Mixing Diet Soda and Fries Has a Dangerous Effect on the Brain

Swapping out sugar for Splenda triggers a strange, potentially dangerous effect on the body if the swap is paired with food high in carbohydrates, suggests new research.

It turns out artificial sweeteners and carbs — when consumed together — trip up the brain and mess with metabolism. These effects can lead to insulin intolerance, diabetes, and weight gain. This research suggests that downing a diet soda isn’t so bad for you if consumed alone. What could be bad for health is when the drink comes with a side of fries.

“If you’re going to have a diet drink, don’t have it with French fries,” co-author Dana Small, a researcher at Yale University, tells Inverse. “Have the diet drink by itself and if you’re going to have a diet drink, give an hour on either side and it should be fine, at least in small quantities.”

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Cell Metabolism.

This research also posits that, if you’re on a sugar detox or aim to skip sugar-related calories, artificial sweeteners may not help as much as you think. Anytime you increase the sweetness of anything and it’s not actual sugar, it could have a negative impact, Small says.

“The finding that we saw could be the TIP OF THE ICEBERG in the sense that there are many, many things where the sensory properties and the energetic properties are mismatched or combined and created and processed, unlike anything in the natural food environment,” Small explains.

SWEET EXPERIMENT

Small and her team recruited a group of 45 healthy young adults who didn’t regularly consume artificial sweeteners. All of the participants maintained a healthy weight and showed no signs of metabolic dysfunction.

The participants were randomly assigned into three groups and, over the course of a two week period, visited Small’s lab 13 times. By the end of the study, each participant drank seven fruit-flavored beverages mixed by the researchers.

One group drank beverages sweetened with the artificial sweetener SUCRALOSE (zero-calories, 0.06 grams of sucralose adding up to about two packets of Splenda). Sucralose goes by the brand name Splenda and is one of the most common artificial sweeteners. It’s 600 times sweeter than table sugar, the FDA says, and has been on the market since 1998.

Sucralose goes by the brand name Splenda. Other popular artificial sweeteners, such as Equal (pictured), contain aspartame.Mike Mozart

Another group drank beverages with regular table sugar (120 calories, 30.38 grams of sugar) and, as a control, the final group consumed drinks including both an artificial sweetener and added carbs — a non-sweet substance called maltodextrin (120 calories, 31.83 grams of maltodextrin). Each drink was the size of a typical soda can (355 milliliters or about 12 ounces).

Before and after they downed their drinks, the participants went through a barrage of tests measuring brain activity, taste perception, and metabolic function. The scientists also used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) scanning to look at how the participant’s brains responded to sweet, savory, salty and sour tastes. The researchers also documented the group’s taste perception and did an oral glucose tolerance test to look at insulin sensitivity.

CONSCIOUS UNCOUPLING

At the start of the study, the researchers wanted to test the “uncoupling hypothesis.” This hypothesis works off the idea that we’ve evolved to have a special relationship with sugar: We want sweet food, like fruit, because sweet food gives us energy. But when we consume something that is sweet that doesn’t contain calories — like artificial sweetener — the body becomes consumed. The taste is there, but the calories that give us energy are not.

In this case sweetness, Small explains, “is no longer a useful clue.” According to the hypothesis, this confusion causes the body to stop producing insulin and metabolizing sugar — which it normally would if the sweetness was paired with calories. This can lead to metabolic dysfunction and weight gain.

But Small’s results DISPROVE this theory: If the uncoupling hypothesis were correct, the group who drank artificially-sweetened drinks would have experienced negative brain and metabolic changes.

That didn’t happen: Only the group that drank the carb-artificial sweetener combo showed changes in the brain’s response to sweet taste and impaired insulin sensitivity or sugar metabolism. This result shocked the researchers so much, that they conducted an additional test where participants drank beverages with the added carbs (maltodextrin) only.

On their own, sucralose, sugar, or carb-heavy drinks didn’t seem to have negative metabolic and neurologic effects. Only the artificial sweetener-carbohydrate mixture disrupted the brain’s sugar response and kicked off downstream metabolic changes.

The sweetener-carbo group participants’ brains also showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain linked to regulating metabolism and processing rewards. These participants also because slightly insensitive to insulin.

