
right as far as using corporate buzz speak ghosts unless
you count gallons of booze, that's not low hanging, my friend,
that's the top of the tree. That's last. She so um,
when you stopped drinking soda, you you really do, like
(03:02):
the pounds just fall off. It's insane, but you still
want soda, right, I mean it's like the craving still there.
And the um soda industry knew this, and they said, hey,
we don't want to lose a bunch of revenue, let's
start making diet sodas. And apparently originally they made them
(03:22):
almost exclusively for people with diabetes. UM. Around the post
World War two era, you could find diet sodas with
basically an inscription or something like that, like it was
inscribed on every hand who would say something like for
people who must uh watch their sugar allotment or something
(03:44):
like that. Right, and then as the soda industry is like,
oh wait, wait, we can really like make weight loss
an issue here and like help promote weight loss by
saying for people who wish to watch their sugar intake right,
and just that little tiny switch changed everything, and like
the diet soda industry was born, so people have aggressive
(04:07):
nudge in the right direction, pretty much like, hey, don't
you think you should be washing your sugar intake chibs?
You know, that's what's that's what's between the lines. So
we've got these awesome diet sodas that are sweetened with
artificial sweeteners. But of course there's nothing can possibly just
be just good or just great because there's apparently we're
(04:30):
starting to learn huge, massive problems with artificial sweeteners as well,
problems so much that, um, they may be worse than
than sugar, it turns out in a lot of cases. Yeah,
I mean, when have we found and replaced something natural
with something synthetic and have it been nothing but like
(04:51):
a win win. I mean, I'm sure there's something, but
it seems like there's always some kind of downside. I
guess maybe like a robotic arm just better than the
real arm, and what depends on the arm that it replaces.
It could be he's saving up for your robotic arm transplant. Sure,
all right, I'm tired of being weak on my right side,
(05:11):
so you can crush those Coke zero cans exactly with
more bigger. Oh well, I'm not drinking anything any longer.
After researching this, I'm like, yep, I'm done with diet
soda all together. Oh yeah, like like through not a
this is in a phase or anything like that. I'm
sure over the course of my life I will have
like a giant like Coke zero at a movie or
(05:34):
something like that, but I'm I'm generally just totally done
with that. What are you going to constantly be drinking? Then? Well,
to be honest, I'd already kind of started. I was
drinking um, like mineral water a lot more, and I found,
like once you just kind of switch over, the water,
which used to just be disgusting, is actually kind of
refreshing like this regular like like filtered water with ice.
(05:59):
So funny, because you know, my history has always been
heavy on the water. Sure, I know, like you're totally
ahead of the game. It turns out well by accident,
but I just I've always loved the water. That's just
how your taste is always run well, and that's I
was just raised on it. You know, I've said it before.
Like milk and water. We just didn't have a lot
of sodas in the house, and it just never really
grabbed hold of me in that way, you know, right,
(06:21):
But mixing milk and water, that's good. Then then you
have fat free milk. Yeah, pretty much, at least thin milk. Now,
drink whole milk. I'm all about it. So I'm off
of the diat soodas forever. Wow. Well that's good for you.
It is good. But if I want to brush my
teeth or use mouthwash US takes, or take certain vitamins
(06:46):
or something like that, I'm still running the risk of
encountering artificial sweeteners because they're everywhere. Now. Yeah, well, let's
back up a bit. Then that was a nice old
school intro. By the way, thank you. That's what you
get after you take a nice Christmas You've been rehearsing
that one for weeks. Yeah, you woke up Christmas morning
(07:08):
and you means just like, shut up. I'm like, no,
I gotta practice. Um. All right, Well, we're talking about
artificial sweeteners, but what we're really talking about, at its
essence is sweet the sensation of sweetness. Um. And if
you go back and listen to our I think pretty
good episode on Taste from many years ago. Uh, we
(07:30):
break it down pretty well as far as the receptors
on our tongues, so we don't really need to rehatch that.
But did you did you go back and listen to
it doesn't really hold up. Yeah, it's not bad, um.
I mean we get to the point there's not as
much shenanigans. A lot of people prefer those. Yeah, we've
added a lot of filler over the years. It's okay, um,
(07:52):
But the the level of sweetness that we taste, it's
gonna depend. You know, those they're those receptors on our
tongue and they interact with those mala fuels and they
have to fit, you know, the shape has to fits
that weird thing that nobody really knows is going on
on their tongue, that strange interaction is happening. Yeah, I
remember from the Taste episode, like one of the theories
(08:13):
is that it's the whole thing is happening on the
quantum level. I remember correctly. Uh So, how much sweetness
you're gonna taste, the level of sweet is gonna depend
on your own receptors and how they're binding to that
sweet sensation. So these artificial sweeteners, what they do is
they found a way to elicit that same response as
(08:36):
as we get from sugar, and basically that that's it.
Some of them are, I mean, obviously they're generally a
lower calorie version of sugar, although we'll get to some
that aren't later. Uh. And the reasons for that is
some of them, they're all different. But some of them
are so sweet, like hundreds and even thousands of times
sweeter than sugar, that they just need to use tiny,
(08:58):
tiny bits of it, so it's basically no calorie. Other
times we don't even synthesize and absorbit and metabolize it,
so that makes it no calorie. Yeah, you get the taste,
but then it just comes out of your pee or
your poop. Yeah, but so no calories exactly. I thought
that was pretty interesting because I've never really stopped and
thought about why those things are no or low calories.
(09:20):
It makes perfect sense. Yeah, like the idea that something
is so sweet you need to use so little of
it too, that you subvert the calorie uh system, the
calory system. It's like, well, you can't even count that low.
That many decimal places beneath one calorie. And the weird
thing is to me is when you look at the
histories of some of these artificial sweeteners, UM, and it's
(09:43):
a little scary is that a lot of them were
discovered by accident from these dumb scientists who are like
trying to trying to discover something else or work on
something else, and they're like, oh, let me look my
finger and get a piece of paper, or let me
smoke a cigarette and not wash my hands, and they're like, oh,
my hand tastes sweet. Yeah, I mean, and it really
it drives home two things that chemists aren't really fixed
(10:07):
on their UM their survival they have low survival skills.
And then too that um, all these artificial sweeteners are
in most cases extraordinarily they're synthetic compounds, you know, like um,
saccharin was or is a derivative of coal tar that
was accidentally discovered when they were trying to find a
(10:27):
new die. And then I believe asper tame was a
nonstarter ulcer drug. Yeah, and the dude was literally picking
up paper and like licked his finger and said, well,
that's in the how LSD that was an accident too.
It was it was are no scientists washing their hands anymore. No,
apparently now, at least not the chemists. Oh yeah, I
(10:49):
guess so chemistry. I don't want to throw all of
science under the snow. It's just the chemists who don't
care where they live or die. Uh So anyway, saccharin
would is one of the first or I guess d
first artificial sweetener way back in nineteen eighteen seventy nine. Yeah,
way back in nineteen seventy nine. Uh in eighteen seventy nine.
(11:12):
That that was a scientist who did not wash his
hands before dinner and notice it tasted sweet, and said,
I think I have a new discovery on my hands. Yeah,
literally on my hands, Yeah, and on my tongue. I'm boy,
oh boys sweet. Yeah, And it's fine to think of that. Yeah,
there's a lot of chemicals and compounds out there that
we may have no clue actually taste sweet because we
(11:36):
just haven't accidentally run across him yet because everyone's washing
their hands now. Yeah. And plus also, sugar has just
such great pr that you tend to think that it
has the market cornered on the sweet sensation. But no,
it's it's just one of many things that elicit that. Yeah, Uh.
And the reason, well, there's a lot of artificial sweeteners.
(11:56):
We're only gonna go over a handful in detail, but
the res and there are, I mean, there are a
couple of reasons. One is just good old fashioned competition,
of course, uh. And another is you can't use them
all in the same way. Like some hold up under baking,
some don't. Uh. Some you can just dust in a
throat lozenge, and another might be good in a cake batter,
(12:17):
you know. So it kind of depends on its use
as to some are good and ice cream and others aren't. Yeah,
but you you hit it on the head though too.
I mean, like there's a lot of competition, like aspar
Tame is owned by Monsanto now, and like anytime those
guys get in on something, there's that means it's automatically
big business. So there's a lot a lot of money
to be made. And one of the reasons why also
(12:40):
that it is such big business because it's very frequently
much cheaper to produce this stuff, these artificial sweeteners, than
it is to to um process sugar. Right, So say
it takes like eight cents worth of sugar to sweeten uh. Two.
Leader of coke in might take three um since worth
(13:03):
of aspartame to sweeten coke zero. And if you're making
you know, millions upon millions of two leaders of this
stuff a year, that adds up pretty quick. Yea. And
in fact, there was actually a British company. I didn't
see which one it was, but they it was found
that their orange drink, which was not being marketed as
diet or sugar free or anything, was basically made up
(13:26):
of artificial sweeteners. I didn't look it up, I just
ran across it. Somewhere was the orange orange like soda
in Great Britain and Great Britain. Okay, call it shame made. Well.
The reason I asked is because you know, my one
weakness is like once a month I'll get the old
fan of orange. Yeah, the Nazi drink. So I'm okay
(13:50):
with that shaming me. Uh well, So these things are
pretty controversial, um since literally least since the first ones
came around. UM. People started like with anything that's new
and synthetic, they're gonna be a certain segment of people
are like this is great. In another segment they're like, well,
(14:11):
I don't know about this. Let's look and see what's
going on in your body and what if it's not
so good for you? And how do we know? Right?
People concerned with health? Yeah, that's an easier way to
say it in public health. Yeah, yeah, there's um it
does kind of seem to be like Chuck, where at
this point in history where there is a lot of
(14:32):
this stuff out there. I think I saw a two
thousand and sixteen articles. So there's like products in the
US using one at least one of the five approved
artificial sweeteners by the FDA. So there's tons of products
out there and not enough medical literature to to really
strongly show one way or the other that yeah, these
(14:54):
things actually are pretty safe, and like all these fears
are just a general public this trust of science and
change and unnatural nous and we don't also have anything
to show the other way to that. Um No, actually
these things are pretty unsafe because it seems like every
study that you find has a contradictory study with just
(15:15):
completely opposite finding. It's pretty frustrating. Yeah, they're like even
they're they're canceling each other out. It is frustrating. It
does seem though that the at least based on the
reporting that I'm seeing or have seen in research. It
seems like a body of um medical literature is mounting
that's showing that this stuff is pretty problematic. Actually yeah,
(15:40):
I mean if you just uh throw science out the
window and start perusing the internet, which everyone should do,
right at least once a day. If you go on
websites though and and internet forums and look around, um
people will blame I mean, just about any disease you
can think of on aspartame a big one that's getting
(16:00):
a lot of the heat, but all kinds of artificial sweeteners,
um ms, brain tumors, dizziness, Alzheimer's, like all kinds of problems.
