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Are Artificial Sweeteners Really Bad For You? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. The
0:17
Speaker 1: three Musketeers together again after so long, so many weeks
0:23
Speaker 1: of holidays and time off and rest and relaxation, back
0:28
Speaker 1: at it again, which which makes this stuff you should
0:33
Speaker 1: know that's right hard to come back for you. No, No,
0:37
Speaker 1: I think it was just long enough and everything was
0:39
Speaker 1: just satisfying enough that I'm ready. I'm glad to be
0:42
Speaker 1: back at you. You're one of those weirdos. It's like
0:45
Speaker 1: I need to work right exactly, like my skin falls off.
0:50
Speaker 1: I've always said I would be a great lottery winner,
0:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, or retiree. Yeah, lottery winner is better. I
0:58
Speaker 1: guess it's it's the same thing. It's a tree. It
1:00
Speaker 1: doesn't have to sweat it right exactly, which is nice. Man.
1:05
Speaker 1: I just should tell people that we were discussing with
1:07
Speaker 1: Jerry um the word dulcet soar as your voice, Yes,
1:12
Speaker 1: dulcet tones. You didn't know the definition. I looked it up.
1:15
Speaker 1: Oh oh yes, I said sweet and soothing. But then
1:18
Speaker 1: in parentheses says often used ironically. I don't know what
1:23
Speaker 1: that is. It's a back in the compliment. I guess, Jerry,
1:26
Speaker 1: were you using it ironically? She actually, she didn't even nod.
1:31
Speaker 1: She's just sort of moving her face around. Her skin
1:35
Speaker 1: falls off to when she doesn't work. That's weird, weird.
1:39
Speaker 1: So sweet and new Guinea is what you said. That's uh,
1:44
Speaker 1: almond Joy's that's right, Mars bars Almond Joy's coconut sweet
1:50
Speaker 1: and soothing. Okay, I'll take that. Yeah, I still prefer
1:54
Speaker 1: muppety tenor. It's the greatest of all time. It's very
1:57
Speaker 1: eye opening for me. What oh that was it a
2:01
Speaker 1: article about us muppet eat dinner good stuff? So chuck. Yes,
2:09
Speaker 1: I know that you. Um, you're a health conscious dude.
2:14
Speaker 1: At the very least you're conscious of healthiness, right, I
2:18
Speaker 1: have to and for a very long time I made
2:20
Speaker 1: the switch, and um, one of the things that I
2:23
Speaker 1: learned was that one of the easiest ways you can
2:27
Speaker 1: lose weight very quickly is to just cut like sodas
2:31
Speaker 1: out of your diet. Yeah. See, my problem is I
2:33
Speaker 1: don't even drink SODA's right, So there's like a there's
2:37
Speaker 1: a whole step right there. Yeah, that's removed from you.
2:40
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's good, but in a way, right, but
2:44
Speaker 1: I mean there's just no low hanging fruit as it were,
2:46
Speaker 1: right as far as using corporate buzz speak ghosts unless
2:50
Speaker 1: you count gallons of booze, that's not low hanging, my friend,
2:54
Speaker 1: that's the top of the tree. That's last. She so um,
2:59
Speaker 1: when you stopped drinking soda, you you really do, like
3:02
Speaker 1: the pounds just fall off. It's insane, but you still
3:06
Speaker 1: want soda, right, I mean it's like the craving still there.
3:10
Speaker 1: And the um soda industry knew this, and they said, hey,
3:13
Speaker 1: we don't want to lose a bunch of revenue, let's
3:15
Speaker 1: start making diet sodas. And apparently originally they made them
3:22
Speaker 1: almost exclusively for people with diabetes. UM. Around the post
3:27
Speaker 1: World War two era, you could find diet sodas with
3:31
Speaker 1: basically an inscription or something like that, like it was
3:35
Speaker 1: inscribed on every hand who would say something like for
3:39
Speaker 1: people who must uh watch their sugar allotment or something
3:44
Speaker 1: like that. Right, and then as the soda industry is like,
3:47
Speaker 1: oh wait, wait, we can really like make weight loss
3:51
Speaker 1: an issue here and like help promote weight loss by
3:54
Speaker 1: saying for people who wish to watch their sugar intake right,
4:00
Speaker 1: and just that little tiny switch changed everything, and like
4:04
Speaker 1: the diet soda industry was born, so people have aggressive
4:07
Speaker 1: nudge in the right direction, pretty much like, hey, don't
4:10
Speaker 1: you think you should be washing your sugar intake chibs?
4:14
Speaker 1: You know, that's what's that's what's between the lines. So
4:17
Speaker 1: we've got these awesome diet sodas that are sweetened with
4:21
Speaker 1: artificial sweeteners. But of course there's nothing can possibly just
4:26
Speaker 1: be just good or just great because there's apparently we're
4:30
Speaker 1: starting to learn huge, massive problems with artificial sweeteners as well,
4:35
Speaker 1: problems so much that, um, they may be worse than
4:38
Speaker 1: than sugar, it turns out in a lot of cases. Yeah,
4:42
Speaker 1: I mean, when have we found and replaced something natural
4:47
Speaker 1: with something synthetic and have it been nothing but like
4:51
Speaker 1: a win win. I mean, I'm sure there's something, but
4:55
Speaker 1: it seems like there's always some kind of downside. I
4:57
Speaker 1: guess maybe like a robotic arm just better than the
5:01
Speaker 1: real arm, and what depends on the arm that it replaces.
5:04
Speaker 1: It could be he's saving up for your robotic arm transplant. Sure,
5:08
Speaker 1: all right, I'm tired of being weak on my right side,
5:11
Speaker 1: so you can crush those Coke zero cans exactly with
5:15
Speaker 1: more bigger. Oh well, I'm not drinking anything any longer.
5:18
Speaker 1: After researching this, I'm like, yep, I'm done with diet
5:21
Speaker 1: soda all together. Oh yeah, like like through not a
5:27
Speaker 1: this is in a phase or anything like that. I'm
5:28
Speaker 1: sure over the course of my life I will have
5:31
Speaker 1: like a giant like Coke zero at a movie or
5:34
Speaker 1: something like that, but I'm I'm generally just totally done
5:37
Speaker 1: with that. What are you going to constantly be drinking? Then? Well,
5:40
Speaker 1: to be honest, I'd already kind of started. I was
5:43
Speaker 1: drinking um, like mineral water a lot more, and I found,
5:47
Speaker 1: like once you just kind of switch over, the water,
5:51
Speaker 1: which used to just be disgusting, is actually kind of
5:54
Speaker 1: refreshing like this regular like like filtered water with ice.
5:59
Speaker 1: So funny, because you know, my history has always been
6:02
Speaker 1: heavy on the water. Sure, I know, like you're totally
6:05
Speaker 1: ahead of the game. It turns out well by accident,
6:08
Speaker 1: but I just I've always loved the water. That's just
6:10
Speaker 1: how your taste is always run well, and that's I
6:12
Speaker 1: was just raised on it. You know, I've said it before.
6:14
Speaker 1: Like milk and water. We just didn't have a lot
6:17
Speaker 1: of sodas in the house, and it just never really
6:19
Speaker 1: grabbed hold of me in that way, you know, right,
6:21
Speaker 1: But mixing milk and water, that's good. Then then you
6:25
Speaker 1: have fat free milk. Yeah, pretty much, at least thin milk. Now,
6:29
Speaker 1: drink whole milk. I'm all about it. So I'm off
6:32
Speaker 1: of the diat soodas forever. Wow. Well that's good for you.
6:38
Speaker 1: It is good. But if I want to brush my
6:40
Speaker 1: teeth or use mouthwash US takes, or take certain vitamins
6:46
Speaker 1: or something like that, I'm still running the risk of
6:51
Speaker 1: encountering artificial sweeteners because they're everywhere. Now. Yeah, well, let's
6:55
Speaker 1: back up a bit. Then that was a nice old
6:57
Speaker 1: school intro. By the way, thank you. That's what you
7:00
Speaker 1: get after you take a nice Christmas You've been rehearsing
7:03
Speaker 1: that one for weeks. Yeah, you woke up Christmas morning
7:08
Speaker 1: and you means just like, shut up. I'm like, no,
7:11
Speaker 1: I gotta practice. Um. All right, Well, we're talking about
7:15
Speaker 1: artificial sweeteners, but what we're really talking about, at its
7:19
Speaker 1: essence is sweet the sensation of sweetness. Um. And if
7:23
Speaker 1: you go back and listen to our I think pretty
7:26
Speaker 1: good episode on Taste from many years ago. Uh, we
7:30
Speaker 1: break it down pretty well as far as the receptors
7:34
Speaker 1: on our tongues, so we don't really need to rehatch that.
