Chemicals?!?!? And how bad they are???

Show me the bodies...

I'm curious what the fascination with these people is. In my extremely limited experiences with them they just seem like two nice people who play poker for fun?

Well if you suck at poker and ur a slob at least you can make a living with silly prop bets. Hope bill busts them both.

He also did not lose the weight drinking diet coke, he lost the weight working out and eating healthier and counting cards & having a trainer basically telling him his every move. So I would say he did all this also while drinking some diet coke during the time but I wouldn't say it helped ( or possibly hurt ) in anyway, More of a non factor.

Counting cards is one of the most important things re: weight loss

Think you might actually be the most toxic poster on 2+2

Any actual science to back up your claims?

When you are trying to prove a point and you say "I would also guess..." multiple times that doesn't really lend yourself to be taken seriously. I've spent countless hours trying to find large-scale, repeatable studies that show aspartame/diet coke are bad for you/have negative health effects, and it just doesn't exist. It reminds me of anti-vaxxers who claim Thimerosal in vaccines was causing all of these negative health effects like Autism based on a couple "scientific" studies that were later debunked. That is the problem with many things similar to this... people think "logically, I could see this (aspartame/diet sodas) having many negative health effects" and then find small-scale studies to back up their claims (confirmation bias). It's the same process for many conspiracy theories.

If you have hard evidence to back up your hypothesis that aspartame/diet sodas are bad for you, please let me know.

It's bad for your weight and its bad for your health.
Everyone who say's its not bad are either working for pharma or cocacola or ist just naive...

My personal reference is my grandma:
-she took aspartame for many years
-diabetes --->check
-brain cancer ---->check
-dementia ---->check

some links:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387446/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20886530
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21176433
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24436139
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7936222
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...?dopt=Abstract

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutriti...al-sweeteners/

A large observational study of French women showed that both sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and LCS beverages were linked with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. [3] The authors noted that a high intake of SSBs have been associated with weight gain, possibly due to lower satiety and increased blood sugar and insulin levels, leading to insulin resistance. LCS beverages may also cause weight gain by stimulating appetite and a sweet preference in some people. However, this may be due to the problem of reverse causation in observational studies (i.e., when people who are overweight or have prediabetes begin drinking LCS beverages to improve their blood sugar control, which produces a false association between higher LCS beverage intake and future risk of developing diabetes).

Reverse causation may also explain the finding from a meta-analysis of 17 cohort studies showing an 18% higher incidence of type 2 diabetes with SSBs and 25% higher incidence with LCS beverages, compared with no intake of these drinks. [4] In a detailed analysis of data from the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study, the positive association observed between LCS beverage intake and type 2 diabetes incidence was largely explained by higher baseline BMI and metabolic conditions, which might have led to increased beverage intake in the first place. [5]
In three large prospective cohort studies of U.S. men and women, intake of SSBs was associated with an average 3-pound weight gain within each 4-year time period. Substituting the same amount of SSBs with water or LCS beverages was associated with less weight gain (about 1 pound) within each 4-year time span. [6]

Writing on phone with a non english auto-corrrect is really hard
What I was trying to get across was exactly what u are saying, I'm definetly not saying that diet coke was the reason he lost weight

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/p...gnore&u=351554

Aspartame is literally (and I literally mean literally, not figuratively) the most studied and scrutinized food additive in existence, and large scale meta-review after large scale meta-review keep on showing that it, in non-insane doses, has no ill effects.

The idea that it spikes insulin is nonsense and this has been shown to be nonsense (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2923074 I can link twenty more like this btw). The very thought is actually absurd: if something would spike insulin because it tasted good, by the same logic something that tastes really bad but contains a ton of carbs would not cause a release in insulin and wham-bam the human body is destroyed. Obviously ridiculous. Even IF it did spike insulin it wouldn't mean anything since insulin can't magically store calories that don't exist.

That individual food sensitivites exist which may make some people very sensitive to aspartame isn't even worth talking about. There are people that die if they eat a peanut. Peanuts are still a safe food.

Papers comparing groups of people who ingest aspartame and see that they are fatter/unhealthier/whatever are also not very relevant since it's all pretty much reverse causation (did you know that people who ingest omega-3 are more likely to die from cancer than those who don't? Think about that one for a while). And certainly not relevant when considering a situation where the subjects track their food intake. Zero-calorie sweetened beverages help a lot of people stay sane and enjoy a taste of something nice while trying to get into shape. Stop demonizing it with ideology-driven drivel.