People are saying, well, you know this didn't start happening
until I started eating or drinking this which contained this. Right, Yeah,
it's anecdotal, extremely anecdotal. And like you said, when you
(16:23):
look at the real studies, and we're gonna get to
some of these and of course some are are mounted
by the very company selling them. And I had a
thing on Facebook last week about these company back studies
and whether or not we should even listen to them,
and most people chimed in that we're in in the
biz and said, you know what, it doesn't mean it's
(16:44):
junk science. Um, A lot of these studies wouldn't even
be done if it wasn't for these companies funding them.
But I still like raise an eyebrow anytime I see like, Nope,
Coca Cola debunks study that says it's bad for you
with our own study. You know, like, how can you
I'm not even a big cynic and you just have
(17:05):
to sort of wonder if that's complete BS or not. Yeah. Well,
the FDA, for its part, if you go to their
website on their Q and A. As far as them
defending their the things that they've approved, they kind of well,
I'll just read it says all all consumer complaints related
to the sweetener have been investigated as thoroughly as possible
(17:25):
by federal authorities for more than five years, in part
under f d a's uh ARMS system or ARM system
Adverse Reaction Monitoring system. In addition, scientific and that's where
people can submit their own beefs basically right and say like, hey,
I'm dizzy and just drink of tab yeah exactly. Uh.
In addition, scientific studies conducted during aspertames preapproval phase I
(17:48):
failed to show that it causes any adverse reactions and
adults are children. Individuals who have concerns about possible adverse
reactions to aspertame or other substances should contact their position. Basically, Hey,
if you're not feeling good, maybe it's on you. Yeah,
why don't you stop being so metabolically weird? Yeah? And
and since you brought up the f d A, there's
(18:10):
a lot of concerns about how just how much oversight
they're bringing to the table um And from there's this
Washington Post article I found, it sounds like like not
much at all. There's this um separate track. It's basically
like an expedited track that company who's looking for FDA
(18:32):
approval for their food item can submit. And rather than
so ideally, there's this f d A review process where
the FDA says, let us see your studies. We're gonna
do some research. Who might do some testing ourselves. It's
gonna take forever. You're gonna lose a bunch of money
while you're sitting there waiting to go to market. But
we will know pretty pretty conclusively that it's safe for
(18:55):
humans to use. Although even even that's not necessarily true.
But that's like the ideal situation that we'll get maybe
close to yes, this is safe for humans. Well they've
basically done away with that and created this fast track
program where you can submit for generally regarded as safe status. Yeah.
(19:16):
That was is when everything kind of there was a
big sea change there. Yeah, and they did it because
business was like, guys, you're taking so long. This is
so slow. This process is killing us. It's costing us
so much cash. We want to go to market faster.
It was like, we don't have enough people, right, what
do we do? So instead of hiring more people, they
(19:38):
just made it easier for the companies to get this
stuff passed. And the way that they did that was
the FDA said, how about this, you guys, go study
the medical literature, write a review of what you find,
and we'll read your review and then we'll give you approval.
So don't you don't need to submit your data anymore.
Just give us your your findings, your fine things in
(20:01):
a summary and that should speed things up. And it
did in a big, big way, and it proved the
FDA was so toothless that apparently now a lot of
companies are releasing food additives into the food supply without
even talking to the FDA about it. It It said in
this article that the UM the one of the Deputy
Commissioners for Food at the FDA, he said, we simply
(20:24):
do not have the information to vouch for the safety
of many of these chemicals. The FDA is just like, oh, well,
there's a new food additive out there. I hope it
goes I hope it goes well for everybody. Yeah, and
in the I don't know if in the FDA's defense
or but what they said initially was the reason we
did this is we thought that people were doing this
anyway and just introducing new chemicals without like submitting for
(20:46):
approval at all. He said, so maybe if we streamline
this process, they'll at least do that. And that just
hasn't worked out how they hoped. Nope, it's like UM
Citizens United Ruling. Oh yeah, you know, all right, well
let's take a break. I need to go. I'm I'm
angry now, sorry, I need to go smash. We'll be
(21:09):
back right after that. Okay, we're back. Chuck, you feeling better? Yeah?
(21:34):
That ming vos Man. That was like an original. Yeah,
well that was real. It's Connor. Now that's gonna come
out of Jerry's pay, let's you get some super glue?
Oh yeah, I like that. That Brady Bunch episode. I'm
always said, don't play ball in the house. Did they
break something? Yeah, they broke a vase playing basketball in
the house, and um they tried to glue it back
(21:57):
together and then Mrs Brady used it for some flat
was from a bunch of leaks. That's so them. I
love those. What are you doing playing basketball inside? Anyway?
And it's dumb, just you know, horseplay, rough housing. The
use I mean they're outside was a studio set with
astro turf, like it's always it's always perfect weather. Yeah,
and that one little quarter drive away. Yeah, I bet
(22:20):
it would be so disappointing if you could go see
a recreation of that set today, you know. Uh yeah,
it's like I said at the Cheers bar once, the
real the not the one in Boston, but the where
they shot the TV show, Okay, And it's just everything
is just always smaller, you know. And in She's tiny,
(22:43):
she was like in my beer mug. Yeah, I was
gonna say the one in Boston. It's like nothing like
the set, So I thought that's where you were going.
I didn't realize you've been on the actual set. Yeah,
that's when I did my famous extra stint on Dear
John and Cheers was next door. I okay, I don't
another story. Yeah, yeah, when my brother he worked on
(23:04):
Dear John, and I went out to visit him and
he got me on as an extra. I played a
bus boy in a restaurant scene. Yeah. I'd love to
get a copy of that. Actually, impost it. Yeah, I
want to see that. It was pretty good. That was
my first encounter, like real encounter with a film business,
and I was like, this is a weird thing to do.
This is the life for me. I'm gonna play bus
boys all my life and one day I'm gonna have
(23:25):
a short lived t failure of a TV show myself.
All right, So where were we? We were talking about
a TV show? Oh no, no, no, we were talking
about coming back from the break. And I wanted to
mention you said earlier that when we first intro that
sometimes this stuff like does more harm. And this this
(23:46):
one per Due University study I thought was really interesting
because it found that drinking sugar or eating and drinking
sugar free stuff with diet drinks mainly UH can actually
mess with your body's ability to naturally count calories, because
it it just messes up what the body recognizes as
(24:08):
real sweet and real calories, which can make that which
can make you fatter. Right, Yeah, Apparently there's been a
number of studies, including like really really good longitudinal longitudinal
studies like the San Antonio Heart Study, that have found that, um, like,
high levels of diet soda intake are correlated with obesity,
(24:31):
meaning everything else equal, the person who drinks more diet
soda is likelier to be obese, which makes zero sense.
It's it's pretty confounding, right. The whole reason, or one
of the big reasons people drink diet soda is so
they can lose weight, But it turns out that they're
actually more likely to be obese. And I should say
(24:51):
compared to people who don't drink diet diet soda, not
compared to people who drink non diet soda. That's not
to say, like, yeah, diet coke drinker is more likely
to be obese than a coke drinker. It's a diet
coke drinker is more likely to be obese than somebody
who just drinks water. And this produced study really like
gives some insight to that. Basically, we our body tells
(25:14):
us how many calories we need to take in, and
part of that is based on how sweet something is.
So once we start drinking and ingesting these artificial sweeteners,
it just it goose everything up. It basically says that
our body doesn't associate sweetness with higher calories anymore. Yeah, right,
because with with something like artificial sweetened soda. Right when
(25:37):
you when you eat food, your body has a couple
of pathways that it rewards you for saying, hey, good job,
eat you ate food. I'm gonna make it so that
you want to eat food again. And one is the
gustatory pathway or gustatory component, which is like the taste,
the smell, the the sensation that you get from eating
like good food or like something sweet and delicious, and
(26:01):
that just activates your limbic system like crazy, Your reward
pathway goes nuts. Right, But when you eat stuff, you
also have the second component, which is um where you're satiated,
the feeling that you get that great pleasant feeling of
being like nice and pleasantly full from eating, right, and
that counters that gustatory excitement. So normally when you eat food,
(26:27):
you you get the excitement from the taste of it,
and then ultimately you'll also get the nice, pleasant feeling
from being full from it. Not so with an artificial
sweetened soda. Instead, you get the excitement your sugar rushes
going off, but you're never gonna get full. And since
we're nothing but junkies as far as like our brains
(26:48):
are wired, we're just gonna keep drinking more and more
and more because that sugar center is going off and
we're never getting full, so it's never counteracted. We just
always crave more and more and more. Yeah, And of course,
like you said, these ease, there's always an opposite one
that it was debunked as flawed um by the National
Soft Drink Association. Yeah, so then you try they just
(27:10):
said wrong. But that's not that produced studies not the
only study. There have been plenty of other studies that
have looked into this and have found the same thing
that that there's there's that our bodies are being tricked,
that we're no longer associating sweet foods with high calorie foods,
and that it's leading to eating more high calorie foods.
(27:32):
So that if you eat something that actually is sweet
and has calories. You're gonna eat more of it than
you would have before because your brain is not used
to saying I've got enough calories from this, I can
stop eating it now, playing tricks on your body. Yeah.
And plus also apparently with these these things that are
three hundred five hundred seven thousand times sweeter than sugar,
(27:55):
which is what our body is used to, is some
form of sugar. Um, the the sensation of sweetness is amplified,
and so it kind of mutes sweetness and other things
like fruit or any any other complex tastes, like in vegetables.
So we end up just craving more and more sweet
stuff because everything else tastes terrible compared to this ultra
(28:19):
sweet stuff that we're eating and drinking. And if you
stop drinking like like soda or diet soda or whatever,
stop eating junk food for even just like a week
or so, when you go back to it, it's amazing
how sweet that stuff actually is. It's it's like a
smack in the face, but you realize, like, wow, I've
(28:39):
really been used to this for a while, because I
don't remember it tasting this sweet. Yea, and my headaches
are are now gone because I'm drinking this again exactly well,
and the other thing too. And I know we covered
a little bit of this and the high fruit dost
corn sir it. But part of the problem is is
the ubiquity of this stuff. It's um, I think which
one was it was it aspartame that's in Yeah, aspertain
(29:03):
is in six thousand, more than six thousand products like
soft you know, soft drinks of course, gum uh, puddings,
dessert mixes, gelatin, frozen desserts, fillings, yogurts uh, and then
and you know, of course people just dump it right
into their coffee too, and it's purest form. But um,
unless you're really a stickler about looking at food labels,
(29:26):
you're getting way way more then the maximum recommended levels
that you should be ingesting of this stuff, because it
might be like I said in the I got a
sore throat, so I took the cough drop and now
chewing gum. Now I'm using toothpaste, and it's all over
the place right exactly. And that's another part of the
problem where even if the FDA is doing its job
(29:48):
and does all this research and looks at the medical literature, Um,
they may say, Okay, this stuff is safe at this level.