7:36
Speaker 1: But did you did you go back and listen to
7:38
Speaker 1: it doesn't really hold up. Yeah, it's not bad, um.
7:42
Speaker 1: I mean we get to the point there's not as
7:44
Speaker 1: much shenanigans. A lot of people prefer those. Yeah, we've
7:48
Speaker 1: added a lot of filler over the years. It's okay, um,
7:52
Speaker 1: But the the level of sweetness that we taste, it's
7:54
Speaker 1: gonna depend. You know, those they're those receptors on our
7:57
Speaker 1: tongue and they interact with those mala fuels and they
8:00
Speaker 1: have to fit, you know, the shape has to fits
8:02
Speaker 1: that weird thing that nobody really knows is going on
8:06
Speaker 1: on their tongue, that strange interaction is happening. Yeah, I
8:10
Speaker 1: remember from the Taste episode, like one of the theories
8:13
Speaker 1: is that it's the whole thing is happening on the
8:16
Speaker 1: quantum level. I remember correctly. Uh So, how much sweetness
8:22
Speaker 1: you're gonna taste, the level of sweet is gonna depend
8:25
Speaker 1: on your own receptors and how they're binding to that
8:28
Speaker 1: sweet sensation. So these artificial sweeteners, what they do is
8:32
Speaker 1: they found a way to elicit that same response as
8:36
Speaker 1: as we get from sugar, and basically that that's it.
8:40
Speaker 1: Some of them are, I mean, obviously they're generally a
8:44
Speaker 1: lower calorie version of sugar, although we'll get to some
8:47
Speaker 1: that aren't later. Uh. And the reasons for that is
8:50
Speaker 1: some of them, they're all different. But some of them
8:52
Speaker 1: are so sweet, like hundreds and even thousands of times
8:55
Speaker 1: sweeter than sugar, that they just need to use tiny,
8:58
Speaker 1: tiny bits of it, so it's basically no calorie. Other
9:02
Speaker 1: times we don't even synthesize and absorbit and metabolize it,
9:05
Speaker 1: so that makes it no calorie. Yeah, you get the taste,
9:08
Speaker 1: but then it just comes out of your pee or
9:10
Speaker 1: your poop. Yeah, but so no calories exactly. I thought
9:14
Speaker 1: that was pretty interesting because I've never really stopped and
9:16
Speaker 1: thought about why those things are no or low calories.
9:20
Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense. Yeah, like the idea that something
9:23
Speaker 1: is so sweet you need to use so little of
9:26
Speaker 1: it too, that you subvert the calorie uh system, the
9:29
Speaker 1: calory system. It's like, well, you can't even count that low.
9:33
Speaker 1: That many decimal places beneath one calorie. And the weird
9:37
Speaker 1: thing is to me is when you look at the
9:39
Speaker 1: histories of some of these artificial sweeteners, UM, and it's
9:43
Speaker 1: a little scary is that a lot of them were
9:45
Speaker 1: discovered by accident from these dumb scientists who are like
9:50
Speaker 1: trying to trying to discover something else or work on
9:53
Speaker 1: something else, and they're like, oh, let me look my
9:55
Speaker 1: finger and get a piece of paper, or let me
9:57
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette and not wash my hands, and they're like, oh,
10:00
Speaker 1: my hand tastes sweet. Yeah, I mean, and it really
10:03
Speaker 1: it drives home two things that chemists aren't really fixed
10:07
Speaker 1: on their UM their survival they have low survival skills.
10:11
Speaker 1: And then too that um, all these artificial sweeteners are
10:15
Speaker 1: in most cases extraordinarily they're synthetic compounds, you know, like um,
10:21
Speaker 1: saccharin was or is a derivative of coal tar that
10:25
Speaker 1: was accidentally discovered when they were trying to find a
10:27
Speaker 1: new die. And then I believe asper tame was a
10:33
Speaker 1: nonstarter ulcer drug. Yeah, and the dude was literally picking
10:37
Speaker 1: up paper and like licked his finger and said, well,
10:39
Speaker 1: that's in the how LSD that was an accident too.
10:42
Speaker 1: It was it was are no scientists washing their hands anymore. No,
10:46
Speaker 1: apparently now, at least not the chemists. Oh yeah, I
10:49
Speaker 1: guess so chemistry. I don't want to throw all of
10:51
Speaker 1: science under the snow. It's just the chemists who don't
10:55
Speaker 1: care where they live or die. Uh So anyway, saccharin
10:59
Speaker 1: would is one of the first or I guess d
11:01
Speaker 1: first artificial sweetener way back in nineteen eighteen seventy nine. Yeah,
11:07
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen seventy nine. Uh in eighteen seventy nine.
11:12
Speaker 1: That that was a scientist who did not wash his
11:15
Speaker 1: hands before dinner and notice it tasted sweet, and said,
11:19
Speaker 1: I think I have a new discovery on my hands. Yeah,
11:22
Speaker 1: literally on my hands, Yeah, and on my tongue. I'm boy,
11:26
Speaker 1: oh boys sweet. Yeah, And it's fine to think of that. Yeah,
11:29
Speaker 1: there's a lot of chemicals and compounds out there that
11:32
Speaker 1: we may have no clue actually taste sweet because we
11:36
Speaker 1: just haven't accidentally run across him yet because everyone's washing
11:39
Speaker 1: their hands now. Yeah. And plus also, sugar has just
11:44
Speaker 1: such great pr that you tend to think that it
11:46
Speaker 1: has the market cornered on the sweet sensation. But no,
11:50
Speaker 1: it's it's just one of many things that elicit that. Yeah, Uh.
11:54
Speaker 1: And the reason, well, there's a lot of artificial sweeteners.
11:56
Speaker 1: We're only gonna go over a handful in detail, but
11:59
Speaker 1: the res and there are, I mean, there are a
12:02
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One is just good old fashioned competition,
12:04
Speaker 1: of course, uh. And another is you can't use them
12:07
Speaker 1: all in the same way. Like some hold up under baking,
12:10
Speaker 1: some don't. Uh. Some you can just dust in a
12:13
Speaker 1: throat lozenge, and another might be good in a cake batter,
12:17
Speaker 1: you know. So it kind of depends on its use
12:20
Speaker 1: as to some are good and ice cream and others aren't. Yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: but you you hit it on the head though too.
12:25
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's a lot of competition, like aspar
12:27
Speaker 1: Tame is owned by Monsanto now, and like anytime those
12:31
Speaker 1: guys get in on something, there's that means it's automatically
12:34
Speaker 1: big business. So there's a lot a lot of money
12:37
Speaker 1: to be made. And one of the reasons why also
12:40
Speaker 1: that it is such big business because it's very frequently
12:44
Speaker 1: much cheaper to produce this stuff, these artificial sweeteners, than
12:49
Speaker 1: it is to to um process sugar. Right, So say
12:54
Speaker 1: it takes like eight cents worth of sugar to sweeten uh. Two.
12:58
Speaker 1: Leader of coke in might take three um since worth
13:03
Speaker 1: of aspartame to sweeten coke zero. And if you're making
13:08
Speaker 1: you know, millions upon millions of two leaders of this
13:11
Speaker 1: stuff a year, that adds up pretty quick. Yea. And
13:14
Speaker 1: in fact, there was actually a British company. I didn't
13:16
Speaker 1: see which one it was, but they it was found
13:19
Speaker 1: that their orange drink, which was not being marketed as
13:22
Speaker 1: diet or sugar free or anything, was basically made up
13:26
Speaker 1: of artificial sweeteners. I didn't look it up, I just
13:31
Speaker 1: ran across it. Somewhere was the orange orange like soda
13:34
Speaker 1: in Great Britain and Great Britain. Okay, call it shame made. Well.
