"Life is too short to say no to dessert" - Unknown
But unfortunately, our bodies are products of Darwinian evolution, and agriculture is less than 8000 years old while we spent 200,000 years as hunter gatherers when sweetness was an absolute rare luxury. Never did we expect that we would find ourselves in a world where sweet calories are some of the cheapest calories, leading to a glut of metabolic diseases as our pancreas struggles to produce insulin to keep taming blood sugar spikes.
In the immortal words of Dave Chappelle, modern problems require modern solutions, and for the last century or so, we have discovered molecules that can give us sweet sensations while not being able to be broken down by our small intestine.
But as with most modern inventions around food, we have gone through a period of irrational exuberance, unseen risks and of course, large scale social media misinformation. This video seeks to bring clarity to an area that is of big interest to Indians - where the planet's second largest population of diabetics live and an even larger pool of prediabetics. Are sweeteners safe? What does the science say?
00:00 - Introduction
00:44 - Natural vs Synthetic
02:17 - Why was Saccharin Banned?
03:48 - Why was Saccharin Un-Banned?
04:33 - Understanding ADI vs NOAEL
06:12 - How do Sugar Substitutes work?
09:12 - Are Artificial Sweeteners Safe?
11:13 - Are Artificial Sweeteners Beneficial?
Citations
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33168917/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33036155/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26365102/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24944060/
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/artificial-sweeteners-fact-sheet
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185898/
https://saccharin.org/facts/public-policy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin_Study_and_Labeling_Act_of_1977
https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-questions-and-answers-about-food-additive-or-color-additive-petition-process
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