This is the maximum recommended amount that a person should
have and still be within the safe zone per day.
So don't put more than this in your soda. Okay, great,
go forth and prosper. And then that soda becomes a
(30:09):
success and other people start using that sweetener, and then
it's like you said, like with aspartain, it's everywhere, so
that the people are getting that amount just from that
that that soda with aspertain that they're drinking, but they're
also getting it from all these other places, and the
levels rise very quickly. Yeah, and some folks get I mean,
there's a definite um soft drink addiction problem. Um, even
(30:31):
with the diet SODA's I've known people who literally drank
like a couple of two liters a day of this stuff. Sure. Yeah,
like just constantly drinking soda all day long, from the
moment they get up till the moment they go to
bed as diet. So it's no big deal exactly. And Um,
there's actually a study that I came across. Um. I
(30:51):
didn't see where the study was from, but this is
it was mentioned on this um Harvard Health blog um.
It was a rat study where rats were given the
choice between oral saccharine and intravenous cocaine um after they've
been acclimated to both, and they tended to choose the saccharin. Wow,
that's crazy, Yeah slightly. Did they go round and round? Sorry,
(31:16):
then they're probably like, I've heard about that cocaine. I'm
not doing that, but I will do this Sacharin. By
the way, there's a h an audio interview on YouTube
with the drummer from the band Rat that's like an
hour and twenty minutes long that you should, I mean,
try and get through fifteen or twenty minutes of it.
(31:37):
But the way I saw it is someone said this
is the Donald Trump of of eighties hair metal? Was
it a contemporary like today? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. He basically
has a new group that does Rat songs, and I
think it's he's just the drummer that's the original member
and and just goes off for like an hour and
a half about how great they are and about how
(31:59):
that to the real stuff, and how they sound better
than the original Rat ever sounded, and and and it's
really something like I've never heard someone who was more
full of themselves than this, dude. It was hysterical, was
really wonderful. Well, how many songs could they possibly play?
They just play round and round like like twelve or
thirteen times at a show. They had a few hits.
(32:21):
All I remembers round and Round? No they uh, well,
I'll think on it. I'll bet your thinking of Cinderella
or docin No, I think Doc can have more hits
than Rat. Now they had lay it down? Remember that one? No,
(32:42):
can you sing it? Sure? You do? Lay it down
right now? And then they had wanted Man No Man Now,
and then You're in Love No, and way cool Jr.
They had I would say for genuine sort of hits,
I really honestly, I remember round and Round and that's it. Well,
(33:02):
they were a little bit pore your time too. Round
and Round was a pretty good song. Though. It's a
great song. Rat what's that? Should we should just end
the show? Actually, let's take a break and then we're
gonna come back and talk specifically about some of these sweeteners.
Is that sound good? It sounds sweet. I can't believe
(33:43):
you don't remember You're in love? Well, you're not thinking it,
so how could I possibly remember it? And lay it down?
Those were two big, big hits. I mean, I'm telling you, like,
I was paying a lot of attention to eighties hair
metal when it was when it was out. Bet you'd
probably be like, oh, I know that song. M um. Alright,
(34:04):
remember remember Striper, the Christian hair metal band. I saw
a Striper and concert, my friend, did you the fabulous
Fox Theater in I did awesome? Uh? Well it was
they had. They had more than one hit, didn't they. Yeah,
I was. I was way into that in my early
youth group days. Strip they rocked about as tough as
(34:27):
you could get. I don't know about that, but they
definitely rocked, for sure. I don't know about that. Well,
they definitely wore a lot of spandex. Their drummer played sideways.
That was his big trick. They set up. They set
it up completely sideways on the stage. He's not actually
playing sideways then, No, no, no, he's playing straight ahead.
(34:48):
He just has the drum kit sideways. That was the gimmick.
Huh Yeah, that in religion pretty good? All right, So
let's talk about Sacharin. Let's that was it's actually the
Latin word for sugar um. And that was the one
we said earlier, which is the O g uh discovered
by two chemists named John's and Hopkins. Well, that's it.
(35:12):
That's so two guys claimed it. One was definitely in
the lab because he was the one who uh licked
his well, he ate a bread roll. I guess that
was sweet and he was like, I don't think this
is supposed to be sweet, and came to realize it
was soaking the coal tar that was on his fingers. Yeah, oh,
(35:33):
I thought you meant it was sitting in a little
pool of cold tar. And he like, notice it. He
was warming it up on the bunts and burner. Uh so, yeah,
that an accidental discovery. And it is three hundred times
sweeter than sugar. Yeah, and this is one of the
ones that is no calorie because his is not metabolized
by the body at all. And it is very famous,
(35:55):
well I don't know, but famous, but the drink tab,
the soft drink tab um. It was very famous for
being sweetened in a big way by saccharin. Right, which
means that from the I think nine seven till nineteen
nine seven, maybe there was a warning label on tab
(36:19):
that said, quote use of this product maybe hazardous to
your health. This product contains sacharin, which has been determined
to cause cancer and laboratory animals. Do you remember that
warning label on it? Yeah? And um, you can also
still find I mean, it's not like it went away.
It's that is what sweeten low is. And if you
drink fountain diet coke or pepsi fountain pepsi, you're gonna
(36:42):
have saccharin in there. Yea. And Emily was big on
the fountain diet cokes. She's like, it's just not the
same form can and I called it you. I was like,
it's because of sacharin. Sure what she's off fers now
too though, Yeah, that'll do it. But but what's weird?
So I've read this really great post on today I
found out, which is an excellent website by the way,
(37:04):
um and they they wrote about the discovering sacharin and
then the controversy, the health controversies of sacaran, and the
case they make is that it's it's it's basically the
victim of bad science reporting, public public fear basically, and
that if you're a rodent, yes you should not be
drinking tab because there there there was discovery of bladder
(37:28):
cancer and other types of cancer, but specifically bladder cancer
in lab rats that were being fed sacharin and um.
I guess before they figured out exactly why, the media
went and extrapolated it onto people, and so in the
public's mind it became, uh, sacharin will give you bladder cancer.
And then by the time they went and researched what
(37:50):
was going on. There's like the specific I think, the
specific parts of rat urine um we're combining with the
saccharine to form these things called micro crystals in the bladder,
which is tearing up the bladder lining so frequently that
as the cells were regenerating, the potential for them to
(38:11):
to grow out of control and become tumors was increased,
and so the lab rats were getting um bladder cancer.
The thing is is the lab rats urine is not
the same as humans urine um, and so we just
don't get bladder cancer too from tab apparently or from saccharin. Well. Yeah,
(38:32):
and one of the things, I mean, I never really
knew this how they exactly tested. I figured because it
was a rat, they would just give them, like, you know,
a few drops or something because they're tiny. But they
apparently dose these lab mice and rats with lots of
these additives, large large doses, and apparently that's to compensate
for the fact that they don't use a lot of
(38:55):
mice and rats. Yeah, which I'm not I don't follow
the logic there, there isn't any. And then they follow
it up with, Wow, that that seems to have really
gotten on top of you. How about some intravenous cocaine
to pure per cua. Well, they also said that large
doses compensate for possibilities that rodents maybe less sensitive to it. Yeah,
(39:16):
but I've also read elsewhere that the stuff that there,
they're the tests they're conducting at least on humans too,
are are not real world tests. It's like, Oh, you
just drank a twelve ounce diet coke and now we're
going to base all of our medical recommendations on the
impact that has on your body. They're not taking into account,
(39:38):
like you said, the guy who drinks to two leaders
or two twelve packs of diet coke a day thirty
years right exactly, and the like, this stuff is generally
just too new for us to have any like studies
on long term effects of them, so we really just
don't know. I mean it's I don't like, I don't
want to foster um paranoia fear, yeah, or paranoia or
(40:02):
even just yeah, fear paranoia. But like, the jury is
still out as far as I'm concerned. Agreed. UH. For
its part, though, sacharine was removed from the n I
h S list of carcinogens, and they did remove that
warning label in the late nineties. Like you said, yeah,
and I should say, I'm not specifically talking about sacarin.
(40:24):
I'm talking about artificial sweeteners in in general. Yeah, totally,
the jury is still out. But onto aspartame, that's one
of the big targets these days. UM Equal Nutra sweet
and neutral Taste are the brand names that it's sold under.
And this is UH. It's a derivative of a couple
of amino acids, um aspartic acid and Finni lalaleena. Yeah,
(40:52):
it's been around since nine Uh. And this was a
chemist named Jim Schladder Um a part of a company
that which is now Fighter. And he was the one
that was licking his finger to pick up paper and
studying an anti ulcer drugs and went, hey, I taste
undred times sweeter than sugared at me, right, and so
that's what it's used for. Oh yeah, well I don't
(41:16):
think they treat ulcers with it anymore. No. But the
weird thing about UM aspartame is more in how it's
broken down in the body. I think, um, yeah, because
it is metabolized. Yeah, And this just blew my mind.
I had no idea that something like that could break
down into methanol in your body. Yeah, wood alcohol. Weird.
(41:38):
I mean that's one of three things. Is spartic acid,
uh and then finnil l laen la la nine and
methanol is what it breaks down into. That's just crazy, right.
And So if you UM do not have this disorder
called p KU or phenol keto neurea UM, it's the
wood alcohol you have to pay attention to. But if
(41:59):
you have PK, you then you've got a big problem
with the phenyl alanine because you're you're missing an enzyme
that breaks that down, and uh, it can build up
in your brain and create brain damage in you. So
people who have UM p KU or phenel ketoeurea UM
can't have aspartame at all because of that. But for
(42:21):
people who do not have p KU, you still have
to worry about the methane, although that would alcohol if
I'm if I remember correctly. Isn't that the stuff that
the US government used to poison the illicit um alcohol
supply with and a bunch of people went blind and
died back into prohibition. I think it was wood alcohol,
(42:43):
And it's just so toxic. And normally when we when
we consume something that has would alcohol in it, um
there it's in the presence of ethanol, and that's it's
absorbed differently. The out the ethanol kind of like um
uh neutralizes it a little bit. But in aspertame, we're
(43:06):
it's breaking down into methanol without the presence of ethanol,
and so we're absorbing this toxic component. Um just straight up. Yeah.