13:41
Speaker 1: The reason I asked is because you know, my one
13:43
Speaker 1: weakness is like once a month I'll get the old
13:46
Speaker 1: fan of orange. Yeah, the Nazi drink. So I'm okay
13:50
Speaker 1: with that shaming me. Uh well, So these things are
13:57
Speaker 1: pretty controversial, um since literally least since the first ones
14:01
Speaker 1: came around. UM. People started like with anything that's new
14:06
Speaker 1: and synthetic, they're gonna be a certain segment of people
14:09
Speaker 1: are like this is great. In another segment they're like, well,
14:11
Speaker 1: I don't know about this. Let's look and see what's
14:14
Speaker 1: going on in your body and what if it's not
14:16
Speaker 1: so good for you? And how do we know? Right?
14:19
Speaker 1: People concerned with health? Yeah, that's an easier way to
14:22
Speaker 1: say it in public health. Yeah, yeah, there's um it
14:26
Speaker 1: does kind of seem to be like Chuck, where at
14:28
Speaker 1: this point in history where there is a lot of
14:32
Speaker 1: this stuff out there. I think I saw a two
14:34
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen articles. So there's like products in the
14:38
Speaker 1: US using one at least one of the five approved
14:42
Speaker 1: artificial sweeteners by the FDA. So there's tons of products
14:46
Speaker 1: out there and not enough medical literature to to really
14:50
Speaker 1: strongly show one way or the other that yeah, these
14:54
Speaker 1: things actually are pretty safe, and like all these fears
14:58
Speaker 1: are just a general public this trust of science and
15:01
Speaker 1: change and unnatural nous and we don't also have anything
15:06
Speaker 1: to show the other way to that. Um No, actually
15:09
Speaker 1: these things are pretty unsafe because it seems like every
15:12
Speaker 1: study that you find has a contradictory study with just
15:15
Speaker 1: completely opposite finding. It's pretty frustrating. Yeah, they're like even
15:20
Speaker 1: they're they're canceling each other out. It is frustrating. It
15:24
Speaker 1: does seem though that the at least based on the
15:26
Speaker 1: reporting that I'm seeing or have seen in research. It
15:30
Speaker 1: seems like a body of um medical literature is mounting
15:35
Speaker 1: that's showing that this stuff is pretty problematic. Actually yeah,
15:40
Speaker 1: I mean if you just uh throw science out the
15:43
Speaker 1: window and start perusing the internet, which everyone should do,
15:47
Speaker 1: right at least once a day. If you go on
15:49
Speaker 1: websites though and and internet forums and look around, um
15:53
Speaker 1: people will blame I mean, just about any disease you
15:57
Speaker 1: can think of on aspartame a big one that's getting
16:00
Speaker 1: a lot of the heat, but all kinds of artificial sweeteners,
16:03
Speaker 1: um ms, brain tumors, dizziness, Alzheimer's, like all kinds of problems.
16:11
Speaker 1: People are saying, well, you know this didn't start happening
16:15
Speaker 1: until I started eating or drinking this which contained this. Right, Yeah,
16:18
Speaker 1: it's anecdotal, extremely anecdotal. And like you said, when you
16:23
Speaker 1: look at the real studies, and we're gonna get to
16:25
Speaker 1: some of these and of course some are are mounted
16:29
Speaker 1: by the very company selling them. And I had a
16:33
Speaker 1: thing on Facebook last week about these company back studies
16:37
Speaker 1: and whether or not we should even listen to them,
16:39
Speaker 1: and most people chimed in that we're in in the
16:41
Speaker 1: biz and said, you know what, it doesn't mean it's
16:44
Speaker 1: junk science. Um, A lot of these studies wouldn't even
16:47
Speaker 1: be done if it wasn't for these companies funding them.
16:51
Speaker 1: But I still like raise an eyebrow anytime I see like, Nope,
16:55
Speaker 1: Coca Cola debunks study that says it's bad for you
16:59
Speaker 1: with our own study. You know, like, how can you
17:02
Speaker 1: I'm not even a big cynic and you just have
17:05
Speaker 1: to sort of wonder if that's complete BS or not. Yeah. Well,
17:09
Speaker 1: the FDA, for its part, if you go to their
17:10
Speaker 1: website on their Q and A. As far as them
17:14
Speaker 1: defending their the things that they've approved, they kind of well,
17:19
Speaker 1: I'll just read it says all all consumer complaints related
17:22
Speaker 1: to the sweetener have been investigated as thoroughly as possible
17:25
Speaker 1: by federal authorities for more than five years, in part
17:28
Speaker 1: under f d a's uh ARMS system or ARM system
17:31
Speaker 1: Adverse Reaction Monitoring system. In addition, scientific and that's where
17:35
Speaker 1: people can submit their own beefs basically right and say like, hey,
17:40
Speaker 1: I'm dizzy and just drink of tab yeah exactly. Uh.
17:44
Speaker 1: In addition, scientific studies conducted during aspertames preapproval phase I
17:48
Speaker 1: failed to show that it causes any adverse reactions and
17:50
Speaker 1: adults are children. Individuals who have concerns about possible adverse
17:53
Speaker 1: reactions to aspertame or other substances should contact their position. Basically, Hey,
17:58
Speaker 1: if you're not feeling good, maybe it's on you. Yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: why don't you stop being so metabolically weird? Yeah? And
18:08
Speaker 1: and since you brought up the f d A, there's
18:10
Speaker 1: a lot of concerns about how just how much oversight
18:14
Speaker 1: they're bringing to the table um And from there's this
18:19
Speaker 1: Washington Post article I found, it sounds like like not
18:23
Speaker 1: much at all. There's this um separate track. It's basically
18:27
Speaker 1: like an expedited track that company who's looking for FDA
18:32
Speaker 1: approval for their food item can submit. And rather than
18:36
Speaker 1: so ideally, there's this f d A review process where
18:39
Speaker 1: the FDA says, let us see your studies. We're gonna
18:43
Speaker 1: do some research. Who might do some testing ourselves. It's
18:46
Speaker 1: gonna take forever. You're gonna lose a bunch of money
18:48
Speaker 1: while you're sitting there waiting to go to market. But
18:51
Speaker 1: we will know pretty pretty conclusively that it's safe for
18:55
Speaker 1: humans to use. Although even even that's not necessarily true.
19:00
Speaker 1: But that's like the ideal situation that we'll get maybe
19:03
Speaker 1: close to yes, this is safe for humans. Well they've
19:06
Speaker 1: basically done away with that and created this fast track
19:10
Speaker 1: program where you can submit for generally regarded as safe status. Yeah.
19:16
Speaker 1: That was is when everything kind of there was a
19:19
Speaker 1: big sea change there. Yeah, and they did it because
19:22
Speaker 1: business was like, guys, you're taking so long. This is
19:26
Speaker 1: so slow. This process is killing us. It's costing us
19:29
Speaker 1: so much cash. We want to go to market faster.
19:33
Speaker 1: It was like, we don't have enough people, right, what
19:35
Speaker 1: do we do? So instead of hiring more people, they
19:38
Speaker 1: just made it easier for the companies to get this
19:40
Speaker 1: stuff passed. And the way that they did that was
19:43
Speaker 1: the FDA said, how about this, you guys, go study
19:47
Speaker 1: the medical literature, write a review of what you find,
19:51
Speaker 1: and we'll read your review and then we'll give you approval.
19:54
Speaker 1: So don't you don't need to submit your data anymore.
19:57
Speaker 1: Just give us your your findings, your fine things in
20:01
Speaker 1: a summary and that should speed things up. And it
20:04
Speaker 1: did in a big, big way, and it proved the
20:07
Speaker 1: FDA was so toothless that apparently now a lot of
20:10
Speaker 1: companies are releasing food additives into the food supply without
20:14
Speaker 1: even talking to the FDA about it. It It said in
20:16
Speaker 1: this article that the UM the one of the Deputy
20:20
Speaker 1: Commissioners for Food at the FDA, he said, we simply
20:24
Speaker 1: do not have the information to vouch for the safety
20:26
Speaker 1: of many of these chemicals. The FDA is just like, oh, well,
20:29
Speaker 1: there's a new food additive out there. I hope it
20:31
Speaker 1: goes I hope it goes well for everybody. Yeah, and
20:35
Speaker 1: in the I don't know if in the FDA's defense
20:36
Speaker 1: or but what they said initially was the reason we
20:38
Speaker 1: did this is we thought that people were doing this
20:42
Speaker 1: anyway and just introducing new chemicals without like submitting for
20:46
Speaker 1: approval at all. He said, so maybe if we streamline
20:48
Speaker 1: this process, they'll at least do that. And that just
20:52
Speaker 1: hasn't worked out how they hoped. Nope, it's like UM
20:57
Speaker 1: Citizens United Ruling. Oh yeah, you know, all right, well
21:02
Speaker 1: let's take a break. I need to go. I'm I'm
21:05
Speaker 1: angry now, sorry, I need to go smash. We'll be
21:09
Speaker 1: back right after that. Okay, we're back. Chuck, you feeling better? Yeah?
