They can’t all have the same effect, they’re wildly different chemically!
Either the conclusion is actually: sugar preserves intelligence OR being overweight is correlated with use of diet drinks, disease, and brain damage caused by those diseases.
Diabetes for example is known to cause neurological damage.
Exactly, I made the same point on HN on a similar story only a few months ago.
Your conclusion makes sense given the data from this questionable research.
As I pointed out in that earlier comment, with vastly different chemistries the only thing these compounds have in common is that they cause the sensation of sweetness and that this could be a possible factor.
There's been a hypothesis around for a while that the body reacts to sweetness and it may have an effect on metabolism. It's also been suggested that receptors in the stomach are sensitive to sweet compounds even though we aren't aware of the sensation and that this could be the mechanism.
If sweetness turns out to have a metabolic effect then it's possible that artificial sweeteners are overstimulating that mechanism given that drinks sweetened with them are often very sweet (to me some are so sweet I find them undrinkable). That last point I've not heard elsewhere, it's a notion of mine based on the fact that in recent decades food and drink manufacturers have been increasing the sweetness of products to the point where the average person's 'bliss point' has increased significantly since say the 1950s. 'Bliss point' is industry jargon for ideal maximum sweetness point, it's the target sweetness level manufacturers aim for in their products.
I have no idea whether stimulating the sensation of sweetness affects body metabolism in ways that could account for these functional changes in cognition or not but it ought to be ruled out completely before tackling the matter of the 'toxicity' of artificial sweeteners. That's just good scientific method.
Studies into the possible damaging effects of artificial sweeteners have been bouncing around for decades with widely differing results and with no real consensus, so it doesn't require an Einstein to figure out something is wrong with the data or methodologies or both. Ruling out the sweetness factor completely is a way to move forward. That could be done with studies with sucrose and fructose. They could then be compared with existing artificial sweetener studies.
Given the obesity epidemic and the increasing percentiles of diabetes cases it's clear that getting definitive results is more urgent than ever.
throwmeaway222•5mo ago