No, he's wrong and studies suggest the opposite. Does low-energy sweetener consumption affect energy intake and body weight? A systematic review, including meta-analyses, of the evidence from human and animal studies.

+1 Great post!

My personal reference is my granddad who has been smoking and drinking coke light for as long as I know, he is 80 years old and in great condition!

If you're so bad at statistics that you think that a personal reference has any relevance poker is not for you.

Loctus, thank you for the well-informed rebuttal to JohnnyJam's post. Saved me quite a bit of time.

Looks like Jaime lost weight again and is back at his all-time low. I still think they don't stand a chance at the bet but it's good to see that he's doesn't fall back to his old weight.

https://www.health.com/health/galler...-2-diabetes--0

They promote weight gain, increase the risk of diabetes and dental problems, for starters.

And if you don't like the popular press source, here are 28 review articles published in peer reviewed scientific journals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...et+soda+review

Here is one of the articles you listed...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5484596/

I don't need some fancy scientist to tell me whether or not diet soda is bad for you and makes you fat. Of course it does dummies!

There is a chemical in diet soda that increases appetite. But keep believing whatever study big soda paid for.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...95666312004138

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314345.php

Basically in double blind studies using mice and the SAME CALORIC INTAKE aspartame was shown to cause weight gain. Case closed.

Well, **** you for making me spend like 30 minutes reading the study trying to find the part about SAME CALORIC-INTAKE, THE ONLY PART OF YOUR ENTIRE POST THAT YOU BOLDED AND IT ISN'T TRUE.

I mean, seriously, how do you write a post on a topic, go through some stuff, and then decide to make up the part which you put in bold letters? Impressive. The mice were fed ab libitum. Which is, like, you know, the opposite to "same caloric intake" - the mice were allowed infinite food. Although I guess there may be some logic in saying to two people "Hey eat as much as you want" - and then claiming "they had the same caloric intake......... unlimited"

By the way, the mice given the regular chow diet had no differences in body weight, and the aspartame group there had more aspartame than the high fat group (where there was a weight difference between the aspartame group and non-aspartame group). Wiggle your head around explaining that one.

edit: It's absolutely hilarious that you call the study double blind, by the way. You don't even know what double blind means. If you did, you wouldn't call a rodent study double blind since one of the parts of "double blind" is that the subjects aren't told what experimental group they belong to. I mean, I guess they didn't tell the rodents here which experimental group they were in so it could technically be considered a single-blind study
Yes this has descended into me just mocking you.

If your post is a level then A+ for you, but I don't think it is

I think there was maybe a thousand words in each article. Should take a lot less time than 30mins to read both and get the information.

Is it really that hard to believe that a chemical sweetener that is literally hundreds of times sweeter than sugar is unhealthy? Isn't that logical?

I didn't realize your links were about to separate studies, so was stuck going through the 2nd one trying to find it

I do have to say that the first (brazil) study's results are strange. Of course the rats (no matter how different their metabolic pathways may be from humans) shouldn't gain unequal amount of weight with the same calories consumed. Which the researchers seem to acknowledge. The sweeteners don't magically make energy out of thin air, which the result of that study basically show (but the authors acknowledge there must be something funky going on, they just don't know what).

By the way, the results of the 2nd study you linked are contrary to the first one, since in 2nd study the group with the highest aspartame intake didn't gain more weight than their control group did. So... Yea. Rats.

"Is it really that hard to believe that a chemical sweetener that is literally hundreds of times sweeter than sugar is unhealthy? Isn't that logical?"
Thing is, it doesn't seem to be unhealthy. Ya know. That's what this all is about.

The 2 studies aren't contradictory. In the 2nd study there are 4 groups of mice not 2 and the group with a high fat diet AND artificial sweeteners gained weight. The 2 groups of mice on normal diet didn't show a difference in weight gain when one group had art sweetener and the other didnt.

If the artificial sweetener is slowing down metabolic processes than weight gain makes sense at same caloric intake. Its an equation. Calories in AND calories out. Something thats hundreds of times sweeter than sugar causes your body to go into a fat storing hibernation mode. Slows your metabolism. Stop thinking diet soda ain't bad for you. Just apply some logic. It's unhealthy af.

Are you even willing to admit you're wrong or are you so convinced that because your personal logic tells you aspartame is bad and you think anyone with proof to the contrary is paid by the soda companies you will continue to hang on to this conspiracy theory regardless?

I'd be willing to admit I was wrong if I thought I was. But I don't think I am. I think I cited proof why it's bad. Maybe you missed it.