21:34
Speaker 1: That ming vos Man. That was like an original. Yeah,
21:37
Speaker 1: well that was real. It's Connor. Now that's gonna come
21:40
Speaker 1: out of Jerry's pay, let's you get some super glue?
21:44
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like that. That Brady Bunch episode. I'm
21:48
Speaker 1: always said, don't play ball in the house. Did they
21:50
Speaker 1: break something? Yeah, they broke a vase playing basketball in
21:54
Speaker 1: the house, and um they tried to glue it back
21:57
Speaker 1: together and then Mrs Brady used it for some flat
22:00
Speaker 1: was from a bunch of leaks. That's so them. I
22:03
Speaker 1: love those. What are you doing playing basketball inside? Anyway?
22:05
Speaker 1: And it's dumb, just you know, horseplay, rough housing. The
22:10
Speaker 1: use I mean they're outside was a studio set with
22:12
Speaker 1: astro turf, like it's always it's always perfect weather. Yeah,
22:17
Speaker 1: and that one little quarter drive away. Yeah, I bet
22:20
Speaker 1: it would be so disappointing if you could go see
22:22
Speaker 1: a recreation of that set today, you know. Uh yeah,
22:27
Speaker 1: it's like I said at the Cheers bar once, the
22:30
Speaker 1: real the not the one in Boston, but the where
22:33
Speaker 1: they shot the TV show, Okay, And it's just everything
22:37
Speaker 1: is just always smaller, you know. And in She's tiny,
22:43
Speaker 1: she was like in my beer mug. Yeah, I was
22:48
Speaker 1: gonna say the one in Boston. It's like nothing like
22:50
Speaker 1: the set, So I thought that's where you were going.
22:52
Speaker 1: I didn't realize you've been on the actual set. Yeah,
22:54
Speaker 1: that's when I did my famous extra stint on Dear
22:57
Speaker 1: John and Cheers was next door. I okay, I don't
23:02
Speaker 1: another story. Yeah, yeah, when my brother he worked on
23:04
Speaker 1: Dear John, and I went out to visit him and
23:06
Speaker 1: he got me on as an extra. I played a
23:07
Speaker 1: bus boy in a restaurant scene. Yeah. I'd love to
23:10
Speaker 1: get a copy of that. Actually, impost it. Yeah, I
23:12
Speaker 1: want to see that. It was pretty good. That was
23:14
Speaker 1: my first encounter, like real encounter with a film business,
23:17
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is a weird thing to do.
23:19
Speaker 1: This is the life for me. I'm gonna play bus
23:23
Speaker 1: boys all my life and one day I'm gonna have
23:25
Speaker 1: a short lived t failure of a TV show myself.
23:30
Speaker 1: All right, So where were we? We were talking about
23:33
Speaker 1: a TV show? Oh no, no, no, we were talking
23:37
Speaker 1: about coming back from the break. And I wanted to
23:38
Speaker 1: mention you said earlier that when we first intro that
23:42
Speaker 1: sometimes this stuff like does more harm. And this this
23:46
Speaker 1: one per Due University study I thought was really interesting
23:50
Speaker 1: because it found that drinking sugar or eating and drinking
23:54
Speaker 1: sugar free stuff with diet drinks mainly UH can actually
24:00
Speaker 1: mess with your body's ability to naturally count calories, because
24:04
Speaker 1: it it just messes up what the body recognizes as
24:08
Speaker 1: real sweet and real calories, which can make that which
24:11
Speaker 1: can make you fatter. Right, Yeah, Apparently there's been a
24:15
Speaker 1: number of studies, including like really really good longitudinal longitudinal
24:20
Speaker 1: studies like the San Antonio Heart Study, that have found that, um, like,
24:25
Speaker 1: high levels of diet soda intake are correlated with obesity,
24:31
Speaker 1: meaning everything else equal, the person who drinks more diet
24:35
Speaker 1: soda is likelier to be obese, which makes zero sense.
24:40
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty confounding, right. The whole reason, or one
24:42
Speaker 1: of the big reasons people drink diet soda is so
24:45
Speaker 1: they can lose weight, But it turns out that they're
24:47
Speaker 1: actually more likely to be obese. And I should say
24:51
Speaker 1: compared to people who don't drink diet diet soda, not
24:54
Speaker 1: compared to people who drink non diet soda. That's not
24:58
Speaker 1: to say, like, yeah, diet coke drinker is more likely
25:01
Speaker 1: to be obese than a coke drinker. It's a diet
25:04
Speaker 1: coke drinker is more likely to be obese than somebody
25:06
Speaker 1: who just drinks water. And this produced study really like
25:10
Speaker 1: gives some insight to that. Basically, we our body tells
25:14
Speaker 1: us how many calories we need to take in, and
25:17
Speaker 1: part of that is based on how sweet something is.
25:20
Speaker 1: So once we start drinking and ingesting these artificial sweeteners,
25:24
Speaker 1: it just it goose everything up. It basically says that
25:28
Speaker 1: our body doesn't associate sweetness with higher calories anymore. Yeah, right,
25:33
Speaker 1: because with with something like artificial sweetened soda. Right when
25:37
Speaker 1: you when you eat food, your body has a couple
25:41
Speaker 1: of pathways that it rewards you for saying, hey, good job,
25:44
Speaker 1: eat you ate food. I'm gonna make it so that
25:46
Speaker 1: you want to eat food again. And one is the
25:49
Speaker 1: gustatory pathway or gustatory component, which is like the taste,
25:53
Speaker 1: the smell, the the sensation that you get from eating
25:57
Speaker 1: like good food or like something sweet and delicious, and
26:01
Speaker 1: that just activates your limbic system like crazy, Your reward
26:04
Speaker 1: pathway goes nuts. Right, But when you eat stuff, you
26:09
Speaker 1: also have the second component, which is um where you're satiated,
26:14
Speaker 1: the feeling that you get that great pleasant feeling of
26:17
Speaker 1: being like nice and pleasantly full from eating, right, and
26:21
Speaker 1: that counters that gustatory excitement. So normally when you eat food,
26:27
Speaker 1: you you get the excitement from the taste of it,
26:30
Speaker 1: and then ultimately you'll also get the nice, pleasant feeling
26:33
Speaker 1: from being full from it. Not so with an artificial
26:37
Speaker 1: sweetened soda. Instead, you get the excitement your sugar rushes
26:41
Speaker 1: going off, but you're never gonna get full. And since
26:44
Speaker 1: we're nothing but junkies as far as like our brains
26:48
Speaker 1: are wired, we're just gonna keep drinking more and more
26:50
Speaker 1: and more because that sugar center is going off and
26:52
Speaker 1: we're never getting full, so it's never counteracted. We just
26:56
Speaker 1: always crave more and more and more. Yeah, And of course,
26:59
Speaker 1: like you said, these ease, there's always an opposite one
27:01
Speaker 1: that it was debunked as flawed um by the National
27:06
Speaker 1: Soft Drink Association. Yeah, so then you try they just
27:10
Speaker 1: said wrong. But that's not that produced studies not the
27:16
Speaker 1: only study. There have been plenty of other studies that
27:18
Speaker 1: have looked into this and have found the same thing
27:20
Speaker 1: that that there's there's that our bodies are being tricked,
27:23
Speaker 1: that we're no longer associating sweet foods with high calorie foods,
27:29
Speaker 1: and that it's leading to eating more high calorie foods.
27:32
Speaker 1: So that if you eat something that actually is sweet
27:34
Speaker 1: and has calories. You're gonna eat more of it than
27:38
Speaker 1: you would have before because your brain is not used
27:40
Speaker 1: to saying I've got enough calories from this, I can
27:43
Speaker 1: stop eating it now, playing tricks on your body. Yeah.
