Is Stevia Really Any Different than Sugar?

in #life6 years ago (edited)

badscience.jpg

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27956737
(main article)

Let's take a look at one of these "scientific" experiments to help us understand the rapidly changing world around us.

pubmed.gov is a very prominent site that PhDs in nutritional and health fields cite from.

The link is to one of the first and only human studies on the effects of non-nutritive sweeteners versus traditional sucrose(sugar).

BACKGROUND:
Substituting sweeteners with non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) may aid in glycaemic control and body weight management. Limited studies have investigated energy compensation, glycaemic and insulinaemic responses to artificial and natural NNS."

Non-nutritive sweetener is a sweetener with no calories. Like Stevia.

OBJECTIVES:
This study compared the effects of consuming NNS (artificial versus natural) and sucrose (65 g) on energy intake, blood glucose and insulin responses."

Pretty self-explanatory. Does Stevia affect energy intake, blood glucose and insulin responses differently than sugar?

METHODS:
Thirty healthy male subjects took part in this randomised, crossover study with four treatments: aspartame-, monk fruit-, stevia- and sucrose-sweetened beverages. On each test day, participants were asked to consume a standardised breakfast in the morning, and they were provided with test beverage as a preload in mid-morning and ad libitum lunch was provided an hour after test beverage consumption. Blood glucose and insulin concentrations were measured every 15 min within the first hour of preload consumption and every 30 min for the subsequent 2 h. Participants left the study site 3 h after preload consumption and completed a food diary for the rest of the day."

Monk fruit, stevia, aspartame(the stuff in diet coke), and sugar were compared. Each person drank a beverage with one of those sweeteners. An hour passed and the person was given an "ad libitum" lunch. Ad libitum means they can eat it however they want and as much as they want. It could have been a small meal, it could have been an entire buffet line.

Their blood glucose and insulin concentrations were measured after they drank the beverage every 15 minutes up until they ate lunch and afterwards.

RESULTS:
Ad libitum lunch intake was significantly higher for the NNS treatments compared with sucrose (P=0.010). The energy 'saved' from replacing sucrose with NNS was fully compensated for at subsequent meals; hence, no difference in total daily energy intake was found between the treatments (P=0.831). The sucrose-sweetened beverage led to large spikes in blood glucose and insulin responses within the first hour, whereas these responses were higher for all three NNS beverages following the test lunch. Thus, there were no differences in total area under the curve (AUC) for glucose (P=0.960) and insulin (P=0.216) over 3 h between the four test beverages."

The people who had Stevia and the other NNS ate significantly more. So they made up for the calories missed from not eating sugar. Blood glucose(blood sugar) was higher for those who drank the sugar drink before the meal, but after the meal the non-sugar beverage drinkers' blood sugar was higher. And if you use a graph and follow the "curve" of time across the entire 3 hours, the blood sugar levels are all about the same

And Finally

CONCLUSIONS:
The consumption of calorie-free beverages sweetened with artificial and natural NNS have minimal influences on total daily energy intake, postprandial glucose and insulin compared with a sucrose-sweetened beverage."

They conclude that things like Stevia have minimal influences on total daily energy intake, and glucose and insulin inside the body compared to sugar.

OK so what's wrong with this study?

Notice how they didn't mention what the subject's glucose and insulin levels were AFTER the beverage and BEFORE the meal.

How many of these subjects were in ketosis? On a ketogenic diet your body runs on ketones INSTEAD of glucose.

If you've got the typical american diet then as soon as the glucose levels drop, you make up for them. That's because sugar is habit forming. If you eat sugar, then stop, you go into withdrawal. Your body is stressed and the only way to relieve it is eating more sugar. Just like alcohol or cigarettes or literally every other addictive substance.

You may also have been wondering why they included the meal at all if they were measuring sugary drinks vs non-sugary drinks with stevia and monk fruit instead?

If you did not have glucose in your system because your body was in ketosis then you wouldn't crave sugar or carbs. If you had a beverage with stevia in it your appetite would not feel compelled to make up for the lack of glucose by putting more glucose into your body because there was no glucose there to begin with!

Maybe they just didn't think about that. Maybe they weren't really testing things for the ketogenic diet.

Read the Conclusion again:

The consumption of calorie-free beverages sweetened with artificial and natural NNS have minimal influences on total daily energy intake, postprandial glucose and insulin compared with a sucrose-sweetened beverage."

postprandial = after a meal.

What if the drink didn't have glucose? And then the meal didn't have glucose? You're telling me that if nothing you eat or drink has glucose or anything that can be converted into glucose(like high amounts of protein) that the glucose will magically appear because you tested it by feeding someone a meal that MAY OR MAY NOT have glucose? Oh you left that part out of the study too, huh?

Lies.

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