This Gary Taubes dude had it figured out a long time ago. Just incredible what is going on out there.
https://reason.com/archives/2018/04/14/the-man-who-hated-carbs-before
This part on artificial sweeteners.
https://reason.com/archives/2018/04/14/the-man-who-hated-carbs-before
This part on artificial sweeteners.
Quote:
Where did the idea that these sweeteners were problematic come from?
Oh, they came from the sugar industry. The saccharine and cyclamates were direct competitors. Interestingly, here's where the beverage industry and the sugar industry split, because the beverage industry was happy to sell artificially sweetened drinks. Artificial sweeteners are cheaper. So Coke and Pepsi put out Tab and Diet Rite.
And Fresca. I'm thinking of all the horrible-tasting preDiet Coke diet sodas.
But the sugar industry saw it as a direct threat to their viability, and it was. There's a quote from The New York Times in my book, a sugar industry executive copping to spending a half-million dollars on research trying to find anything that an artificial sweetener does that's damaging. They would give female rats the equivalent of 60 cans a day of soda and then hope that they would produce rats with birth defects so they could say it was as bad as thalidomide. This executive is quoted as saying, "If someone could undersell you one cent to a dime, wouldn't you throw a brickbat at them if you could?"