27:47
Speaker 1: And plus also apparently with these these things that are
27:50
Speaker 1: three hundred five hundred seven thousand times sweeter than sugar,
27:55
Speaker 1: which is what our body is used to, is some
27:57
Speaker 1: form of sugar. Um, the the sensation of sweetness is amplified,
28:04
Speaker 1: and so it kind of mutes sweetness and other things
28:07
Speaker 1: like fruit or any any other complex tastes, like in vegetables.
28:12
Speaker 1: So we end up just craving more and more sweet
28:14
Speaker 1: stuff because everything else tastes terrible compared to this ultra
28:19
Speaker 1: sweet stuff that we're eating and drinking. And if you
28:22
Speaker 1: stop drinking like like soda or diet soda or whatever,
28:27
Speaker 1: stop eating junk food for even just like a week
28:29
Speaker 1: or so, when you go back to it, it's amazing
28:32
Speaker 1: how sweet that stuff actually is. It's it's like a
28:36
Speaker 1: smack in the face, but you realize, like, wow, I've
28:39
Speaker 1: really been used to this for a while, because I
28:41
Speaker 1: don't remember it tasting this sweet. Yea, and my headaches
28:44
Speaker 1: are are now gone because I'm drinking this again exactly well,
28:48
Speaker 1: and the other thing too. And I know we covered
28:50
Speaker 1: a little bit of this and the high fruit dost
28:51
Speaker 1: corn sir it. But part of the problem is is
28:54
Speaker 1: the ubiquity of this stuff. It's um, I think which
28:59
Speaker 1: one was it was it aspartame that's in Yeah, aspertain
29:03
Speaker 1: is in six thousand, more than six thousand products like
29:07
Speaker 1: soft you know, soft drinks of course, gum uh, puddings,
29:11
Speaker 1: dessert mixes, gelatin, frozen desserts, fillings, yogurts uh, and then
29:16
Speaker 1: and you know, of course people just dump it right
29:17
Speaker 1: into their coffee too, and it's purest form. But um,
29:23
Speaker 1: unless you're really a stickler about looking at food labels,
29:26
Speaker 1: you're getting way way more then the maximum recommended levels
29:32
Speaker 1: that you should be ingesting of this stuff, because it
29:35
Speaker 1: might be like I said in the I got a
29:37
Speaker 1: sore throat, so I took the cough drop and now
29:38
Speaker 1: chewing gum. Now I'm using toothpaste, and it's all over
29:41
Speaker 1: the place right exactly. And that's another part of the
29:44
Speaker 1: problem where even if the FDA is doing its job
29:48
Speaker 1: and does all this research and looks at the medical literature, Um,
29:52
Speaker 1: they may say, Okay, this stuff is safe at this level.
29:55
Speaker 1: This is the maximum recommended amount that a person should
29:58
Speaker 1: have and still be within the safe zone per day.
30:01
Speaker 1: So don't put more than this in your soda. Okay, great,
30:05
Speaker 1: go forth and prosper. And then that soda becomes a
30:09
Speaker 1: success and other people start using that sweetener, and then
30:11
Speaker 1: it's like you said, like with aspartain, it's everywhere, so
30:14
Speaker 1: that the people are getting that amount just from that
30:17
Speaker 1: that that soda with aspertain that they're drinking, but they're
30:20
Speaker 1: also getting it from all these other places, and the
30:22
Speaker 1: levels rise very quickly. Yeah, and some folks get I mean,
30:26
Speaker 1: there's a definite um soft drink addiction problem. Um, even
30:31
Speaker 1: with the diet SODA's I've known people who literally drank
30:35
Speaker 1: like a couple of two liters a day of this stuff. Sure. Yeah,
30:40
Speaker 1: like just constantly drinking soda all day long, from the
30:43
Speaker 1: moment they get up till the moment they go to
30:45
Speaker 1: bed as diet. So it's no big deal exactly. And Um,
30:49
Speaker 1: there's actually a study that I came across. Um. I
30:51
Speaker 1: didn't see where the study was from, but this is
30:54
Speaker 1: it was mentioned on this um Harvard Health blog um.
30:58
Speaker 1: It was a rat study where rats were given the
31:01
Speaker 1: choice between oral saccharine and intravenous cocaine um after they've
31:07
Speaker 1: been acclimated to both, and they tended to choose the saccharin. Wow,
31:10
Speaker 1: that's crazy, Yeah slightly. Did they go round and round? Sorry,
31:16
Speaker 1: then they're probably like, I've heard about that cocaine. I'm
31:20
Speaker 1: not doing that, but I will do this Sacharin. By
31:22
Speaker 1: the way, there's a h an audio interview on YouTube
31:27
Speaker 1: with the drummer from the band Rat that's like an
31:31
Speaker 1: hour and twenty minutes long that you should, I mean,
31:34
Speaker 1: try and get through fifteen or twenty minutes of it.
31:37
Speaker 1: But the way I saw it is someone said this
31:40
Speaker 1: is the Donald Trump of of eighties hair metal? Was
31:44
Speaker 1: it a contemporary like today? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. He basically
31:48
Speaker 1: has a new group that does Rat songs, and I
31:50
Speaker 1: think it's he's just the drummer that's the original member
31:53
Speaker 1: and and just goes off for like an hour and
31:56
Speaker 1: a half about how great they are and about how
31:59
Speaker 1: that to the real stuff, and how they sound better
32:02
Speaker 1: than the original Rat ever sounded, and and and it's
32:05
Speaker 1: really something like I've never heard someone who was more
32:09
Speaker 1: full of themselves than this, dude. It was hysterical, was
32:13
Speaker 1: really wonderful. Well, how many songs could they possibly play?
32:16
Speaker 1: They just play round and round like like twelve or
32:19
Speaker 1: thirteen times at a show. They had a few hits.
32:21
Speaker 1: All I remembers round and Round? No they uh, well,
32:26
Speaker 1: I'll think on it. I'll bet your thinking of Cinderella
32:32
Speaker 1: or docin No, I think Doc can have more hits
32:36
Speaker 1: than Rat. Now they had lay it down? Remember that one? No,
32:42
Speaker 1: can you sing it? Sure? You do? Lay it down
32:44
Speaker 1: right now? And then they had wanted Man No Man Now,
32:51
Speaker 1: and then You're in Love No, and way cool Jr.
32:54
Speaker 1: They had I would say for genuine sort of hits,
32:58
Speaker 1: I really honestly, I remember round and Round and that's it. Well,
33:02
Speaker 1: they were a little bit pore your time too. Round
33:05
Speaker 1: and Round was a pretty good song. Though. It's a
33:07
Speaker 1: great song. Rat what's that? Should we should just end
33:13
Speaker 1: the show? Actually, let's take a break and then we're
33:17
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk specifically about some of these sweeteners.
33:20
Speaker 1: Is that sound good? It sounds sweet. I can't believe
33:43
Speaker 1: you don't remember You're in love? Well, you're not thinking it,
33:46
Speaker 1: so how could I possibly remember it? And lay it down?
33:49
Speaker 1: Those were two big, big hits. I mean, I'm telling you, like,
33:54
Speaker 1: I was paying a lot of attention to eighties hair
33:57
Speaker 1: metal when it was when it was out. Bet you'd
34:01
Speaker 1: probably be like, oh, I know that song. M um. Alright,
34:04
Speaker 1: remember remember Striper, the Christian hair metal band. I saw
34:08
Speaker 1: a Striper and concert, my friend, did you the fabulous
34:11
Speaker 1: Fox Theater in I did awesome? Uh? Well it was
34:17
Speaker 1: they had. They had more than one hit, didn't they. Yeah,
34:20
Speaker 1: I was. I was way into that in my early
34:23
Speaker 1: youth group days. Strip they rocked about as tough as
34:27
Speaker 1: you could get. I don't know about that, but they
34:29
Speaker 1: definitely rocked, for sure. I don't know about that. Well,
34:33
Speaker 1: they definitely wore a lot of spandex. Their drummer played sideways.
34:36
Speaker 1: That was his big trick. They set up. They set
34:40
Speaker 1: it up completely sideways on the stage. He's not actually
34:45
Speaker 1: playing sideways then, No, no, no, he's playing straight ahead.
34:48
Speaker 1: He just has the drum kit sideways. That was the gimmick.
34:51
Speaker 1: Huh Yeah, that in religion pretty good? All right, So
34:56
Speaker 1: let's talk about Sacharin. Let's that was it's actually the
35:00
Speaker 1: Latin word for sugar um. And that was the one
35:03
Speaker 1: we said earlier, which is the O g uh discovered
35:07
Speaker 1: by two chemists named John's and Hopkins. Well, that's it.