Ten percent of asport tame is absorbed as methanol, and
the e p A says, uh, there's a recommended limit
of seven point eight milligrams per day of methanol and
drinking one leader of an aspartame sweeten beverage contains fifty
(43:29):
six milligrams of methanol. Well of well as what is
that saying fifty six milligrams of absorbed methanol or fifty
six milligrams of aspartame. I think I don't know. I
think that means methanol. That's how I took it eight
(43:49):
times a recommended amount in one leader of an aspertame
sweet and beverage. That's not good. Well, and like you
were saying, how the ethanol counterbalances it, it's the same
as the UH amino acids. They're naturally part of our diet,
but usually when we consume it there it's counterbalanced by
other amino acids, and in the case of aspartame, it
(44:10):
doesn't have those, so it's just consuming it on its own, right,
So you're getting it in very high doses basically. And
there's been at least one study that is linked um
types of different types of cancers in female rats to
aspartain consumption. Right, but again, no official studies show any
(44:31):
official problems, well none that the FDA is pointing to.
Like that was Europe. They're overprotective. Yeah, but this is
one of the ones too, that that arms program where
you can call in and report things. I think it
counts for sevent of all complaints. They're like, I'm dizzy,
I got headaches, I've got seizures, got fatigue. It's killing me.
(44:54):
It's killing me, Doc, you gotta do something. What's next?
Super lows sucralose like splenda, So sucralos is um. Splenda's
marketed or it was marketed with the kind of slogan
made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar, right, And
apparently they got sued by the sugar industry because, um,
(45:17):
I guess people thought that splenda was natural. I think
there was a um there was some sort of pole
that found like fifty seven percent of people thought that
splenda was a natural artificial sweetener and it's not. It's
actually you take a sugar molecule and then you take
out three of the hydroxyl groups, hydrogen and oxygen groups,
(45:38):
and you replace those with chlorine. This is always a
good move. That's no longer sugar. Nope, that's not sugar anymore.
It's not natural either. So what what you have? A
sucralose and sucralose is um six hundred times sweeter than
sugar and it's not metabolized by the body, so it's
calorie free. But there have been studies that have found
(45:58):
that it might not be my bablized by the body,
but it's absorbed by the body has been found in
the blood immediately after drinking a can of sucralow sweetened soda,
and it's also been found in breast milk too, from
mothers who have drank uh sucralose sweeten drinks. Yeah, and
sucralose is one of those you're gonna find because it
holds up to heat, so you're gonna find it in
(46:18):
a lot of baked goods or you know, like process
baked goods or in um. The I was about to
call them kits. What are they called the easy bake covin? No,
you know when you got to make a cake and
you get the stuff mix, Yeah, the mix, not a kit.
I like kit though, that's good. I need a cake kit.
(46:42):
I don't. I don't know what you mean, pal book
And it's been a long day, please leave me alone.
But Splenda is one of the biggest, um probably heaviest
used sweetener. Just like I was gonna call it over
the counter sweetener. But when you just use it for
a sweetener alone, to sweeten sweeten your tea or your
coffee or whatever. Yeah, like you see a lot of
(47:03):
splendid because as that little green leaf on it. No,
it's Splendid. I thought Splendid was the yellow one. Oh,
Stevie is the one with the green Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's right. You're right. Yeah, Stevie actually is natural. It
comes from a plant. Okay, alright, I feel much better
about the green leaf. Yes, super loser. Splendis sugar with chlorine.
(47:25):
Oh yeah, Splendid that yellow packet, that's right. Yeah, sweeten
load was pink Yep, Stevia has got the green leaf.
I used to dump that Sweeten loan in my iced
tea when I was a kid because I knew no better.
Did you really, wow? Well, because you know you put
sugar in cold iced tea, it does nothing but just
go to the bottom. I know. It's absolutely frustrating. And
(47:46):
then I was like, oh wait a minute, I'm from Georgia.
I need to be drinking sweet and tea, which is,
while they're brewing it, they dump in a full one
pound bag of sugar so much like they say down here,
that the straws us to stand straight up in the tea.
And that's how you know when you have enough sugar
in your sweet tea. Yeah. I don't drink sweet teo
much anymore, but boy, I love it. Yeah, I do too.
(48:08):
It's really good. UM so super lose uh. For it's
worth isn't as controversial in the public sphere as aspartame
is UM. But there was a report the FDA that
said it's approved, but it did cause minor genetic damage
and mouse cells. But it was minor and weekly muta
(48:29):
genetic may cause may cause light cancer. Uh. And like
you said, they weren't they sued by the sugar industry,
didn't you say that? Yeah, I don't know what the
outcome was. I don't know. I haven't heard that slogan
in a while. So I bet the sugar industry one. Yeah,
now it's just splenda, you know the deal. Yeah, you know.
(48:52):
We used to say just think, just think, think hard,
google it. Uh. And then finally we have sugar alcohols,
which I wasn't super familiar with. Actually I am, because
I up until this week showed a lot of sugar
free gum and UM. A lot of it is is
(49:13):
sweetened with sugar alcohols, which is it's um. It's where
you take a sugar and you add a hydrogen atom
to it. So there's stuff like um sorb at all
zylas all um a thir tall. I even practiced that
one therapy. Yes, thank you, had a little trouble with it.
(49:34):
But um, they don't have calories because they're not typically
absorbed by the body, although some some actually do have
just about as money calories as sugar, so you do
have to kind of watch it. Um. But sugar alcohols
typically are used less for weight loss and more for
(49:55):
um like uh sugar or blood sugar control, like among
people with diabetes. Because so it might have the calories,
but it doesn't it doesn't have the glycemic load that
that sugar does. UM, and even some artificial sweeteners too.
But they taste really really good. They're they're about as
close to sugar as you can possibly get, UM and
(50:17):
still have fewer calories or whatever. The problem with them
is that they can um. They're like butterfish. They caused
the anal leakage. Yeah, I'm gonna bring that up every
chance I get. You know, I think we have our
first great band name of too, not antal leakage, but
(50:41):
glycemic load only. No one wants to hear that. No,
it's like diarrhea planet. Oh yeah, did poop knife? Is
that what it was? You're telling diarrhea Planet to to
change the knife and they yeah, they tweeted never never,
who are you? Um, yeah, so that lacksative effect. Um,
(51:05):
if you have a daily dose of fifty grams or
twenty grams, fifty grams of the sorb at all or
twenty grams of the man at all has to be
labeled that it has a lacksative effect. Yeah, But the
Center for Science and the Public Interest says no, no, no no,
Only ten grams of sorb at all can make you
poop your pants, So maybe you guys should lower it
(51:25):
for that warning. And the FDA said, look, man, we're
taking a nap away. They're like, why can we just
have people on the verge of pooping their pants? But
not quite right? Oh dear, yeah, I saw an alternative
to all this, you know, Oh what real sugar. That
is one alternative. And the thing is is, yeah, the
(51:47):
the upshot of all this is, well, maybe sugar is
not so bad. We're fine, sugar is pretty bad for you,
and so is like high fruit toast corncerpt But there
are plenty of like natural forms of sugar too, like
unref fine raw demorerra sugar or honey. There's a lot
of places you can get sweetness that aren't necessarily bad
(52:07):
for you, right, Um, but then if you're super hip
with the science too, you might be in favor of
what are called sweet tasting proteins. And these are actually
pretty cutting edge from what I've seen. There's seven that
have been identified so far. All of them come from
plants that grow in the rainforest. And um, they are proteins.
They're not carbohydrates, their actual proteins. So they they yeah, yeah,
(52:33):
the Paraguayan and sweet chicken, Paragua and sweetbird. Yeah they
they they So they're not gonna they're not gonna raise
your glycemic index like your blood sugar. They're not going
to lead to weight gain. Um, they're they're just proteins.
And apparently some of them are quite sweet, and they're
looking into using those as an alternative to the artificial sweeteners,
(52:55):
which were the alternative to sugar, so they can decimate
the rainforest and yet another way, well hopefully this will
help them protect the rainforce something. No, no, no, this
is where our sweet comes from. Stop cutting it down. Okay,
keep keep your fingers crossed. They're crossed. Okay, that's all
I got. That's all I got. So that's artificial sweeteners everybody.
(53:15):
If you want to know more about those, you can
tact those words in the search bar at how stuff
works dot com and um the nooid will appear. And
since I said noid, it's time for listener now, I'm
gonna call this warmed my heart over the holidays, Scotch Hi, Yeah,
(53:36):
that too, Hi, Josh and Chuck Um, Grace and I'm
seventeen years old and the oldest of three sisters, Lily
Rose ten great names. We started listening to your podcast
in two thousand nine when our parents split up and
we moved a state away from our dad. As a tradition,
now we always listen to a podcast of yours to
(53:57):
this very day when we are traveling between the two
states with our dad. It's been such a fun way
to pass the time during road trips. Your podcasts have
been the source of so many interesting conversations, such a
wonderful way to bring our family together over the years.
For instance, all three of us girls vividly remember the
Vulture episode for no apparent reason, and found the Haunted
(54:17):
House episode oddly cool. Uh. Lily, who was the fifteen
year old she enjoys the Halloween story episodes. Rose ten
thinks it's funny when you guys get off track. God
bless you, Rose uh. And I really like to annoy
my friends with all the useless facts that I now know.
We are such hardcore fans that we even had marathons
(54:37):
of your TV series Whoa. And we have literally been
a fan of you guys since you started. Thanks for
being a part of our childhood. Love the Harvey family.
That's fantastic and they fantastic. It was great. And they
sent a picture of Dad and behind the wheel Uh
driving with it looks like Grace upfront and Lilian Rose
(55:00):
in the back and they were all just smiling and
just just they just had this lovely aura about them.
Thanks to us, No thanks to the Vulture episode. Anyway,
I love the Harvey family now they're they're tops on
my list. Yeah, thanks a lot, Harvey family for writing in.
We appreciate that big time. And the old man Harvey,
(55:20):
you're doing the right thing, sir, yep, keep both hands
on the wheel, that's right. If you want to get
in touch with us like the Harvey's did to let
us know how much of a role we've played in
your life. We love hearing that kind of stuff. You
can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark and
we're also at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
(55:41):
You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics because it how stuff Works dot com.
(56:10):
Mhm
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. The
three Musketeers together again after so long, so many weeks
(00:23):
of holidays and time off and rest and relaxation, back
at it again, which which makes this stuff you should
know that's right hard to come back for you. No, No,
I think it was just long enough and everything was
just satisfying enough that I'm ready. I'm glad to be
back at you. You're one of those weirdos. It's like
(00:45):
I need to work right exactly, like my skin falls off.
I've always said I would be a great lottery winner,
Oh yeah, or retiree. Yeah, lottery winner is better. I
guess it's it's the same thing. It's a tree. It
doesn't have to sweat it right exactly, which is nice. Man.
I just should tell people that we were discussing with
(01:07):
Jerry um the word dulcet soar as your voice, Yes,
dulcet tones. You didn't know the definition. I looked it up.
Oh oh yes, I said sweet and soothing. But then
in parentheses says often used ironically. I don't know what
that is. It's a back in the compliment. I guess, Jerry,
were you using it ironically? She actually, she didn't even nod.
