No more aspartame in Diet Pepsi

[Dick Whitman]

deck, how many obese classmates did you have in law school? How many at your law firm?

I'm on college campuses on a regular basis. The percentage of folks who are obese is small.

Very few in both instances. You have some dad guts, I suppose, but most people watch it. My one good friend at work put it this way: The partners have three things in their lives: Family, fitness, and practicing law.

 

[YankeeFan]

Very few in both instances. You have some dad guts, I suppose, but most people watch it. My one good friend at work put it this way: The partners have three things in their lives: Family, fitness, and practicing law.

That's what I figured. As education and wealth increases, so does health/fitness.

 

[old_tony]

What sucks about Diet Coke?

The taste, the headaches caused by the artificial sweetener ... just to name two.

 

[amraeder]

It's always been funny to me that I spend my days and nights with a Diet Coke next to me, and I can't stand Diet Pepsi. If I order Diet Coke somewhere and the waitress says, "Is Diet Pepsi OK?", I say no, I'll have something else. To me, Diet Pepsi tastes like water poorly infused with cola taste.

But my doctor did say that aspartame fools your body into thinking it's getting sugar, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

So I was curious about this because I heard this - in fact I think I first heard about this it on this site in one of the weigh loss or exercise threads.
Don't know exactly how your Dr was saying this happened, but from what I could find:
Hartel et al (1993) Found that there was no difference in insulin production when consuming water or consuming water with artificial sweeteners, including aspartame. (There was, not surprisingly, from sugar water).
Teff et al (1995) Found the same general thing using oral sugar/artificial sweeter pills - sugar causes insulin production but artificial sweeteners don't.
Abdallah et al. (1997) Reproduced these findings.
Carlson and Shah (1989) Did some study I didn't 100% understand. It seemed to be looking at hormone production related to insulin production. It basically said that it didn't have an impact on blood-sugar levels because it didn't cause an increase in activity of insulin counterregulatory hormones.

There were a lot of studies with this with diabetics since obviously it could be life-threatening for them if it screwed with their endocrine system.
Stern et al (1976) Found no blood-sugar differences between fasting and a placebo or with aspartame.
Taur et al (1984) and Okuno et al (1986) showed no change in glucose tolerance of type 2 diabetics after courses (lengths varied between studies daily to 18 weeks) of aspartame.
There's some more, but the common theme is "it doesn't screw with the blood glucose levels of diabetics."

Now it's possible your Dr is thinking of it happening through a mechanism I haven't found yet. But as far as I can tell, it do anything strange like cause your body to produce insulin when it's not actually getting sugar.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Well, I do feel better as I go to the fridge for the fifth Diet Coke of the night ...

 

[93Devil]

You are the new Boom. Mazel tov.

When I was a kid, before my mother went to college, she cooked three hot meals a day (my father drove home for lunch from the plant, which was only a mile or so away). We had handmade white biscuits -- with good ole Crisco shortening -- every day of the week. We had fried chicken -- fried in melted Crisco shortening -- at least twice a week. And we tucked into 'nary a lunch or supper without quaffing a glass or two of ridiculously sweet iced tea. Unless fresh vegetables were in season, if my mother hadn't canned it that summer, we didn't have it. Which meant that mostly we had canned green beans ... and I'm not exaggerating when I say we had 'em pretty much every damned meal.

A really swanky-do night was when we bought the Kraft boxed spaghetti dinner (anyone here remember those?). And an unbelievable swanky-do night was when we had tacos ... browned (in Crisco) ground beef, served in skillet-softened (in Crisco) corn tortillas (they came in a can). In the fall, on Friday nights when the high school football team was in town, we went to the ice cream parlor on Main St. and got a sackful of hot dogs (with chili). The guy there (I still remember his name ... Leland) had a chili that I learned later was Cincinnati style. There were other, similar, hot dog places all over mill hills throughout S.C. Many years later I sat down at the counter at one, looked to my left and saw the wife of the governor of S.C. They were all the same in one way, though ... by the time you got home with your sackful, the grease had already worked it's way through the bag.