35:12
Speaker 1: That's so two guys claimed it. One was definitely in
35:15
Speaker 1: the lab because he was the one who uh licked
35:19
Speaker 1: his well, he ate a bread roll. I guess that
35:22
Speaker 1: was sweet and he was like, I don't think this
35:25
Speaker 1: is supposed to be sweet, and came to realize it
35:27
Speaker 1: was soaking the coal tar that was on his fingers. Yeah, oh,
35:33
Speaker 1: I thought you meant it was sitting in a little
35:34
Speaker 1: pool of cold tar. And he like, notice it. He
35:38
Speaker 1: was warming it up on the bunts and burner. Uh so, yeah,
35:42
Speaker 1: that an accidental discovery. And it is three hundred times
35:44
Speaker 1: sweeter than sugar. Yeah, and this is one of the
35:47
Speaker 1: ones that is no calorie because his is not metabolized
35:52
Speaker 1: by the body at all. And it is very famous,
35:55
Speaker 1: well I don't know, but famous, but the drink tab,
35:58
Speaker 1: the soft drink tab um. It was very famous for
36:03
Speaker 1: being sweetened in a big way by saccharin. Right, which
36:08
Speaker 1: means that from the I think nine seven till nineteen
36:14
Speaker 1: nine seven, maybe there was a warning label on tab
36:19
Speaker 1: that said, quote use of this product maybe hazardous to
36:23
Speaker 1: your health. This product contains sacharin, which has been determined
36:26
Speaker 1: to cause cancer and laboratory animals. Do you remember that
36:29
Speaker 1: warning label on it? Yeah? And um, you can also
36:32
Speaker 1: still find I mean, it's not like it went away.
36:34
Speaker 1: It's that is what sweeten low is. And if you
36:38
Speaker 1: drink fountain diet coke or pepsi fountain pepsi, you're gonna
36:42
Speaker 1: have saccharin in there. Yea. And Emily was big on
36:46
Speaker 1: the fountain diet cokes. She's like, it's just not the
36:48
Speaker 1: same form can and I called it you. I was like,
36:51
Speaker 1: it's because of sacharin. Sure what she's off fers now
36:55
Speaker 1: too though, Yeah, that'll do it. But but what's weird?
36:58
Speaker 1: So I've read this really great post on today I
37:01
Speaker 1: found out, which is an excellent website by the way,
37:04
Speaker 1: um and they they wrote about the discovering sacharin and
37:07
Speaker 1: then the controversy, the health controversies of sacaran, and the
37:10
Speaker 1: case they make is that it's it's it's basically the
37:14
Speaker 1: victim of bad science reporting, public public fear basically, and
37:21
Speaker 1: that if you're a rodent, yes you should not be
37:23
Speaker 1: drinking tab because there there there was discovery of bladder
37:28
Speaker 1: cancer and other types of cancer, but specifically bladder cancer
37:32
Speaker 1: in lab rats that were being fed sacharin and um.
37:37
Speaker 1: I guess before they figured out exactly why, the media
37:40
Speaker 1: went and extrapolated it onto people, and so in the
37:43
Speaker 1: public's mind it became, uh, sacharin will give you bladder cancer.
37:48
Speaker 1: And then by the time they went and researched what
37:50
Speaker 1: was going on. There's like the specific I think, the
37:54
Speaker 1: specific parts of rat urine um we're combining with the
38:00
Speaker 1: saccharine to form these things called micro crystals in the bladder,
38:04
Speaker 1: which is tearing up the bladder lining so frequently that
38:07
Speaker 1: as the cells were regenerating, the potential for them to
38:11
Speaker 1: to grow out of control and become tumors was increased,
38:14
Speaker 1: and so the lab rats were getting um bladder cancer.
38:18
Speaker 1: The thing is is the lab rats urine is not
38:21
Speaker 1: the same as humans urine um, and so we just
38:26
Speaker 1: don't get bladder cancer too from tab apparently or from saccharin. Well. Yeah,
38:32
Speaker 1: and one of the things, I mean, I never really
38:34
Speaker 1: knew this how they exactly tested. I figured because it
38:36
Speaker 1: was a rat, they would just give them, like, you know,
38:39
Speaker 1: a few drops or something because they're tiny. But they
38:42
Speaker 1: apparently dose these lab mice and rats with lots of
38:46
Speaker 1: these additives, large large doses, and apparently that's to compensate
38:51
Speaker 1: for the fact that they don't use a lot of
38:55
Speaker 1: mice and rats. Yeah, which I'm not I don't follow
38:59
Speaker 1: the logic there, there isn't any. And then they follow
39:03
Speaker 1: it up with, Wow, that that seems to have really
39:05
Speaker 1: gotten on top of you. How about some intravenous cocaine
39:07
Speaker 1: to pure per cua. Well, they also said that large
39:11
Speaker 1: doses compensate for possibilities that rodents maybe less sensitive to it. Yeah,
39:16
Speaker 1: but I've also read elsewhere that the stuff that there,
39:20
Speaker 1: they're the tests they're conducting at least on humans too,
39:23
Speaker 1: are are not real world tests. It's like, Oh, you
39:28
Speaker 1: just drank a twelve ounce diet coke and now we're
39:32
Speaker 1: going to base all of our medical recommendations on the
39:35
Speaker 1: impact that has on your body. They're not taking into account,
39:38
Speaker 1: like you said, the guy who drinks to two leaders
39:41
Speaker 1: or two twelve packs of diet coke a day thirty
39:44
Speaker 1: years right exactly, and the like, this stuff is generally
39:47
Speaker 1: just too new for us to have any like studies
39:51
Speaker 1: on long term effects of them, so we really just
39:54
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean it's I don't like, I don't
39:57
Speaker 1: want to foster um paranoia fear, yeah, or paranoia or
40:02
Speaker 1: even just yeah, fear paranoia. But like, the jury is
40:08
Speaker 1: still out as far as I'm concerned. Agreed. UH. For
40:11
Speaker 1: its part, though, sacharine was removed from the n I
40:14
Speaker 1: h S list of carcinogens, and they did remove that
40:18
Speaker 1: warning label in the late nineties. Like you said, yeah,
40:21
Speaker 1: and I should say, I'm not specifically talking about sacarin.
40:24
Speaker 1: I'm talking about artificial sweeteners in in general. Yeah, totally,
40:27
Speaker 1: the jury is still out. But onto aspartame, that's one
40:30
Speaker 1: of the big targets these days. UM Equal Nutra sweet
40:35
Speaker 1: and neutral Taste are the brand names that it's sold under.
40:39
Speaker 1: And this is UH. It's a derivative of a couple
40:42
Speaker 1: of amino acids, um aspartic acid and Finni lalaleena. Yeah,
40:52
Speaker 1: it's been around since nine Uh. And this was a
40:56
Speaker 1: chemist named Jim Schladder Um a part of a company
40:59
Speaker 1: that which is now Fighter. And he was the one
41:02
Speaker 1: that was licking his finger to pick up paper and
41:04
Speaker 1: studying an anti ulcer drugs and went, hey, I taste
41:09
Speaker 1: undred times sweeter than sugared at me, right, and so
41:12
Speaker 1: that's what it's used for. Oh yeah, well I don't
41:16
Speaker 1: think they treat ulcers with it anymore. No. But the
41:18
Speaker 1: weird thing about UM aspartame is more in how it's
41:22
Speaker 1: broken down in the body. I think, um, yeah, because
41:26
Speaker 1: it is metabolized. Yeah, And this just blew my mind.
41:30
Speaker 1: I had no idea that something like that could break
41:33
Speaker 1: down into methanol in your body. Yeah, wood alcohol. Weird.
41:38
Speaker 1: I mean that's one of three things. Is spartic acid,
41:40
Speaker 1: uh and then finnil l laen la la nine and
41:45
Speaker 1: methanol is what it breaks down into. That's just crazy, right.
