The Downsides of the Sweet Stuff: All About Sugar and Sugar Alternatives

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Transcript: The Downsides of the Sweet Stuff: All About Sugar and Sugar Alternatives

Season 7, Episode 12  | October 31, 2023

Jamie Martin:
Welcome to Life Time Talks, the podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, editor-in-chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole-life health and fitness magazine.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman, director of Alpha, one of Life Time’s signature group-training programs. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey, but no matter what we’re working toward, there are some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy, purpose-driven life.

Jamie Martin:
In each episode, we break down various elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, mindset and community, and health issues. We’ll also share real, inspiring stories of transformation.

David Freeman:
And we’ll be talking to experts from Life Time and beyond who will share their insights and knowledge so you have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

Welcome back to another episode of Life Time Talks. I’m David Freeman.

Jamie Martin:
And I’m Jamie Martin.

David Freeman:
And we got a pretty sweet topic today. We’re going to have a different take on sweets. It’s going to be sugar, artificial sweeteners, and natural sweeteners, and here today, we got a special guest.

Jamie Martin:
Our friend Paul Kriegler is back. Paul is a registered dietician and personal trainer, as well as the director of nutritional product development for Life Time. Hi, Paul.

Paul Kriegler:
Hi, Jamie. Hi, David.

Jamie Martin:
Is this one of your favorite topics?

Paul Kriegler:
Yes and no.

Jamie Martin:
We’re excited to dive into this, right? Okay, so, sweeteners. Sugar is all of those things. I mean, I think most of us know that too much is not a great thing. So, let’s just talk about the role of sugar in our health, and why it is problematic for so many of us.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah, I mean, our intakes of sugar and sweeteners have both increased dramatically in the last few decades, and it’s probably affected some people more than others, in terms of conditioning their appetite, their taste preferences, and then the downstream effects of that, of, you know, what happens in the body, to your nerve signals, your gut/brain axis, inflammatory signaling processes, and glucose and insulin sensitivity, right?

Jamie Martin:
So, really broad-ranging in terms of its health effects, for a lot of us?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah, whole-system-wide.

David Freeman:
Well, I mean, the introduction of sugar comes such at a early age, when you think of, like, celebrating birthdays, or whatever it may be, like when we’re at parties. So, we hear how bad sugar is, and yet, we still crave it. So, what makes it so addictive?

Paul Kriegler:
Well, it has a really pleasant taste, so it immediately lights up your brain and your neurons when you consume it. So, sweetness is a preference that we have from birth. You know, in breastmilk, there’s lactose, and it’s part of a mechanism to get a baby to eat enough and drink enough to grow. So, at that stage of life, it’s a benefit. But if it continues to be highly prevalent, then it can be problematic down the road, when you don’t want to grow taller and bigger and weigh more.

You know, when you’re not in hyper-growth mode, you don’t want to be in hyper-growth mode, then that’s when it becomes a problem, if you can’t tamp down the sugar intake.

Jamie Martin:
And that’s referring to naturally-occurring sugars, right? I mean, you know, those can be addictive in and of themselves, but then the addictiveness of the artificial and natural sweeteners. I’m assuming because of the way they’ve been manufactured, they’re made to be more addictive.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s on purpose, but yeah, that’s the effect it has.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah.

Paul Kriegler:
That’s what it appears to be, because they’re not inert. You know, the high-intensity sweeteners, and we’ll kind of go through what the different types of them are, high-intensity sweeteners are used in place of sugar. You know, the intention is that they’re replacing something that we don’t need as much of, that we would probably consume if we had sugar only. But the total amount of sweetness in the diet plays into how your brain perceives your food environment, and how your taste preferences basically develop from there on out.

David Freeman:
Well, you kind of said it in the beginning, is, like, this is something that you experience at a early point in life, as far as for babies just to actually consume the food. So, now individuals that are older, and this is something that’s become accustomed to their life, but they’re trying to cut back, they understand that, obviously, it can lead to some detrimental things, but it’s so addictive, to our point.

Like, how would you, as far as a coach in that space, try to help navigate someone who’s trying to cut back on their sugar?