Taken together, the results suggest carbs and sucralose work together TO CONFUSE THE BRAIN and set off a cascade of miscommunication through the body.

Since the brain’s response to sugar is “blunted” the body can’t metabolize sugar properly. In turn, if this blunting effect happens regularly, it can make it difficult for the brain and body to recognize sugar and respond appropriately.

Small describes this as a “circuit change.” This neural circuit change is adaptive in the sense that the body’s trying to understand how to process nutrients, but it is getting inaccurate signals, Small says. Whether the brain would eventually be able to self-correct isn’t clear, since the study was only for two weeks.

RETHINKING ARTIFICIAL SUGAR

While no one in this study was at risk of becoming diabetic, the results do suggest that people who habitually eat or drink artificial sweeteners with a side of carbs may have a greater risk of Type 2 diabetes or becoming obese, Small explains.

Whether other common artificial sweeteners — from aspartame to stevia — could also ignite this disruptive effect when paired with carbs isn’t known, but Small predicts research will reveal similar results.

Artificial sweeteners, Small points out, aren’t necessarily used by food and drink companies because they are trying to make “diet” products — it’s because they’re artificial sweeteners are less expensive than sugar. In turn, her research suggests it’s time to rethink how healthy a “diet” version of a product (containing artificial sweeteners) is compared to foods and drinks that contain actual sugar.

To be the healthiest you can be, Small advises you avoid process foods and eat naturally. But if you’re in the mood for a treat, pair your pizza slice with a sugary drink like a Sprite — and not a Diet Coke.

Abstract: There is a general consensus that overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to the prevalence of obesity and related comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes (T2D). Whether a similar relationship exists for no- or low-calorie ‘‘diet’’ drinks is a subject of intensive debate and controversy. Here, we demonstrate that consuming seven sucralose- sweetened beverages with, but not without, a carbohydrate over 10 days decreases insulin sensitivity in healthy human participants, an effect that correlates with reductions in midbrain, insular, and cingulate responses to sweet, but not sour, salty, or savory, taste as assessed with fMRI. Taste perception was unaltered and consuming the carbohydrate alone had no effect. These findings indicate that consumption of sucralose in the presence of a carbohydrate rapidly impairs glucose metabolism and results in longer-term decreases in brain, but not perceptual sensitivity to sweet taste, suggesting dysregulation of gut-brain control of glucose metabolism.

Fruit Fly Study Reveals the Hidden Costs of Intermittent Fasting

Note from Millie–  Please remember that a true fast is not a short term deal. The first three days you are simple emptying the colon. Then you begin the process of detoxing. Very few people’s lifestyle affords them the luxury of a fast, as it takes a week to 10n days to truly fast effectively. I recommend detoxing by stopping processed foods, ,beginning to eat more fruits and veggies. Every summer I do a fruit fats, I will eat only fruit for several weeks. It’s an amazing detox and will allow you to carry on your regular schedule.

Yo-yo dieting takes an unexpected toll on health, a new study suggests.

Jumping on and off the diet wagon may seem like a tempting way to lose weight or improve long-term health. But a new study suggests swinging between periods of dietary restriction and eating rich foods may have “hidden costs” for reproductive health and perhaps even lifespan.

In the study, which was conducted in fruit flies, researchers find that switching back to a plentiful diet after cutting consumption causes flies to lay fewer eggs and die prematurely as compared to flies that lived on a rich diet consistently.

Of course, “fruit flies aren’t humans,” study co-author Mirre Simons tells Inverse. More research is needed to see how diet switching plays out in the human body. But if future studies confirm the findings, it could be bad news for the thousands of people who diet on-and-off, or incorporate intermittent fasting in their routines.

“Intermittent fasting could have negative health consequences under certain dietary or temporal regimes,” Simons, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, says.

Switching from restriction to re-feeding, or resuming normal eating, may have negative health consequences that may occur within a short timeline, the results suggest.

“A level of caution is therefore warranted when rapidly changing diet, especially at least that is what our work suggests, increasing intake after a period of restriction,” he says.

The findings were published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

Typically, when fruit flies’ diets are restricted, their risk of death drops significantly within 24 hours, Simons says. But rebounding after dietary restriction by eating a rich diet appears to cause an “overshoot effect” in the flies, resulting in “substantial” and “unexpected” mortality costs.