It's comical to think how different my diet is from that of my parents.

P.S. For whatever reason, this brings to mind a really good friend of mine, who's about 15 years older but came from similar blue-class roots. He tells of growing up (in Akron, OH) when his family had one night out a month. They always went to the same restaurant, a chicken dinner place, and the kids could each get one Coke (this was in the day before free refills). He was the youngest, so he always slurped his down before his dinner came, so he'd then have to do with water for his meal. Years later, after he'd grown up and become a fairly successful salesman, he went back to that restaurant and ordered a chicken dinner .. and five Cokes.

My mom would always slap a loaf of white bread on the table while I ate. Eating four to five slices of Wonder with my meatloaf was the shirt, but it was terrible for me in the long run.

 

[93Devil]

Just to keep this thread rolling along...

At what point do you allow your kids to drink any type of soda?

 

[Batman]

deck, how many obese classmates did you have in law school? How many at your law firm?

I'm on college campuses on a regular basis. The percentage of folks who are obese is small.

Besides being young and in their prime, does the very nature of college help with that? I lived on campus and was walking at least two miles a day just to get back and forth to class. That's not counting anything else I did, like play basketball with friends or take the occasional walk across campus (about a half-mile each way) just to get out of the dorm room for a while.

 

[BTExpress]

Holy shirt! I'd be bouncing off the walls if I took in that much caffeine.

Just about any brand-name diet soda has a decaffeinated version. Caffeine is. not. an. issue.

 

[deskslave]

When I was a kid, before my mother went to college, she cooked three hot meals a day (my father drove home for lunch from the plant, which was only a mile or so away). We had handmade white biscuits -- with good ole Crisco shortening -- every day of the week. We had fried chicken -- fried in melted Crisco shortening -- at least twice a week. And we tucked into 'nary a lunch or supper without quaffing a glass or two of ridiculously sweet iced tea. Unless fresh vegetables were in season, if my mother hadn't canned it that summer, we didn't have it. Which meant that mostly we had canned green beans ... and I'm not exaggerating when I say we had 'em pretty much every damned meal.

A really swanky-do night was when we bought the Kraft boxed spaghetti dinner (anyone here remember those?). And an unbelievable swanky-do night was when we had tacos ... browned (in Crisco) ground beef, served in skillet-softened (in Crisco) corn tortillas (they came in a can). In the fall, on Friday nights when the high school football team was in town, we went to the ice cream parlor on Main St. and got a sackful of hot dogs (with chili). The guy there (I still remember his name ... Leland) had a chili that I learned later was Cincinnati style. There were other, similar, hot dog places all over mill hills throughout S.C. Many years later I sat down at the counter at one, looked to my left and saw the wife of the governor of S.C. They were all the same in one way, though ... by the time you got home with your sackful, the grease had already worked it's way through the bag.

It's comical to think how different my diet is from that of my parents.

P.S. For whatever reason, this brings to mind a really good friend of mine, who's about 15 years older but came from similar blue-class roots. He tells of growing up (in Akron, OH) when his family had one night out a month. They always went to the same restaurant, a chicken dinner place, and the kids could each get one Coke (this was in the day before free refills). He was the youngest, so he always slurped his down before his dinner came, so he'd then have to do with water for his meal. Years later, after he'd grown up and become a fairly successful salesman, he went back to that restaurant and ordered a chicken dinner .. and five Cokes.

How much did you eat between meals?

 

[doctorquant]

Probably not much, but I don't really remember. I do remember that back then having popcorn was a big, big treat -- strange what you remember, but I can still see the kettle my parents made it in -- but for me and my kids it's as handy as tap water. Really, though, my trip down memory lane was to echo YF's point re: the vast differences in eating habits between then and now.

 

[YankeeFan]

How much did you eat between meals?

We always had an "after school snack" when we got home -- and it wasn't fruit.

Ate a lot of ice cream after dinner, often with chocolate syrup. And popcorn -- with tons of butter -- and soda were standard accompaniments to a Friday night movie.