Paul Kriegler:
You know, understanding kind of the mechanism behind it. Sugar is a very quick energy source. So, if the brain is lacking energy for another reason, like lack of sleep, or poor sleep quality, or any number of other things, sugar’s the easiest thing to kind of boost the energy in the whole system, especially the brain. It’s an efficient energy source. So, we burn it very well. Every cell in the body can burn sugar, glucose, and the waste products are just carbon dioxide and water.

So, you breathe out the carbon dioxide, some of the water, and the rest of the water gets used metabolically, or you excrete it out.

Jamie Martin:
Right. But it’s so widespread in our food supply. So, I mean, and obviously you mentioned how much sugar we’re eating now, probably today versus even, you know, maybe two decades ago, five decades ago. So, how much has our sugar intake increased in the US, for instance, or in North America?

Paul Kriegler:
I don’t know the exact figure, but it was really dramatic from the mid-‘70s through the ‘90s, and then, since the mid-2000s, it has kind of leveled off a little bit, but it’s remained at a very high level. And I think it’s important to recognize, like, our body does utilize sugar very well metabolically, but the amount we need in the bloodstream at any given time to maintain, you know, good, healthy function of all our organs and our brain, is about 5 grams, or one teaspoon diluted in our entire bloodstream.

So, that’s what produces a normal fasting blood sugar of about 85 grams per deciliter. It’s one teaspoon of sugar. So, when you compare that to, like, what’s available in just normal, run-of-the-mill, everyday foods that kids and adults are consuming, you know, sometimes, a can of soda is seven, eight x-ing your blood sugar amount.

Jamie Martin:
Well, before we hit record on this, I was using a kind of a, what was, a rehydration tool, right, that I was going to put in my water this morning before my workout. And knowing we were going to be recording this, I looked at the ingredients list, and it was 9 grams of added sugar. And I was like, wait a second. I mean, it’s meant to rehydrate, and you mentioned that there’s a role, like, the sugar in that can help for certain reasons, but you also said it’s not necessary.

So, it’s just this widespread, like, it’s in everything, and I was shocked. I was like, I’m not drinking this anymore. Like, that exceeds that amount you just noted, the 5 grams.

Paul Kriegler:
And taking it right before a hard workout might be, it’s fine, probably. It’s going to help your performance a little bit.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah.

Paul Kriegler:
But it’s also going to block you from burning fat for that time that you’re burning those 9 grams of sugar off. So, like, what’s your goal, how important is it to have that high-octane fuel source in that moment, you know? So, you’re right. Sugar has made an appearance everywhere, and where people are starting to scrutinize it, now it’s being replaced with non-nutritive or zero-calorie sweeteners, some of them being chemical-based.

Jamie Martin:
Right.

David Freeman:
I like how you kind of just hit on that as far as from a workout preference, how it might be the easiest source, preferred source, probably, by the body to go there first. So, those individuals who want that quick burst, I know we used a car analogy the other day with, like, maybe this is the NOS, right, the nitro button…

Jamie Martin:
Yeah.

Paul Kriegler:
Totally.

David Freeman:
Yeah, right? So…

Paul Kriegler:
It’s a performance-enhancing drug when you look at it in that context. Sugar’s very powerful.

David Freeman:
And ideally, individuals who want to lose fat, if this is an energy source that they’re going to because of the feeling that they’re getting during the workout, the diminished results as far as, like, why am I not losing, yeah, or seeing results as far as dropping the body fat and increasing, potentially I know protein will help support it, but increasing the lean body mass.

So, with that, I mean, you kind of just kind of said it, but I think just, you know, nailing that down again, saying that, okay, during the workout, yes, it could be beneficial, but if you’re looking for results, understand that this can probably slow down that process, if I’m hearing you correctly?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. We burn more of what we eat, is kind of the general idea, is if we eat more carbohydrates, our body’s going to try to burn those carbohydrates, because that’s what carbohydrates are, including sugars, especially. They’re used for nothing other than fuel, and if we don’t need that fuel in the next, you know, few moments or few hours, our body will find a way to store it, and a lot of times, extra sugar above and beyond the calories we need for whatever we’re doing, is easily converted to body fat.