To test how sudden diet shifts affect fruit flies, a model often used in biology as a “stand-in” for humans, Simons’ team cycled a large group of mostly female flies through periods of eating very little and periods of eating four times as much food.

The research team examined the survival and reproductive capabilities of over 60,000 fruit flies in their labUniversity of Sheffield

The researchers tracked how many bugs lived or died throughout the study, and how many eggs the flies laid. After switching from four-day dietary restriction to a rich-food diet, flies’ risk of death went up and their fertility went down.

The effect of diet switching remained significant after controlling for different confounders, including the flies’ microbiomes, water consumption, social dynamics, and gender.

The experiment was repeated in over 66,000 flies across 11 genetic lines. As a group, the short-term diet switches have “surprising” effects on flies’ health, the researchers say.

Mortality risk during intermittent 4-day periods of dietary restriction was 1.6 times higher than in flies kept on a restricted diet without breaks. During the 4-day timelines, the flies’ risk of death appears to peak 48 hours after each diet switch.

During shorter, 2-day time periods, the team did not see significant effects on the flies’ risk of death. This finding suggests timing matters, and negative effects pop up after a certain number of days after a diet switch.

SURVIVAL MODE

This study pushes against the popular theory that dietary restriction triggers a “survival strategy” in humans and animals.

The theory goes that humans and animals invest in maintaining and repairing the body in times of low food availability, to await times when food availability increases again. This ability to thrive under a constrained energy budget seems to benefit their long-term survival. Indeed, dietary restriction — not starvation or nutrient deprivation — has been shown to extend animal lifespans in multiple studies.

A huge number of species — from yeast to rhesus monkeys — show similar responses to dietary restriction, suggesting dietary restriction is an “evolutionary conserved response,” Simons says.

“The explanation why this response is so universally found in the animal kingdom is that organisms go into a survival mode during times of scarcity, invest in maintaining themselves, therefore age less fast, to await times when food availability increases again,” he says.

The theory is “attractive and intuitive,” but it has not been subject to rigorous testing, Simons says.

In this study, the researchers test the theory’s assumption that cutting food intake prepares animals for periods of food abundance.

But the results indicate flies are “ill-prepared” for rich-food conditions after experiencing dietary restriction. Rather than waiting for food availability to increase in the future, the flies instead appear to be essentially waiting to die on a restricted diet, the researchers say.

The team conducted several follow-up experiments to make sure this effect was “real,” interesting biology, Simons says. However, the work does still need to be validated in a separate sample.

Instead of dietary restriction triggering a survival mechanism, the researchers offer an alternate theory: Perhaps, dietary restriction is an escape from the damaging costs of a rich diet, which are currently unknown, they say.

What that “escape” means and if it translates to real-life health outcomes isn’t clear at this stage.

“Our work is a considerable step forward in the fundamental understanding of dietary restriction — one of the best known and studied ways to make animals, and most likely also our own species, live longer and healthier,” Simons says.

Ultimately, the study suggests limiting food intake may affect longevity, and in some cases, hamper reproductive abilities and heighten the risk of death. Diet changes should be taken with care, the researchers caution.

Abstract: Dietary restriction (DR) extends life span across taxa. Despite considerable research, precise and universal mechanisms of DR have not been identified, limiting its translational potential. In biomedical science, DR is interpreted as stimulating pro-longevity molecular pathways. This rationale is guided by the conviction that DR evolved as an adaptive, pro-longevity physiological response to food scarcity. Current evolutionary theory states that organisms invest in their soma during DR, and thus when resource availability improves, should outcompete rich-fed controls in survival and/or reproduction. Here, we test this prediction using large populations of Drosophila melanogaster (N > 66,000 across 11 genetic lines). Our experiments reveal substantial, unexpected mortality costs when flies return to a rich diet following DR. The physiological effects of DR should therefore not be interpreted as intrinsically pro-longevity, acting via somatic maintenance. We suggest DR could alternatively be considered an escape from costs incurred under nutrient-rich conditions, in addition to costs associated with DR.

People With The Best Gut Health Share This ONE Thing in Common

After looking at 11,000 people’s gut microbes and their corresponding eating questionnaires, the team of researchers learned an invaluable lesson about gut health. “It turned out that people who had the healthiest guts, which is generally the most diverse guts, were the people eating more than 30 different types of plant in a week,” says Dr. Spector.