(01:31):
She's just sort of moving her face around. Her skin
falls off to when she doesn't work. That's weird, weird.
So sweet and new Guinea is what you said. That's uh,
almond Joy's that's right, Mars bars Almond Joy's coconut sweet
and soothing. Okay, I'll take that. Yeah, I still prefer
(01:54):
muppety tenor. It's the greatest of all time. It's very
eye opening for me. What oh that was it a
article about us muppet eat dinner good stuff? So chuck. Yes,
I know that you. Um, you're a health conscious dude.
At the very least you're conscious of healthiness, right, I
(02:18):
have to and for a very long time I made
the switch, and um, one of the things that I
learned was that one of the easiest ways you can
lose weight very quickly is to just cut like sodas
out of your diet. Yeah. See, my problem is I
don't even drink SODA's right, So there's like a there's
a whole step right there. Yeah, that's removed from you.
(02:40):
That's fine, that's good, but in a way, right, but
I mean there's just no low hanging fruit as it were,
right as far as using corporate buzz speak ghosts unless
you count gallons of booze, that's not low hanging, my friend,
that's the top of the tree. That's last. She so um,
when you stopped drinking soda, you you really do, like
(03:02):
the pounds just fall off. It's insane, but you still
want soda, right, I mean it's like the craving still there.
And the um soda industry knew this, and they said, hey,
we don't want to lose a bunch of revenue, let's
start making diet sodas. And apparently originally they made them
(03:22):
almost exclusively for people with diabetes. UM. Around the post
World War two era, you could find diet sodas with
basically an inscription or something like that, like it was
inscribed on every hand who would say something like for
people who must uh watch their sugar allotment or something
(03:44):
like that. Right, and then as the soda industry is like,
oh wait, wait, we can really like make weight loss
an issue here and like help promote weight loss by
saying for people who wish to watch their sugar intake right,
and just that little tiny switch changed everything, and like
the diet soda industry was born, so people have aggressive
(04:07):
nudge in the right direction, pretty much like, hey, don't
you think you should be washing your sugar intake chibs?
You know, that's what's that's what's between the lines. So
we've got these awesome diet sodas that are sweetened with
artificial sweeteners. But of course there's nothing can possibly just
be just good or just great because there's apparently we're
(04:30):
starting to learn huge, massive problems with artificial sweeteners as well,
problems so much that, um, they may be worse than
than sugar, it turns out in a lot of cases. Yeah,
I mean, when have we found and replaced something natural
with something synthetic and have it been nothing but like
(04:51):
a win win. I mean, I'm sure there's something, but
it seems like there's always some kind of downside. I
guess maybe like a robotic arm just better than the
real arm, and what depends on the arm that it replaces.
It could be he's saving up for your robotic arm transplant. Sure,
all right, I'm tired of being weak on my right side,
(05:11):
so you can crush those Coke zero cans exactly with
more bigger. Oh well, I'm not drinking anything any longer.
After researching this, I'm like, yep, I'm done with diet
soda all together. Oh yeah, like like through not a
this is in a phase or anything like that. I'm
sure over the course of my life I will have
like a giant like Coke zero at a movie or
(05:34):
something like that, but I'm I'm generally just totally done
with that. What are you going to constantly be drinking? Then? Well,
to be honest, I'd already kind of started. I was
drinking um, like mineral water a lot more, and I found,
like once you just kind of switch over, the water,
which used to just be disgusting, is actually kind of
refreshing like this regular like like filtered water with ice.
(05:59):
So funny, because you know, my history has always been
heavy on the water. Sure, I know, like you're totally
ahead of the game. It turns out well by accident,
but I just I've always loved the water. That's just
how your taste is always run well, and that's I
was just raised on it. You know, I've said it before.
Like milk and water. We just didn't have a lot
of sodas in the house, and it just never really
grabbed hold of me in that way, you know, right,
(06:21):
But mixing milk and water, that's good. Then then you
have fat free milk. Yeah, pretty much, at least thin milk. Now,
drink whole milk. I'm all about it. So I'm off
of the diat soodas forever. Wow. Well that's good for you.
It is good. But if I want to brush my
teeth or use mouthwash US takes, or take certain vitamins
(06:46):
or something like that, I'm still running the risk of
encountering artificial sweeteners because they're everywhere. Now. Yeah, well, let's
back up a bit. Then that was a nice old
school intro. By the way, thank you. That's what you
get after you take a nice Christmas You've been rehearsing
that one for weeks. Yeah, you woke up Christmas morning
(07:08):
and you means just like, shut up. I'm like, no,
I gotta practice. Um. All right, Well, we're talking about
artificial sweeteners, but what we're really talking about, at its
essence is sweet the sensation of sweetness. Um. And if
you go back and listen to our I think pretty
good episode on Taste from many years ago. Uh, we
(07:30):
break it down pretty well as far as the receptors
on our tongues, so we don't really need to rehatch that.
But did you did you go back and listen to
it doesn't really hold up. Yeah, it's not bad, um.
I mean we get to the point there's not as
much shenanigans. A lot of people prefer those. Yeah, we've
added a lot of filler over the years. It's okay, um,
(07:52):
But the the level of sweetness that we taste, it's
gonna depend. You know, those they're those receptors on our
tongue and they interact with those mala fuels and they
have to fit, you know, the shape has to fits
that weird thing that nobody really knows is going on
on their tongue, that strange interaction is happening. Yeah, I
remember from the Taste episode, like one of the theories
(08:13):
is that it's the whole thing is happening on the
quantum level. I remember correctly. Uh So, how much sweetness
you're gonna taste, the level of sweet is gonna depend
on your own receptors and how they're binding to that
sweet sensation. So these artificial sweeteners, what they do is
they found a way to elicit that same response as
(08:36):
as we get from sugar, and basically that that's it.
Some of them are, I mean, obviously they're generally a
lower calorie version of sugar, although we'll get to some
that aren't later. Uh. And the reasons for that is
some of them, they're all different. But some of them
are so sweet, like hundreds and even thousands of times
sweeter than sugar, that they just need to use tiny,
(08:58):
tiny bits of it, so it's basically no calorie. Other
times we don't even synthesize and absorbit and metabolize it,
so that makes it no calorie. Yeah, you get the taste,
but then it just comes out of your pee or
your poop. Yeah, but so no calories exactly. I thought
that was pretty interesting because I've never really stopped and
thought about why those things are no or low calories.
(09:20):
It makes perfect sense. Yeah, like the idea that something
is so sweet you need to use so little of
it too, that you subvert the calorie uh system, the
calory system. It's like, well, you can't even count that low.
That many decimal places beneath one calorie. And the weird
thing is to me is when you look at the
histories of some of these artificial sweeteners, UM, and it's
(09:43):
a little scary is that a lot of them were
discovered by accident from these dumb scientists who are like
trying to trying to discover something else or work on
something else, and they're like, oh, let me look my
finger and get a piece of paper, or let me
smoke a cigarette and not wash my hands, and they're like, oh,
my hand tastes sweet. Yeah, I mean, and it really
it drives home two things that chemists aren't really fixed
(10:07):
on their UM their survival they have low survival skills.
And then too that um, all these artificial sweeteners are
in most cases extraordinarily they're synthetic compounds, you know, like um,
saccharin was or is a derivative of coal tar that
was accidentally discovered when they were trying to find a
(10:27):
new die. And then I believe asper tame was a
nonstarter ulcer drug. Yeah, and the dude was literally picking
up paper and like licked his finger and said, well,
that's in the how LSD that was an accident too.
It was it was are no scientists washing their hands anymore. No,
apparently now, at least not the chemists. Oh yeah, I
(10:49):
guess so chemistry. I don't want to throw all of
science under the snow. It's just the chemists who don't
care where they live or die. Uh So anyway, saccharin
would is one of the first or I guess d
first artificial sweetener way back in nineteen eighteen seventy nine. Yeah,
way back in nineteen seventy nine. Uh in eighteen seventy nine.
(11:12):
That that was a scientist who did not wash his
hands before dinner and notice it tasted sweet, and said,
I think I have a new discovery on my hands. Yeah,
literally on my hands, Yeah, and on my tongue. I'm boy,
oh boys sweet. Yeah, And it's fine to think of that. Yeah,
there's a lot of chemicals and compounds out there that
we may have no clue actually taste sweet because we
(11:36):
just haven't accidentally run across him yet because everyone's washing
their hands now. Yeah. And plus also, sugar has just
such great pr that you tend to think that it
has the market cornered on the sweet sensation. But no,
it's it's just one of many things that elicit that. Yeah, Uh.
And the reason, well, there's a lot of artificial sweeteners.
(11:56):
We're only gonna go over a handful in detail, but
the res and there are, I mean, there are a
couple of reasons. One is just good old fashioned competition,
of course, uh. And another is you can't use them
all in the same way. Like some hold up under baking,
some don't. Uh. Some you can just dust in a
throat lozenge, and another might be good in a cake batter,
(12:17):
you know. So it kind of depends on its use
as to some are good and ice cream and others aren't. Yeah,
but you you hit it on the head though too.
I mean, like there's a lot of competition, like aspar
Tame is owned by Monsanto now, and like anytime those
guys get in on something, there's that means it's automatically
big business. So there's a lot a lot of money
to be made. And one of the reasons why also
(12:40):
that it is such big business because it's very frequently
much cheaper to produce this stuff, these artificial sweeteners, than
it is to to um process sugar. Right, So say
it takes like eight cents worth of sugar to sweeten uh. Two.
Leader of coke in might take three um since worth
(13:03):
of aspartame to sweeten coke zero. And if you're making
you know, millions upon millions of two leaders of this
stuff a year, that adds up pretty quick. Yea. And
in fact, there was actually a British company. I didn't
see which one it was, but they it was found
that their orange drink, which was not being marketed as
diet or sugar free or anything, was basically made up
(13:26):
of artificial sweeteners. I didn't look it up, I just
ran across it. Somewhere was the orange orange like soda
in Great Britain and Great Britain. Okay, call it shame made. Well.
The reason I asked is because you know, my one
weakness is like once a month I'll get the old
fan of orange. Yeah, the Nazi drink. So I'm okay
(13:50):
with that shaming me. Uh well, So these things are
pretty controversial, um since literally least since the first ones
came around. UM. People started like with anything that's new
and synthetic, they're gonna be a certain segment of people
are like this is great. In another segment they're like, well,
(14:11):
I don't know about this. Let's look and see what's
going on in your body and what if it's not
so good for you? And how do we know? Right?