So, I think that’s where people get in the way of themselves sometimes, is they’re fueling hard workouts. You know, they know they need to work hard. However, they don’t know that the tradeoff might be they’re decreasing their access to their own body fat that they’re trying to burn off, sometimes. So…

Jamie Martin:
It’s, like, such a science with all of it. It’s like understanding how it all…you know, it’s like the body awareness and understanding how it all works, right?

Paul Kriegler:
But I get it, people are looking for a burst of energy. They’re looking for that nitro button, you know, to hit higher intensities, because maybe they feel flat most of the time, and again, that could trace back to, like, poor sleep quality, or a pattern of other lifestyle choices that leaves them feeling flat. Another thing that can amp up energy is having proper hydration and electrolyte balance, because our body literally runs on electric current, and without electrolytes or sufficient levels of electrolytes and hydration, we feel flat.

You know, the lights are dim. So, you can turn the lights up two ways, optimize your hydration electrolytes, or inject a little sugar into the system. Both work. Both can work. They have very different outcomes.

Jamie Martin:
So, as we keep going into this, we want to delve deeper, we know that sugar is showing up on labels in, like, a variety of ways. You know, we have an article on Experience Life where it’s, like, 61 names for sugar. So, that’s confusing in and of itself, but then, those sugars are broken down into different categories. Can you talk a little bit about the categories, and how they differentiate?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah, it can be a little confusing. So, sugar, or sucrose, table sugar, is what most people are probably picturing when we’re talking about sugar here, has 4 calories per gram. And there’s a number of alternative sugars, or sources of carbohydrates, that are used as sweeteners in food products. I’ll list a few of the most common ones, agave, which is, like, agave nectar, coconut sugar, which really is just sugar from coconuts, date syrup, or dates is what you might see on a food label, like a protein bar or something like that, glycerol, honey, maple syrup, and like you said, there’s dozens of other names, like rice syrup, and you know, I can’t even think of them all right now.

But there’s a ton of alternative names for sugar, basically. Some of them have different mixtures of fructose and glucose. Like, table sugar is half glucose, half fructose, and those are just two different types of monosaccharides that the body processes slightly differently, each one. High-fructose corn syrup is, like, slightly more fructose than sucrose, but for all intents and purposes, it’s kind of like table sugar. They’re basically the same.

Then, there’s low-calorie sweeteners. So, these are sweeteners that are sometimes present in natural foods in very small quantities, but they happen to have less than 4 calories per gram. So, they’re not lumped together with sugar and the alternative sugars, because they don’t have 4 calories per gram. They’re called low-calorie sweeteners. Most of those are slightly less sweet than sugar on a sweetness level, so you might have to use more of them to get the same sweetness effect.

So, oftentimes companies are maybe using an alternative sugar in a lower quantity than they would normally use, plus an alternative low-calorie sweetener. Those include things like allulose. That only has ten percent of the calories of sugar, but 70 percent of the sweetness. So, you have to use more of it, and the tradeoff is, some of these alternative low-calorie sweeteners have side effects, and they show up differently in different people, so that’s what makes it difficult to kind of pinpoint when you’re working with an individual client, or you’re trying to work through some of the questions you have about your own diet.

A lot of these alternative low-calorie sweeteners are incompletely digested. So, they might leave with bloating, gassiness, other gastrointestinal, you know, urgency symptoms, those types of things. So, you know, you look at it from afar, it’s like, that can be problematic. If they’re all over the place in foods, or packaged foods, and you don’t always know how much of it is in there. Sugar alcohols, which are included in that low-calorie sweeteners, like erythritol, sorbitol, xylitol, those have to be labeled on the nutrition facts panel as sugar alcohols.

But there’s a few others, like polydextrose, inulin, glycine, which might just show up in the other ingredients section, and when it’s in the other ingredients section, you don’t know how much is in it. But inulin can be problematic at pretty low doses, but it’s in a ton of foods. It’s a type of fiber that’s incompletely digested. It’s a little bit sweet, so it’s used as kind of a low-calorie sweetener in a lot of food products.