When your gut isn’t happy about what you ate for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, it makes its feelings known. There’s an overwhelming amount of information out there about what to do—and what to avoid—to care for your digestive tract. But Tim Spector, MD, professor of genetic epidemiology at Kings College London and author of The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat, knows how to improve gut health naturally with a small but mighty tweak to your diet.

On a recent episode of the Deliciously Ella podcast, Dr. Spector points to a study a 2018 study published by the American Society for Microbiology. After looking at 11,000 people’s gut microbes and their corresponding eating questionnaires, the team of researchers learned an invaluable lesson about gut health. “It turned out that people who had the healthiest guts, which is generally the most diverse guts, were the people eating more than 30 different types of plant in a week,” says Dr. Spector.

At first blush, a triple-digit quantity of plants sounds like a lot, but Dr. Spector explains that it’s easier than you think. “People forget what a plant is. A plant can be a nut, a seed, a grain. It can be an herb, a spice. So it’s actually not that hard as long as you don’t have the same thing every day. That diversity was much more important than if you were vegan or vegetarian or meat-eater,” he says. So if you eat nut butter and whole grain toast for breakfast, followed by a salad at lunch, and some cauliflower pizza for dinner, you’ve checked off nearly a dozen of your vegetables in less than 24 hours.

The lesson here? If you’re new to the world of digestive health, focus on the diversity of the foods you eat. Your gut microbes will flourish and you’ll get to try every plant the supermarket has to offer.

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Vegetarian Nutrition- Examined. How Coaching Can Help

Most vegetarians do not eat enough fruits and veggies and eat too much bread, grains and processed foods.

I cooked and taught vegetarian nutrition for almost 30 years before organic meat became readily available to us. Although I healed on the vegetarian diet I developed other issues because of its inadequacies. So this stage of my life I eat wheat and dairy free, lots of fruits and vegetables and I mainly depend on protein with seafood and eggs.

I had found in teaching and coaching nutrition all these years that very few people meet their nutrient needs. So course when that happens the body stores what it takes in and it makes it harder to lose weight. So only when you meet every nutrient needs can you reach Optimum Nutrition and health.

The way I offered coaching is to analyze the clients food diary for 4 to 5 days and then show them in analysis of their nutrition for each of those days. That way you can see what you’re missing and what you are getting out of the way you’re eating.
There is so much controversy and belief system wrapped around the way we eat whoever really and truly it’s not that complicated. The right healthy fats, the correct amount of protein for growth and repair, and lots of fruits and vegetables. That’s it ,that’s all we should eat everyday.

When you can see it in black and white and have someone coach you as to how to shop, how to meet your nutrient needs, how to still have a life and eat healthy, that’s when you can really start to make changes and reach a very high degree of Health. My client see major changes in just a few weeks and it is amazing to see how different people feeling look in just a month.

I Googled what a vegetarian should eat daily to meet their nutrient needs;  This menu below was very typical of what I found. I have also seen MANY vegetarian clients daily food diaries along the way.

• Breakfast: Oatmeal with fruit and flaxseeds
• Lunch: Grilled veggie and hummus wrap with sweet potato fries
• Dinner: Tofu banh mi sandwich with pickled slaw

Here’s the nutrient breakdown;

The highlighted part is showing the deficiencies, long term this will do harm to your health.

Hands on Coaching can help you come very close to meeting the lack of some vitamins and minerals. In this example the saturated fats are dangerously low, this affects the immune system, brain function, our ability to digest food. The mono and poly-unsaturated fats are way too high, leading to clogged arteries and sticky blood lipids.

the B Vitamins, especially B12 is way too low. This is one of the reason that many Vegetarians are tired and lack energy. Including Tofu in your diet is dangerous and is associated with brain fog, damage to the endocrine system and many types of cancer.

Notice how FEW fruits and vegetables there are in this days menu! You cannot maintain this type of nutrition long term with harming the body.

I work with clients by analyzing their daily food intake and helping them optimize their nutrition.