41:48
Speaker 1: And So if you UM do not have this disorder
41:52
Speaker 1: called p KU or phenol keto neurea UM, it's the
41:56
Speaker 1: wood alcohol you have to pay attention to. But if
41:59
Speaker 1: you have PK, you then you've got a big problem
42:02
Speaker 1: with the phenyl alanine because you're you're missing an enzyme
42:06
Speaker 1: that breaks that down, and uh, it can build up
42:09
Speaker 1: in your brain and create brain damage in you. So
42:13
Speaker 1: people who have UM p KU or phenel ketoeurea UM
42:17
Speaker 1: can't have aspartame at all because of that. But for
42:21
Speaker 1: people who do not have p KU, you still have
42:24
Speaker 1: to worry about the methane, although that would alcohol if
42:27
Speaker 1: I'm if I remember correctly. Isn't that the stuff that
42:30
Speaker 1: the US government used to poison the illicit um alcohol
42:35
Speaker 1: supply with and a bunch of people went blind and
42:37
Speaker 1: died back into prohibition. I think it was wood alcohol,
42:43
Speaker 1: And it's just so toxic. And normally when we when
42:49
Speaker 1: we consume something that has would alcohol in it, um
42:53
Speaker 1: there it's in the presence of ethanol, and that's it's
42:57
Speaker 1: absorbed differently. The out the ethanol kind of like um
43:02
Speaker 1: uh neutralizes it a little bit. But in aspertame, we're
43:06
Speaker 1: it's breaking down into methanol without the presence of ethanol,
43:10
Speaker 1: and so we're absorbing this toxic component. Um just straight up. Yeah.
43:15
Speaker 1: Ten percent of asport tame is absorbed as methanol, and
43:18
Speaker 1: the e p A says, uh, there's a recommended limit
43:21
Speaker 1: of seven point eight milligrams per day of methanol and
43:25
Speaker 1: drinking one leader of an aspartame sweeten beverage contains fifty
43:29
Speaker 1: six milligrams of methanol. Well of well as what is
43:37
Speaker 1: that saying fifty six milligrams of absorbed methanol or fifty
43:40
Speaker 1: six milligrams of aspartame. I think I don't know. I
43:46
Speaker 1: think that means methanol. That's how I took it eight
43:49
Speaker 1: times a recommended amount in one leader of an aspertame
43:53
Speaker 1: sweet and beverage. That's not good. Well, and like you
43:56
Speaker 1: were saying, how the ethanol counterbalances it, it's the same
43:59
Speaker 1: as the UH amino acids. They're naturally part of our diet,
44:03
Speaker 1: but usually when we consume it there it's counterbalanced by
44:06
Speaker 1: other amino acids, and in the case of aspartame, it
44:10
Speaker 1: doesn't have those, so it's just consuming it on its own, right,
44:14
Speaker 1: So you're getting it in very high doses basically. And
44:17
Speaker 1: there's been at least one study that is linked um
44:21
Speaker 1: types of different types of cancers in female rats to
44:25
Speaker 1: aspartain consumption. Right, but again, no official studies show any
44:31
Speaker 1: official problems, well none that the FDA is pointing to.
44:34
Speaker 1: Like that was Europe. They're overprotective. Yeah, but this is
44:39
Speaker 1: one of the ones too, that that arms program where
44:42
Speaker 1: you can call in and report things. I think it
44:45
Speaker 1: counts for sevent of all complaints. They're like, I'm dizzy,
44:49
Speaker 1: I got headaches, I've got seizures, got fatigue. It's killing me.
44:54
Speaker 1: It's killing me, Doc, you gotta do something. What's next?
44:59
Speaker 1: Super lows sucralose like splenda, So sucralos is um. Splenda's
45:06
Speaker 1: marketed or it was marketed with the kind of slogan
45:10
Speaker 1: made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar, right, And
45:12
Speaker 1: apparently they got sued by the sugar industry because, um,
45:17
Speaker 1: I guess people thought that splenda was natural. I think
45:20
Speaker 1: there was a um there was some sort of pole
45:23
Speaker 1: that found like fifty seven percent of people thought that
45:26
Speaker 1: splenda was a natural artificial sweetener and it's not. It's
45:30
Speaker 1: actually you take a sugar molecule and then you take
45:33
Speaker 1: out three of the hydroxyl groups, hydrogen and oxygen groups,
45:38
Speaker 1: and you replace those with chlorine. This is always a
45:40
Speaker 1: good move. That's no longer sugar. Nope, that's not sugar anymore.
45:44
Speaker 1: It's not natural either. So what what you have? A
45:47
Speaker 1: sucralose and sucralose is um six hundred times sweeter than
45:51
Speaker 1: sugar and it's not metabolized by the body, so it's
45:54
Speaker 1: calorie free. But there have been studies that have found
45:58
Speaker 1: that it might not be my bablized by the body,
46:01
Speaker 1: but it's absorbed by the body has been found in
46:03
Speaker 1: the blood immediately after drinking a can of sucralow sweetened soda,
46:08
Speaker 1: and it's also been found in breast milk too, from
46:10
Speaker 1: mothers who have drank uh sucralose sweeten drinks. Yeah, and
46:14
Speaker 1: sucralose is one of those you're gonna find because it
46:16
Speaker 1: holds up to heat, so you're gonna find it in
46:18
Speaker 1: a lot of baked goods or you know, like process
46:23
Speaker 1: baked goods or in um. The I was about to
46:27
Speaker 1: call them kits. What are they called the easy bake covin? No,
46:31
Speaker 1: you know when you got to make a cake and
46:33
Speaker 1: you get the stuff mix, Yeah, the mix, not a kit.
46:37
Speaker 1: I like kit though, that's good. I need a cake kit.
46:42
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know what you mean, pal book
46:43
Speaker 1: And it's been a long day, please leave me alone.
46:47
Speaker 1: But Splenda is one of the biggest, um probably heaviest
46:51
Speaker 1: used sweetener. Just like I was gonna call it over
46:56
Speaker 1: the counter sweetener. But when you just use it for
46:58
Speaker 1: a sweetener alone, to sweeten sweeten your tea or your
47:01
Speaker 1: coffee or whatever. Yeah, like you see a lot of
47:03
Speaker 1: splendid because as that little green leaf on it. No,
47:07
Speaker 1: it's Splendid. I thought Splendid was the yellow one. Oh,
47:10
Speaker 1: Stevie is the one with the green Yeah, yeah, yeah,
47:12
Speaker 1: that's right. You're right. Yeah, Stevie actually is natural. It
47:15
Speaker 1: comes from a plant. Okay, alright, I feel much better
47:20
Speaker 1: about the green leaf. Yes, super loser. Splendis sugar with chlorine.
47:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Splendid that yellow packet, that's right. Yeah, sweeten
47:28
Speaker 1: load was pink Yep, Stevia has got the green leaf.
47:31
Speaker 1: I used to dump that Sweeten loan in my iced
47:33
Speaker 1: tea when I was a kid because I knew no better.
47:36
Speaker 1: Did you really, wow? Well, because you know you put
47:39
Speaker 1: sugar in cold iced tea, it does nothing but just
47:42
Speaker 1: go to the bottom. I know. It's absolutely frustrating. And
47:46
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh wait a minute, I'm from Georgia.
47:49
Speaker 1: I need to be drinking sweet and tea, which is,
47:52
Speaker 1: while they're brewing it, they dump in a full one
47:54
Speaker 1: pound bag of sugar so much like they say down here,
47:58
Speaker 1: that the straws us to stand straight up in the tea.
48:01
Speaker 1: And that's how you know when you have enough sugar
48:03
Speaker 1: in your sweet tea. Yeah. I don't drink sweet teo
48:05
Speaker 1: much anymore, but boy, I love it. Yeah, I do too.
48:08
Speaker 1: It's really good. UM so super lose uh. For it's
48:14
Speaker 1: worth isn't as controversial in the public sphere as aspartame
48:17
Speaker 1: is UM. But there was a report the FDA that
48:22
Speaker 1: said it's approved, but it did cause minor genetic damage
48:26
Speaker 1: and mouse cells. But it was minor and weekly muta
48:29
Speaker 1: genetic may cause may cause light cancer. Uh. And like
48:38
Speaker 1: you said, they weren't they sued by the sugar industry,
48:40
Speaker 1: didn't you say that? Yeah, I don't know what the
48:42
Speaker 1: outcome was. I don't know. I haven't heard that slogan
48:45
Speaker 1: in a while. So I bet the sugar industry one. Yeah,
48:48
Speaker 1: now it's just splenda, you know the deal. Yeah, you know.