David Freeman:
Well, then, I mean, just listening to you say that, if now the individual wants more of the sweetness, nine times out of ten, they’re probably going to add more, so they’re almost going back, they’re taking the low-calorie sweetener, but now, let me double up on this, and now they’re probably, almost trying to achieve what they would probably get from, I guess you would call that high-intensity sweetener. And now, if it’s incompletely digestible, to your point, it’s even more problematic over time.

So, that in itself stands out, when you said the word regulation. So, I mean, I want to go into the next piece here, as far as, we have the FDA currently list six high-intensity sweeteners permitted to use, and food additives. So, can you list what those are and how they can be problematic as well?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. Yeah, so, the high-intensity sweeteners are the ones that include the artificial sweeteners.

Jamie Martin:
Okay.

Paul Kriegler:
They’re no-calories, so, in the FDA’s eyes, they classify the zero-calorie high-intensity sweeteners as kind of a stand-off group from the other two groups that I just covered. Ace-K, or acesulfame potassium, advantame, aspartame, neotame, saccharine, sucralose. And then, there’s two naturally-occurring high-intensity sweeteners that are allowed in foods in the US, stevia and monk fruit, or luo han.

Jamie Martin:
And that’s what you’re saying, you have it as, like, they’re grass-approved, right, so they’re generally recognized as safe by the FDA?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. Yeah. So, those are permitted for the purpose of sweetening in food products. And these sweeteners have, you know, a hundred to several thousand times the sweetness of sugar, and some of them can vary from batch to batch or brand to brand, whoever’s producing them, but all with the intent of, like, keeping total sugar content down in food, and total calorie count down, and total carbohydrate count down.

So, it’s the advantage of food producers that are trying to attract a certain customer type to use various forms of sweeteners, whether that’s alternative sugars, low-calorie sweeteners, and/or the high-intensity sweeteners that are permitted.

Jamie Martin:
Right. So, you hear a lot about, for instance, like, aspartame being used, and I think, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a diet soda, but like, isn’t aspartame the replacement in most diet sodas? Or, what is the one now?

Paul Kriegler:
A lot of diet sodas have used aspartame in the past. Some have used saccharine, or…so, aspartame is NutraSweet, and Equal. Those are the brand names for aspartame. Sucralose, or Splenda, is another one that’s used, I think, in Coke Zero, and a few other brands that are, like, the Zero instead of the diet. Honestly, it’s hard to keep up.

Jamie Martin:
Right, like, how quickly that’s changing.

Paul Kriegler:
Yes.

Jamie Martin:
So, what are some of the side effects of these? I know you mentioned, like, a little bit with the low-calorie sweeteners kind of, because they’re incompletely digested, like, the gassiness, the bloating, all of that, but what about with high-intensity sweeteners? Like, what are some of the effects that we’re hearing about, or that research has been done about?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. So, a lot of the research that gets quoted is done in rodents, at higher doses per kilogram of body weight, or per gram of body weight, in rodents, than normal human consumption would be, which makes it difficult to extrapolate, you know, what are the metabolic effects in a rodent, and how does that translate to a human dose, and that sort of thing. I think that’s where a lot of controversy comes from, but there is some human evidence, certainly real-world evidence, too, which, you know, you take it with a grain of salt what anecdotal evidence or real-world experience can teach us.

But like, aspartame, for example, is 200 times sweeter than sugar, but it has the same calories as sugar. Since you’re using one two-hundredth of the amount for the same sweetness level, it’s essentially zero calories contributed to the food, for the purpose of sweetening. But that form of artificial sweetening is not heat-stable, so it can only be used in cold things or room-temperature things, and there is human evidence that has linked it with increased rates of cancer and tinnitus, which is, like, ringing in your ears, which is really odd to me.

You know, like, we have these downstream chronic, metabolic changes that we call cancer, and more acute changes that, like, affect your auditory signaling in your nervous system. That right there, the fact that it can have really broad-ranging acute and chronic effects should make us question whether or not it’s truly safe, if it’s so ubiquitous in the food supply.