People concerned with health? Yeah, that's an easier way to
say it in public health. Yeah, yeah, there's um it
does kind of seem to be like Chuck, where at
this point in history where there is a lot of
(14:32):
this stuff out there. I think I saw a two
thousand and sixteen articles. So there's like products in the
US using one at least one of the five approved
artificial sweeteners by the FDA. So there's tons of products
out there and not enough medical literature to to really
strongly show one way or the other that yeah, these
(14:54):
things actually are pretty safe, and like all these fears
are just a general public this trust of science and
change and unnatural nous and we don't also have anything
to show the other way to that. Um No, actually
these things are pretty unsafe because it seems like every
study that you find has a contradictory study with just
(15:15):
completely opposite finding. It's pretty frustrating. Yeah, they're like even
they're they're canceling each other out. It is frustrating. It
does seem though that the at least based on the
reporting that I'm seeing or have seen in research. It
seems like a body of um medical literature is mounting
that's showing that this stuff is pretty problematic. Actually yeah,
(15:40):
I mean if you just uh throw science out the
window and start perusing the internet, which everyone should do,
right at least once a day. If you go on
websites though and and internet forums and look around, um
people will blame I mean, just about any disease you
can think of on aspartame a big one that's getting
(16:00):
a lot of the heat, but all kinds of artificial sweeteners,
um ms, brain tumors, dizziness, Alzheimer's, like all kinds of problems.
People are saying, well, you know this didn't start happening
until I started eating or drinking this which contained this. Right, Yeah,
it's anecdotal, extremely anecdotal. And like you said, when you
(16:23):
look at the real studies, and we're gonna get to
some of these and of course some are are mounted
by the very company selling them. And I had a
thing on Facebook last week about these company back studies
and whether or not we should even listen to them,
and most people chimed in that we're in in the
biz and said, you know what, it doesn't mean it's
(16:44):
junk science. Um, A lot of these studies wouldn't even
be done if it wasn't for these companies funding them.
But I still like raise an eyebrow anytime I see like, Nope,
Coca Cola debunks study that says it's bad for you
with our own study. You know, like, how can you
I'm not even a big cynic and you just have
(17:05):
to sort of wonder if that's complete BS or not. Yeah. Well,
the FDA, for its part, if you go to their
website on their Q and A. As far as them
defending their the things that they've approved, they kind of well,
I'll just read it says all all consumer complaints related
to the sweetener have been investigated as thoroughly as possible
(17:25):
by federal authorities for more than five years, in part
under f d a's uh ARMS system or ARM system
Adverse Reaction Monitoring system. In addition, scientific and that's where
people can submit their own beefs basically right and say like, hey,
I'm dizzy and just drink of tab yeah exactly. Uh.
In addition, scientific studies conducted during aspertames preapproval phase I
(17:48):
failed to show that it causes any adverse reactions and
adults are children. Individuals who have concerns about possible adverse
reactions to aspertame or other substances should contact their position. Basically, Hey,
if you're not feeling good, maybe it's on you. Yeah,
why don't you stop being so metabolically weird? Yeah? And
and since you brought up the f d A, there's
(18:10):
a lot of concerns about how just how much oversight
they're bringing to the table um And from there's this
Washington Post article I found, it sounds like like not
much at all. There's this um separate track. It's basically
like an expedited track that company who's looking for FDA
(18:32):
approval for their food item can submit. And rather than
so ideally, there's this f d A review process where
the FDA says, let us see your studies. We're gonna
do some research. Who might do some testing ourselves. It's
gonna take forever. You're gonna lose a bunch of money
while you're sitting there waiting to go to market. But
we will know pretty pretty conclusively that it's safe for
(18:55):
humans to use. Although even even that's not necessarily true.
But that's like the ideal situation that we'll get maybe
close to yes, this is safe for humans. Well they've
basically done away with that and created this fast track
program where you can submit for generally regarded as safe status. Yeah.
(19:16):
That was is when everything kind of there was a
big sea change there. Yeah, and they did it because
business was like, guys, you're taking so long. This is
so slow. This process is killing us. It's costing us
so much cash. We want to go to market faster.
It was like, we don't have enough people, right, what
do we do? So instead of hiring more people, they
(19:38):
just made it easier for the companies to get this
stuff passed. And the way that they did that was
the FDA said, how about this, you guys, go study
the medical literature, write a review of what you find,
and we'll read your review and then we'll give you approval.
So don't you don't need to submit your data anymore.
Just give us your your findings, your fine things in
(20:01):
a summary and that should speed things up. And it
did in a big, big way, and it proved the
FDA was so toothless that apparently now a lot of
companies are releasing food additives into the food supply without
even talking to the FDA about it. It It said in
this article that the UM the one of the Deputy
Commissioners for Food at the FDA, he said, we simply
(20:24):
do not have the information to vouch for the safety
of many of these chemicals. The FDA is just like, oh, well,
there's a new food additive out there. I hope it
goes I hope it goes well for everybody. Yeah, and
in the I don't know if in the FDA's defense
or but what they said initially was the reason we
did this is we thought that people were doing this
anyway and just introducing new chemicals without like submitting for
(20:46):
approval at all. He said, so maybe if we streamline
this process, they'll at least do that. And that just
hasn't worked out how they hoped. Nope, it's like UM
Citizens United Ruling. Oh yeah, you know, all right, well
let's take a break. I need to go. I'm I'm
angry now, sorry, I need to go smash. We'll be
(21:09):
back right after that. Okay, we're back. Chuck, you feeling better? Yeah?
(21:34):
That ming vos Man. That was like an original. Yeah,
well that was real. It's Connor. Now that's gonna come
out of Jerry's pay, let's you get some super glue?
Oh yeah, I like that. That Brady Bunch episode. I'm
always said, don't play ball in the house. Did they
break something? Yeah, they broke a vase playing basketball in
the house, and um they tried to glue it back
(21:57):
together and then Mrs Brady used it for some flat
was from a bunch of leaks. That's so them. I
love those. What are you doing playing basketball inside? Anyway?
And it's dumb, just you know, horseplay, rough housing. The
use I mean they're outside was a studio set with
astro turf, like it's always it's always perfect weather. Yeah,
and that one little quarter drive away. Yeah, I bet
(22:20):
it would be so disappointing if you could go see
a recreation of that set today, you know. Uh yeah,
it's like I said at the Cheers bar once, the
real the not the one in Boston, but the where
they shot the TV show, Okay, And it's just everything
is just always smaller, you know. And in She's tiny,
(22:43):
she was like in my beer mug. Yeah, I was
gonna say the one in Boston. It's like nothing like
the set, So I thought that's where you were going.
I didn't realize you've been on the actual set. Yeah,
that's when I did my famous extra stint on Dear
John and Cheers was next door. I okay, I don't
another story. Yeah, yeah, when my brother he worked on
(23:04):
Dear John, and I went out to visit him and
he got me on as an extra. I played a
bus boy in a restaurant scene. Yeah. I'd love to
get a copy of that. Actually, impost it. Yeah, I
want to see that. It was pretty good. That was
my first encounter, like real encounter with a film business,
and I was like, this is a weird thing to do.
This is the life for me. I'm gonna play bus
boys all my life and one day I'm gonna have
(23:25):
a short lived t failure of a TV show myself.
All right, So where were we? We were talking about
a TV show? Oh no, no, no, we were talking
about coming back from the break. And I wanted to
mention you said earlier that when we first intro that
sometimes this stuff like does more harm. And this this
(23:46):
one per Due University study I thought was really interesting
because it found that drinking sugar or eating and drinking
sugar free stuff with diet drinks mainly UH can actually
mess with your body's ability to naturally count calories, because
it it just messes up what the body recognizes as
(24:08):
real sweet and real calories, which can make that which
can make you fatter. Right, Yeah, Apparently there's been a
number of studies, including like really really good longitudinal longitudinal
studies like the San Antonio Heart Study, that have found that, um, like,
high levels of diet soda intake are correlated with obesity,
(24:31):
meaning everything else equal, the person who drinks more diet
soda is likelier to be obese, which makes zero sense.
It's it's pretty confounding, right. The whole reason, or one
of the big reasons people drink diet soda is so
they can lose weight, But it turns out that they're
actually more likely to be obese. And I should say
(24:51):
compared to people who don't drink diet diet soda, not
compared to people who drink non diet soda. That's not
to say, like, yeah, diet coke drinker is more likely
to be obese than a coke drinker. It's a diet
coke drinker is more likely to be obese than somebody
who just drinks water. And this produced study really like
gives some insight to that. Basically, we our body tells
(25:14):
us how many calories we need to take in, and
part of that is based on how sweet something is.
So once we start drinking and ingesting these artificial sweeteners,
it just it goose everything up. It basically says that
our body doesn't associate sweetness with higher calories anymore. Yeah, right,
because with with something like artificial sweetened soda. Right when
(25:37):
you when you eat food, your body has a couple
of pathways that it rewards you for saying, hey, good job,
eat you ate food. I'm gonna make it so that
you want to eat food again. And one is the
gustatory pathway or gustatory component, which is like the taste,
the smell, the the sensation that you get from eating
like good food or like something sweet and delicious, and
(26:01):
that just activates your limbic system like crazy, Your reward
pathway goes nuts. Right, But when you eat stuff, you
also have the second component, which is um where you're satiated,
the feeling that you get that great pleasant feeling of
being like nice and pleasantly full from eating, right, and
that counters that gustatory excitement. So normally when you eat food,
(26:27):
you you get the excitement from the taste of it,
and then ultimately you'll also get the nice, pleasant feeling
from being full from it. Not so with an artificial
sweetened soda. Instead, you get the excitement your sugar rushes
going off, but you're never gonna get full. And since
we're nothing but junkies as far as like our brains
(26:48):
are wired, we're just gonna keep drinking more and more
and more because that sugar center is going off and
we're never getting full, so it's never counteracted. We just
always crave more and more and more. Yeah, And of course,
like you said, these ease, there's always an opposite one
that it was debunked as flawed um by the National
Soft Drink Association. Yeah, so then you try they just
(27:10):
said wrong. But that's not that produced studies not the
only study. There have been plenty of other studies that
have looked into this and have found the same thing
that that there's there's that our bodies are being tricked,
that we're no longer associating sweet foods with high calorie foods,
and that it's leading to eating more high calorie foods.
(27:32):
So that if you eat something that actually is sweet
and has calories. You're gonna eat more of it than
you would have before because your brain is not used
to saying I've got enough calories from this, I can
stop eating it now, playing tricks on your body. Yeah.
And plus also apparently with these these things that are
three hundred five hundred seven thousand times sweeter than sugar,
(27:55):
which is what our body is used to, is some
form of sugar. Um, the the sensation of sweetness is amplified,
and so it kind of mutes sweetness and other things
like fruit or any any other complex tastes, like in vegetables.