48:52
Speaker 1: We used to say just think, just think, think hard,
48:56
Speaker 1: google it. Uh. And then finally we have sugar alcohols,
49:00
Speaker 1: which I wasn't super familiar with. Actually I am, because
49:04
Speaker 1: I up until this week showed a lot of sugar
49:09
Speaker 1: free gum and UM. A lot of it is is
49:13
Speaker 1: sweetened with sugar alcohols, which is it's um. It's where
49:17
Speaker 1: you take a sugar and you add a hydrogen atom
49:19
Speaker 1: to it. So there's stuff like um sorb at all
49:23
Speaker 1: zylas all um a thir tall. I even practiced that
49:31
Speaker 1: one therapy. Yes, thank you, had a little trouble with it.
49:34
Speaker 1: But um, they don't have calories because they're not typically
49:38
Speaker 1: absorbed by the body, although some some actually do have
49:43
Speaker 1: just about as money calories as sugar, so you do
49:46
Speaker 1: have to kind of watch it. Um. But sugar alcohols
49:51
Speaker 1: typically are used less for weight loss and more for
49:55
Speaker 1: um like uh sugar or blood sugar control, like among
50:00
Speaker 1: people with diabetes. Because so it might have the calories,
50:04
Speaker 1: but it doesn't it doesn't have the glycemic load that
50:07
Speaker 1: that sugar does. UM, and even some artificial sweeteners too.
50:11
Speaker 1: But they taste really really good. They're they're about as
50:14
Speaker 1: close to sugar as you can possibly get, UM and
50:17
Speaker 1: still have fewer calories or whatever. The problem with them
50:20
Speaker 1: is that they can um. They're like butterfish. They caused
50:27
Speaker 1: the anal leakage. Yeah, I'm gonna bring that up every
50:34
Speaker 1: chance I get. You know, I think we have our
50:37
Speaker 1: first great band name of too, not antal leakage, but
50:41
Speaker 1: glycemic load only. No one wants to hear that. No,
50:46
Speaker 1: it's like diarrhea planet. Oh yeah, did poop knife? Is
50:54
Speaker 1: that what it was? You're telling diarrhea Planet to to
50:56
Speaker 1: change the knife and they yeah, they tweeted never never,
51:01
Speaker 1: who are you? Um, yeah, so that lacksative effect. Um,
51:05
Speaker 1: if you have a daily dose of fifty grams or
51:09
Speaker 1: twenty grams, fifty grams of the sorb at all or
51:12
Speaker 1: twenty grams of the man at all has to be
51:14
Speaker 1: labeled that it has a lacksative effect. Yeah, But the
51:17
Speaker 1: Center for Science and the Public Interest says no, no, no no,
51:20
Speaker 1: Only ten grams of sorb at all can make you
51:23
Speaker 1: poop your pants, So maybe you guys should lower it
51:25
Speaker 1: for that warning. And the FDA said, look, man, we're
51:29
Speaker 1: taking a nap away. They're like, why can we just
51:32
Speaker 1: have people on the verge of pooping their pants? But
51:34
Speaker 1: not quite right? Oh dear, yeah, I saw an alternative
51:40
Speaker 1: to all this, you know, Oh what real sugar. That
51:43
Speaker 1: is one alternative. And the thing is is, yeah, the
51:47
Speaker 1: the upshot of all this is, well, maybe sugar is
51:50
Speaker 1: not so bad. We're fine, sugar is pretty bad for you,
51:53
Speaker 1: and so is like high fruit toast corncerpt But there
51:56
Speaker 1: are plenty of like natural forms of sugar too, like
51:59
Speaker 1: unref fine raw demorerra sugar or honey. There's a lot
52:03
Speaker 1: of places you can get sweetness that aren't necessarily bad
52:07
Speaker 1: for you, right, Um, but then if you're super hip
52:12
Speaker 1: with the science too, you might be in favor of
52:14
Speaker 1: what are called sweet tasting proteins. And these are actually
52:17
Speaker 1: pretty cutting edge from what I've seen. There's seven that
52:20
Speaker 1: have been identified so far. All of them come from
52:23
Speaker 1: plants that grow in the rainforest. And um, they are proteins.
52:27
Speaker 1: They're not carbohydrates, their actual proteins. So they they yeah, yeah,
52:33
Speaker 1: the Paraguayan and sweet chicken, Paragua and sweetbird. Yeah they
52:38
Speaker 1: they they So they're not gonna they're not gonna raise
52:40
Speaker 1: your glycemic index like your blood sugar. They're not going
52:44
Speaker 1: to lead to weight gain. Um, they're they're just proteins.
52:47
Speaker 1: And apparently some of them are quite sweet, and they're
52:50
Speaker 1: looking into using those as an alternative to the artificial sweeteners,
52:55
Speaker 1: which were the alternative to sugar, so they can decimate
52:58
Speaker 1: the rainforest and yet another way, well hopefully this will
53:01
Speaker 1: help them protect the rainforce something. No, no, no, this
53:03
Speaker 1: is where our sweet comes from. Stop cutting it down. Okay,
53:07
Speaker 1: keep keep your fingers crossed. They're crossed. Okay, that's all
53:11
Speaker 1: I got. That's all I got. So that's artificial sweeteners everybody.
53:15
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about those, you can
53:17
Speaker 1: tact those words in the search bar at how stuff
53:19
Speaker 1: works dot com and um the nooid will appear. And
53:24
Speaker 1: since I said noid, it's time for listener now, I'm
53:29
Speaker 1: gonna call this warmed my heart over the holidays, Scotch Hi, Yeah,
53:36
Speaker 1: that too, Hi, Josh and Chuck Um, Grace and I'm
53:39
Speaker 1: seventeen years old and the oldest of three sisters, Lily
53:44
Speaker 1: Rose ten great names. We started listening to your podcast
53:48
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine when our parents split up and
53:51
Speaker 1: we moved a state away from our dad. As a tradition,
53:54
Speaker 1: now we always listen to a podcast of yours to
53:57
Speaker 1: this very day when we are traveling between the two
53:59
Speaker 1: states with our dad. It's been such a fun way
54:02
Speaker 1: to pass the time during road trips. Your podcasts have
54:05
Speaker 1: been the source of so many interesting conversations, such a
54:08
Speaker 1: wonderful way to bring our family together over the years.
54:11
Speaker 1: For instance, all three of us girls vividly remember the
54:14
Speaker 1: Vulture episode for no apparent reason, and found the Haunted
54:17
Speaker 1: House episode oddly cool. Uh. Lily, who was the fifteen
54:21
Speaker 1: year old she enjoys the Halloween story episodes. Rose ten
54:26
Speaker 1: thinks it's funny when you guys get off track. God
54:29
Speaker 1: bless you, Rose uh. And I really like to annoy
54:31
Speaker 1: my friends with all the useless facts that I now know.
54:35
Speaker 1: We are such hardcore fans that we even had marathons
54:37
Speaker 1: of your TV series Whoa. And we have literally been
54:41
Speaker 1: a fan of you guys since you started. Thanks for
54:44
Speaker 1: being a part of our childhood. Love the Harvey family.
54:48
Speaker 1: That's fantastic and they fantastic. It was great. And they
54:51
Speaker 1: sent a picture of Dad and behind the wheel Uh
54:56
Speaker 1: driving with it looks like Grace upfront and Lilian Rose
55:00
Speaker 1: in the back and they were all just smiling and
55:03
Speaker 1: just just they just had this lovely aura about them.
55:07
Speaker 1: Thanks to us, No thanks to the Vulture episode. Anyway,
55:12
Speaker 1: I love the Harvey family now they're they're tops on
55:14
Speaker 1: my list. Yeah, thanks a lot, Harvey family for writing in.
55:17
Speaker 1: We appreciate that big time. And the old man Harvey,
55:20
Speaker 1: you're doing the right thing, sir, yep, keep both hands
55:22
Speaker 1: on the wheel, that's right. If you want to get
55:25
Speaker 1: in touch with us like the Harvey's did to let
55:27
Speaker 1: us know how much of a role we've played in
55:30
Speaker 1: your life. We love hearing that kind of stuff. You
55:32
Speaker 1: can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark and
55:35
Speaker 1: we're also at s Y s K podcast. You can
55:38
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
55:41
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W.
55:44
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff
55:47
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
55:49
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
55:51
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
55:58
Speaker 1: of other topics because it how stuff Works dot com.
56:10
Speaker 1: Mhm