Reach out today to get started on a healthier lifestyle. Click here for more info-  Beyond-Paleo.com

Why You shouldn’t Follow “Diet” Advice on Losing Weight

PopSugar carried this article on it’s website on how to lose weight and a 7 Day Meal Plan- you can read it here-

You Don’t Have to Eat Bland, Boring Food to Lose Weight, and This 7-Day Meal Plan Is Proof

After reading the article I realized their advice was awful. So I took the first day’s meal plan and used my Nutrition Program to analyze the calories and nutrition.

Here’s their menu for the day-

Breakfast-   Pumpkin oatmeal, 2 tablespoons no-sugar-added peanut butter

Lunch-  –  Mexican stuffed peppers

Dinner-  Easy fried rice with egg

Snack-  Banana peanut butter ice cream

Notice there are a LOT of empty carbs and very little veggies, and no fruit?

The breakdown; 3875 calories!  Yikes!

19% fat-  ok

68% carbs- way too high as most of the calories come from dairy and rice (empty calories)

Protein- 13% –  too low

Only 45% of needed B12 was achieved.

Other nutrients were met but only by taking in more than twice needed calorie!

Alzheimer’s Risk May be 75% Higher for People Who Eat Trans Fats

If you eat out often, eat fast foods, eat purchased baked goods, if you eat anything with partially hydrogenated oils, canned frosting, margarines you are eating trans fats. I have worked in many high end restaurants and I can tell you that most restaurants do not use real butter, they use an oil blend, because of the cost. And those are vegetable oils that mostly contain soy, canola and other vegetable oils. Many products, such as popcorn or pizza still contain trans fat.

People with higher levels of trans fats in their blood may be 50% to 75% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia from any cause, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Neurology.

“This study demonstrates that there are negative ‘brain/cognitive’ outcomes, in addition to the known cardiovascular outcomes, that are related to a diet that has (a) high content of trans fats,” said neurologist Dr. Neelum T. Aggarwal, who was not involved in the study. Aggarwal, a member of the American Academy of Neurology, is co-leader of the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago.

Over 1,600 Japanese men and women without dementia were followed over a 10-year period. A blood test for trans fat levels was done at the start of the study and their diets were analyzed.

Researchers then adjusted for other factors that could affect the risk of dementia, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking. They found that people with the two highest levels of trans fats were 52% and 74% more likely to develop dementia than those with the lowest levels.

“The study used blood marker levels of trans fats, rather than more traditionally used dietary questionnaires, which increases the scientific validity of the results,” said neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.

“This study is important as it builds upon prior evidence that dietary intake of trans fats can increase risk of Alzheimer’s dementia,” said Isaacson, who was also not involved in the study.

Trans fats can occur naturally in small amounts in certain meat and dairy foods, but by far the greatest exposure comes from the man-made version.

Also called trans fatty acids, artificial trans fats are created by an industrialized process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid (think of semi-soft margarine and shortening).

The food industry loves trans fats because they are cheap to produce, last a long time and give foods a great taste and texture.

Besides fried foods, trans fats are found in coffee creamer, cakes, pie crusts, frozen pizza, cookies, crackers, biscuits and dozens of other processed foods.

In the Japanese study, researchers found sweet pastries were the strongest contributor to higher trans fats levels. Margarine was next, followed by candies, caramels, croissants, non-dairy creamers, ice cream and rice crackers.

After extensive research revealed the connection between trans fats and the increase of bad cholesterol (LDL), combined with a reduction of good cholesterol (HDL), the US Food and Drug Administration banned trans fats in 2015.

Companies were given three years to stop using them; then the FDA began granting extensions to various parts of the industry. The latest extension runs out January 1.

But even if every manufacturer complies by the first of the year, that doesn’t mean trans fats are gone from the grocery shelves. According to the FDA, if one serving of the food contains less than 0.5 grams, companies can label the food as “0 grams” of trans fats.

Even in small doses, artificial trans fats will still be around to contribute to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other conditions, such as dementia.

“In the United States, the small amounts still allowed in foods can really add up if people eat multiple servings of these foods, and trans fats are still allowed in many other countries,” said study author Dr. Toshiharu Ninomiya, a professor at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, in a statement.

“People at risk still need to pay careful attention to nutrition labels,” Isaacson said. “When it comes to nutrition labels, the fewer ingredients, the better! Focus on natural whole food, and minimize or avoid those that are highly processed.”

Aggarwal added: “This message must be delivered in countries where the ban of trans fats has not been enacted or difficult to enforce.”