So we end up just craving more and more sweet
stuff because everything else tastes terrible compared to this ultra
(28:19):
sweet stuff that we're eating and drinking. And if you
stop drinking like like soda or diet soda or whatever,
stop eating junk food for even just like a week
or so, when you go back to it, it's amazing
how sweet that stuff actually is. It's it's like a
smack in the face, but you realize, like, wow, I've
(28:39):
really been used to this for a while, because I
don't remember it tasting this sweet. Yea, and my headaches
are are now gone because I'm drinking this again exactly well,
and the other thing too. And I know we covered
a little bit of this and the high fruit dost
corn sir it. But part of the problem is is
the ubiquity of this stuff. It's um, I think which
one was it was it aspartame that's in Yeah, aspertain
(29:03):
is in six thousand, more than six thousand products like
soft you know, soft drinks of course, gum uh, puddings,
dessert mixes, gelatin, frozen desserts, fillings, yogurts uh, and then
and you know, of course people just dump it right
into their coffee too, and it's purest form. But um,
unless you're really a stickler about looking at food labels,
(29:26):
you're getting way way more then the maximum recommended levels
that you should be ingesting of this stuff, because it
might be like I said in the I got a
sore throat, so I took the cough drop and now
chewing gum. Now I'm using toothpaste, and it's all over
the place right exactly. And that's another part of the
problem where even if the FDA is doing its job
(29:48):
and does all this research and looks at the medical literature, Um,
they may say, Okay, this stuff is safe at this level.
This is the maximum recommended amount that a person should
have and still be within the safe zone per day.
So don't put more than this in your soda. Okay, great,
go forth and prosper. And then that soda becomes a
(30:09):
success and other people start using that sweetener, and then
it's like you said, like with aspartain, it's everywhere, so
that the people are getting that amount just from that
that that soda with aspertain that they're drinking, but they're
also getting it from all these other places, and the
levels rise very quickly. Yeah, and some folks get I mean,
there's a definite um soft drink addiction problem. Um, even
(30:31):
with the diet SODA's I've known people who literally drank
like a couple of two liters a day of this stuff. Sure. Yeah,
like just constantly drinking soda all day long, from the
moment they get up till the moment they go to
bed as diet. So it's no big deal exactly. And Um,
there's actually a study that I came across. Um. I
(30:51):
didn't see where the study was from, but this is
it was mentioned on this um Harvard Health blog um.
It was a rat study where rats were given the
choice between oral saccharine and intravenous cocaine um after they've
been acclimated to both, and they tended to choose the saccharin. Wow,
that's crazy, Yeah slightly. Did they go round and round? Sorry,
(31:16):
then they're probably like, I've heard about that cocaine. I'm
not doing that, but I will do this Sacharin. By
the way, there's a h an audio interview on YouTube
with the drummer from the band Rat that's like an
hour and twenty minutes long that you should, I mean,
try and get through fifteen or twenty minutes of it.
(31:37):
But the way I saw it is someone said this
is the Donald Trump of of eighties hair metal? Was
it a contemporary like today? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. He basically
has a new group that does Rat songs, and I
think it's he's just the drummer that's the original member
and and just goes off for like an hour and
a half about how great they are and about how
(31:59):
that to the real stuff, and how they sound better
than the original Rat ever sounded, and and and it's
really something like I've never heard someone who was more
full of themselves than this, dude. It was hysterical, was
really wonderful. Well, how many songs could they possibly play?
They just play round and round like like twelve or
thirteen times at a show. They had a few hits.
(32:21):
All I remembers round and Round? No they uh, well,
I'll think on it. I'll bet your thinking of Cinderella
or docin No, I think Doc can have more hits
than Rat. Now they had lay it down? Remember that one? No,
(32:42):
can you sing it? Sure? You do? Lay it down
right now? And then they had wanted Man No Man Now,
and then You're in Love No, and way cool Jr.
They had I would say for genuine sort of hits,
I really honestly, I remember round and Round and that's it. Well,
(33:02):
they were a little bit pore your time too. Round
and Round was a pretty good song. Though. It's a
great song. Rat what's that? Should we should just end
the show? Actually, let's take a break and then we're
gonna come back and talk specifically about some of these sweeteners.
Is that sound good? It sounds sweet. I can't believe
(33:43):
you don't remember You're in love? Well, you're not thinking it,
so how could I possibly remember it? And lay it down?
Those were two big, big hits. I mean, I'm telling you, like,
I was paying a lot of attention to eighties hair
metal when it was when it was out. Bet you'd
probably be like, oh, I know that song. M um. Alright,
(34:04):
remember remember Striper, the Christian hair metal band. I saw
a Striper and concert, my friend, did you the fabulous
Fox Theater in I did awesome? Uh? Well it was
they had. They had more than one hit, didn't they. Yeah,
I was. I was way into that in my early
youth group days. Strip they rocked about as tough as
(34:27):
you could get. I don't know about that, but they
definitely rocked, for sure. I don't know about that. Well,
they definitely wore a lot of spandex. Their drummer played sideways.
That was his big trick. They set up. They set
it up completely sideways on the stage. He's not actually
playing sideways then, No, no, no, he's playing straight ahead.
(34:48):
He just has the drum kit sideways. That was the gimmick.
Huh Yeah, that in religion pretty good? All right, So
let's talk about Sacharin. Let's that was it's actually the
Latin word for sugar um. And that was the one
we said earlier, which is the O g uh discovered
by two chemists named John's and Hopkins. Well, that's it.
(35:12):
That's so two guys claimed it. One was definitely in
the lab because he was the one who uh licked
his well, he ate a bread roll. I guess that
was sweet and he was like, I don't think this
is supposed to be sweet, and came to realize it
was soaking the coal tar that was on his fingers. Yeah, oh,
(35:33):
I thought you meant it was sitting in a little
pool of cold tar. And he like, notice it. He
was warming it up on the bunts and burner. Uh so, yeah,
that an accidental discovery. And it is three hundred times
sweeter than sugar. Yeah, and this is one of the
ones that is no calorie because his is not metabolized
by the body at all. And it is very famous,
(35:55):
well I don't know, but famous, but the drink tab,
the soft drink tab um. It was very famous for
being sweetened in a big way by saccharin. Right, which
means that from the I think nine seven till nineteen
nine seven, maybe there was a warning label on tab
(36:19):
that said, quote use of this product maybe hazardous to
your health. This product contains sacharin, which has been determined
to cause cancer and laboratory animals. Do you remember that
warning label on it? Yeah? And um, you can also
still find I mean, it's not like it went away.
It's that is what sweeten low is. And if you
drink fountain diet coke or pepsi fountain pepsi, you're gonna
(36:42):
have saccharin in there. Yea. And Emily was big on
the fountain diet cokes. She's like, it's just not the
same form can and I called it you. I was like,
it's because of sacharin. Sure what she's off fers now
too though, Yeah, that'll do it. But but what's weird?
So I've read this really great post on today I
found out, which is an excellent website by the way,
(37:04):
um and they they wrote about the discovering sacharin and
then the controversy, the health controversies of sacaran, and the
case they make is that it's it's it's basically the
victim of bad science reporting, public public fear basically, and
that if you're a rodent, yes you should not be
drinking tab because there there there was discovery of bladder
(37:28):
cancer and other types of cancer, but specifically bladder cancer
in lab rats that were being fed sacharin and um.
I guess before they figured out exactly why, the media
went and extrapolated it onto people, and so in the
public's mind it became, uh, sacharin will give you bladder cancer.
And then by the time they went and researched what
(37:50):
was going on. There's like the specific I think, the
specific parts of rat urine um we're combining with the
saccharine to form these things called micro crystals in the bladder,
which is tearing up the bladder lining so frequently that
as the cells were regenerating, the potential for them to
(38:11):
to grow out of control and become tumors was increased,
and so the lab rats were getting um bladder cancer.
The thing is is the lab rats urine is not
the same as humans urine um, and so we just
don't get bladder cancer too from tab apparently or from saccharin. Well. Yeah,
(38:32):
and one of the things, I mean, I never really
knew this how they exactly tested. I figured because it
was a rat, they would just give them, like, you know,
a few drops or something because they're tiny. But they
apparently dose these lab mice and rats with lots of
these additives, large large doses, and apparently that's to compensate
for the fact that they don't use a lot of
(38:55):
mice and rats. Yeah, which I'm not I don't follow
the logic there, there isn't any. And then they follow
it up with, Wow, that that seems to have really
gotten on top of you. How about some intravenous cocaine
to pure per cua. Well, they also said that large
doses compensate for possibilities that rodents maybe less sensitive to it. Yeah,
(39:16):
but I've also read elsewhere that the stuff that there,
they're the tests they're conducting at least on humans too,
are are not real world tests. It's like, Oh, you
just drank a twelve ounce diet coke and now we're
going to base all of our medical recommendations on the
impact that has on your body. They're not taking into account,
(39:38):
like you said, the guy who drinks to two leaders
or two twelve packs of diet coke a day thirty
years right exactly, and the like, this stuff is generally
just too new for us to have any like studies
on long term effects of them, so we really just
don't know. I mean it's I don't like, I don't
want to foster um paranoia fear, yeah, or paranoia or
(40:02):
even just yeah, fear paranoia. But like, the jury is
still out as far as I'm concerned. Agreed. UH. For
its part, though, sacharine was removed from the n I
h S list of carcinogens, and they did remove that
warning label in the late nineties. Like you said, yeah,
and I should say, I'm not specifically talking about sacarin.
(40:24):
I'm talking about artificial sweeteners in in general. Yeah, totally,
the jury is still out. But onto aspartame, that's one
of the big targets these days. UM Equal Nutra sweet
and neutral Taste are the brand names that it's sold under.
And this is UH. It's a derivative of a couple
of amino acids, um aspartic acid and Finni lalaleena. Yeah,
(40:52):
it's been around since nine Uh. And this was a
chemist named Jim Schladder Um a part of a company
that which is now Fighter. And he was the one
that was licking his finger to pick up paper and
studying an anti ulcer drugs and went, hey, I taste
undred times sweeter than sugared at me, right, and so
that's what it's used for. Oh yeah, well I don't
(41:16):
think they treat ulcers with it anymore. No. But the
weird thing about UM aspartame is more in how it's
broken down in the body. I think, um, yeah, because
it is metabolized. Yeah, And this just blew my mind.
I had no idea that something like that could break
down into methanol in your body. Yeah, wood alcohol. Weird.
(41:38):
I mean that's one of three things. Is spartic acid,
uh and then finnil l laen la la nine and
methanol is what it breaks down into. That's just crazy, right.
And So if you UM do not have this disorder
called p KU or phenol keto neurea UM, it's the
wood alcohol you have to pay attention to. But if
(41:59):
you have PK, you then you've got a big problem
with the phenyl alanine because you're you're missing an enzyme
that breaks that down, and uh, it can build up
in your brain and create brain damage in you. So
people who have UM p KU or phenel ketoeurea UM
can't have aspartame at all because of that. But for
(42:21):
people who do not have p KU, you still have
to worry about the methane, although that would alcohol if
I'm if I remember correctly. Isn't that the stuff that
the US government used to poison the illicit um alcohol
supply with and a bunch of people went blind and
died back into prohibition. I think it was wood alcohol,
(42:43):
And it's just so toxic. And normally when we when
we consume something that has would alcohol in it, um
there it's in the presence of ethanol, and that's it's
absorbed differently. The out the ethanol kind of like um
uh neutralizes it a little bit. But in aspertame, we're
(43:06):
it's breaking down into methanol without the presence of ethanol,
and so we're absorbing this toxic component. Um just straight up. Yeah.
Ten percent of asport tame is absorbed as methanol, and
the e p A says, uh, there's a recommended limit
of seven point eight milligrams per day of methanol and
drinking one leader of an aspartame sweeten beverage contains fifty
(43:29):
six milligrams of methanol. Well of well as what is
that saying fifty six milligrams of absorbed methanol or fifty
six milligrams of aspartame. I think I don't know. I
think that means methanol. That's how I took it eight
(43:49):
times a recommended amount in one leader of an aspertame
sweet and beverage. That's not good. Well, and like you
were saying, how the ethanol counterbalances it, it's the same
as the UH amino acids. They're naturally part of our diet,
but usually when we consume it there it's counterbalanced by
other amino acids, and in the case of aspartame, it
(44:10):
doesn't have those, so it's just consuming it on its own, right,
So you're getting it in very high doses basically. And
there's been at least one study that is linked um
types of different types of cancers in female rats to
aspartain consumption. Right, but again, no official studies show any
(44:31):
official problems, well none that the FDA is pointing to.
Like that was Europe. They're overprotective. Yeah, but this is
one of the ones too, that that arms program where
you can call in and report things. I think it
counts for sevent of all complaints. They're like, I'm dizzy,
I got headaches, I've got seizures, got fatigue. It's killing me.
(44:54):
It's killing me, Doc, you gotta do something. What's next?
Super lows sucralose like splenda, So sucralos is um. Splenda's
marketed or it was marketed with the kind of slogan
made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar, right, And
apparently they got sued by the sugar industry because, um,
(45:17):
I guess people thought that splenda was natural. I think
there was a um there was some sort of pole
that found like fifty seven percent of people thought that
splenda was a natural artificial sweetener and it's not. It's
actually you take a sugar molecule and then you take
out three of the hydroxyl groups, hydrogen and oxygen groups,
(45:38):
and you replace those with chlorine. This is always a
good move. That's no longer sugar. Nope, that's not sugar anymore.
It's not natural either. So what what you have? A
sucralose and sucralose is um six hundred times sweeter than
sugar and it's not metabolized by the body, so it's
calorie free. But there have been studies that have found
(45:58):
that it might not be my bablized by the body,
but it's absorbed by the body has been found in
the blood immediately after drinking a can of sucralow sweetened soda,
and it's also been found in breast milk too, from
mothers who have drank uh sucralose sweeten drinks. Yeah, and
sucralose is one of those you're gonna find because it
holds up to heat, so you're gonna find it in
(46:18):
a lot of baked goods or you know, like process
baked goods or in um. The I was about to
call them kits. What are they called the easy bake covin? No,
you know when you got to make a cake and
you get the stuff mix, Yeah, the mix, not a kit.
I like kit though, that's good. I need a cake kit.
(46:42):
I don't. I don't know what you mean, pal book
And it's been a long day, please leave me alone.
But Splenda is one of the biggest, um probably heaviest
used sweetener. Just like I was gonna call it over
the counter sweetener. But when you just use it for
a sweetener alone, to sweeten sweeten your tea or your
coffee or whatever. Yeah, like you see a lot of
(47:03):
splendid because as that little green leaf on it. No,
it's Splendid. I thought Splendid was the yellow one. Oh,
Stevie is the one with the green Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's right. You're right. Yeah, Stevie actually is natural. It
comes from a plant. Okay, alright, I feel much better
about the green leaf. Yes, super loser. Splendis sugar with chlorine.
(47:25):
Oh yeah, Splendid that yellow packet, that's right. Yeah, sweeten
load was pink Yep, Stevia has got the green leaf.
I used to dump that Sweeten loan in my iced
tea when I was a kid because I knew no better.
Did you really, wow? Well, because you know you put
sugar in cold iced tea, it does nothing but just
go to the bottom. I know. It's absolutely frustrating. And
(47:46):
then I was like, oh wait a minute, I'm from Georgia.
I need to be drinking sweet and tea, which is,
while they're brewing it, they dump in a full one
pound bag of sugar so much like they say down here,
that the straws us to stand straight up in the tea.
And that's how you know when you have enough sugar
in your sweet tea. Yeah. I don't drink sweet teo
much anymore, but boy, I love it. Yeah, I do too.
(48:08):
It's really good. UM so super lose uh. For it's
worth isn't as controversial in the public sphere as aspartame
is UM. But there was a report the FDA that
said it's approved, but it did cause minor genetic damage
and mouse cells. But it was minor and weekly muta
(48:29):
genetic may cause may cause light cancer. Uh. And like
you said, they weren't they sued by the sugar industry,
didn't you say that? Yeah, I don't know what the
outcome was. I don't know. I haven't heard that slogan
in a while. So I bet the sugar industry one. Yeah,
now it's just splenda, you know the deal. Yeah, you know.
(48:52):
We used to say just think, just think, think hard,
google it. Uh. And then finally we have sugar alcohols,
which I wasn't super familiar with. Actually I am, because
I up until this week showed a lot of sugar
free gum and UM. A lot of it is is
(49:13):
sweetened with sugar alcohols, which is it's um. It's where
you take a sugar and you add a hydrogen atom
to it. So there's stuff like um sorb at all
zylas all um a thir tall. I even practiced that
one therapy. Yes, thank you, had a little trouble with it.
(49:34):
But um, they don't have calories because they're not typically
absorbed by the body, although some some actually do have
just about as money calories as sugar, so you do
have to kind of watch it. Um. But sugar alcohols
typically are used less for weight loss and more for
(49:55):
um like uh sugar or blood sugar control, like among
people with diabetes. Because so it might have the calories,
but it doesn't it doesn't have the glycemic load that
that sugar does. UM, and even some artificial sweeteners too.
But they taste really really good. They're they're about as
close to sugar as you can possibly get, UM and
(50:17):
still have fewer calories or whatever. The problem with them
is that they can um. They're like butterfish. They caused
the anal leakage. Yeah, I'm gonna bring that up every
chance I get. You know, I think we have our
first great band name of too, not antal leakage, but
(50:41):
glycemic load only. No one wants to hear that. No,
it's like diarrhea planet. Oh yeah, did poop knife? Is
that what it was? You're telling diarrhea Planet to to
change the knife and they yeah, they tweeted never never,
who are you? Um, yeah, so that lacksative effect. Um,
(51:05):
if you have a daily dose of fifty grams or
twenty grams, fifty grams of the sorb at all or
twenty grams of the man at all has to be
labeled that it has a lacksative effect. Yeah, But the
Center for Science and the Public Interest says no, no, no no,
Only ten grams of sorb at all can make you
poop your pants, So maybe you guys should lower it
(51:25):
for that warning. And the FDA said, look, man, we're
taking a nap away. They're like, why can we just
have people on the verge of pooping their pants? But
not quite right? Oh dear, yeah, I saw an alternative
to all this, you know, Oh what real sugar. That
is one alternative. And the thing is is, yeah, the
(51:47):
the upshot of all this is, well, maybe sugar is
not so bad. We're fine, sugar is pretty bad for you,
and so is like high fruit toast corncerpt But there
are plenty of like natural forms of sugar too, like
unref fine raw demorerra sugar or honey. There's a lot
of places you can get sweetness that aren't necessarily bad
(52:07):
for you, right, Um, but then if you're super hip
with the science too, you might be in favor of
what are called sweet tasting proteins. And these are actually
pretty cutting edge from what I've seen. There's seven that
have been identified so far. All of them come from
plants that grow in the rainforest. And um, they are proteins.
They're not carbohydrates, their actual proteins. So they they yeah, yeah,
(52:33):
the Paraguayan and sweet chicken, Paragua and sweetbird. Yeah they
they they So they're not gonna they're not gonna raise
your glycemic index like your blood sugar. They're not going
to lead to weight gain. Um, they're they're just proteins.
And apparently some of them are quite sweet, and they're
looking into using those as an alternative to the artificial sweeteners,
(52:55):
which were the alternative to sugar, so they can decimate
the rainforest and yet another way, well hopefully this will
help them protect the rainforce something. No, no, no, this
is where our sweet comes from. Stop cutting it down. Okay,
keep keep your fingers crossed. They're crossed. Okay, that's all
I got. That's all I got. So that's artificial sweeteners everybody.
(53:15):
If you want to know more about those, you can
tact those words in the search bar at how stuff
works dot com and um the nooid will appear. And
since I said noid, it's time for listener now, I'm
gonna call this warmed my heart over the holidays, Scotch Hi, Yeah,
(53:36):
that too, Hi, Josh and Chuck Um, Grace and I'm
seventeen years old and the oldest of three sisters, Lily
Rose ten great names. We started listening to your podcast
in two thousand nine when our parents split up and
we moved a state away from our dad. As a tradition,
now we always listen to a podcast of yours to
(53:57):
this very day when we are traveling between the two
states with our dad. It's been such a fun way
to pass the time during road trips. Your podcasts have
been the source of so many interesting conversations, such a
wonderful way to bring our family together over the years.
For instance, all three of us girls vividly remember the
Vulture episode for no apparent reason, and found the Haunted
(54:17):
House episode oddly cool. Uh. Lily, who was the fifteen
year old she enjoys the Halloween story episodes. Rose ten
thinks it's funny when you guys get off track. God
bless you, Rose uh. And I really like to annoy
my friends with all the useless facts that I now know.
We are such hardcore fans that we even had marathons
(54:37):
of your TV series Whoa. And we have literally been
a fan of you guys since you started. Thanks for
being a part of our childhood. Love the Harvey family.
That's fantastic and they fantastic. It was great. And they
sent a picture of Dad and behind the wheel Uh
driving with it looks like Grace upfront and Lilian Rose
(55:00):
in the back and they were all just smiling and
just just they just had this lovely aura about them.
Thanks to us, No thanks to the Vulture episode. Anyway,
I love the Harvey family now they're they're tops on
my list. Yeah, thanks a lot, Harvey family for writing in.
We appreciate that big time. And the old man Harvey,
(55:20):
you're doing the right thing, sir, yep, keep both hands
on the wheel, that's right. If you want to get
in touch with us like the Harvey's did to let
us know how much of a role we've played in
your life. We love hearing that kind of stuff. You
can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark and
we're also at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
(55:41):
You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics because it how stuff Works dot com.
(56:10):
Mhm
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