Jamie Martin:
Okay, so, I’m just going to…and I don’t know the answer to this, hopefully you do, but you know, we know that there’s a lot of different regulations between, for instance, the EU and the United States. Are some of these regulated differently across the pond?

Paul Kriegler:
Yes. I didn’t do the prep homework to figure out exactly which ones are regulated or allowed in the US versus the EU, but yeah, there are differences in what is allowed in different nations.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah, I think we have some articles that maybe reference that on Experience Life that we can link to in the show notes, go more in-depth on that.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. As a general idea, the EU is a little more cautious or conservative about artificially-created food ingredients. So, some of these high-intensity, non-nutritive sweeteners, the zero-calorie ones that are chemical-based, might be limited more tightly in the EU versus the US.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah, that’s my kind of general knowledge of it as well, kind of a little bit more regulation.

Paul Kriegler:
Which is also a head-scratcher for us.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m just kind of riffing here for a second, but proven safe versus, you know, safe until proven harmful, type thing, right, isn’t that kind of how they…?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah.

Jamie Martin:
…the thinking goes on that?

Paul Kriegler:
I think, yeah, I mean, people have the choice. You know, you can choose to use them, and choose which evidence you look at, and choose what experience you want to draw from. I think that’s kind of a good thing in some ways, but in other ways, it’s like, you should know how much is in there.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah, have that awareness. All right, so, let’s talk a little bit about, you mentioned erythritol. You know, it’s gotten a lot of kind of attention lately because of some news headlines that hit…there was a study that came out saying it was linked to heart attack and stroke. So, let’s talk a little bit about that one in particular.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. So, erythritol is a sugar alcohol. It is naturally present in a number of foods. It is a substance that our body can produce internally. It has five percent of the calories of sugar, so it’s much lower in calories than table sugar, but it is slightly less sweet than sugar. So, you’re kind of going to use it in similar amounts, but you’re going to get way fewer calories into your bloodstream from it. That’s because it’s not digested completely, so you’re not absorbing all of it through the gut.

A lot of it’s excreted out. It makes it kind of problematic, because around 10 to 13, 10 to 15 grams, so, think of it like 3 teaspoons’ worth of erythritol, which would be about a, you know, a similar amount that you would find in a sweetened beverage, if you’re swapping out sugar for erythritol, so kind of a one-to-one volume thing, that can cause GI distress. So, bloating, gassiness, bathroom urgency, those types of things. Some of the recent research is really challenging to decipher.

It was an association or observational study, and you know, I think there was some subject bias in those conclusions, meaning the people that are consuming diet beverages are usually the ones that are trying to lose weight, and I think that, the study that made the headlines was, that was the case. Those might be the individuals that are producing the most erythritol internally anyway. They also might be the individuals who are more likely to have clotting issues and cardiometabolic issues anyway.

So, there’s a lot of confounding variables that led to that confusing headline. I don’t think erythritol is the bad actor in that scenario. I think it’s poor metabolic health and propensity to clot, but that’s my opinion. I don’t think it’s enough to warrant taking erythritol off the table, but I think it’s good that we’re kind of raising concern about why is it in these food products, why is it in so many things that we’re consuming on a habitual basis if we don’t really need it, and if it might be potentially dangerous.

I think that’s the conversation we should be having. Like, how did this slip through the cracks? If it truly is harmful, how did it slip through the cracks?

Jamie Martin:
Yeah. So, you mentioned something here, the studies, and historically, and just kind of over time, like, studying food and its impact on people has historically been very hard, because a lot of it is self-reported. And so, to your point, like, you know, the bias that might be happening within this, but this is not just happening with artificial sweeteners. It’s across…whenever we’re studying food, that’s really hard. So, I think that’s worth noting, because, like you said, it’s observational, or it’s self-reported, or whatever it looks like. So, how do we really know, right, in many cases, what the true, underlying factors are, or, you know, all the related factors that need to be considered, and…

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. In fact, there’s so many variables in every nutrition study. Even if you’re doing a, you know, tightly controlled institutional study, where everyone is staying at a lab, being fed highly-measured portions of food, and you know exactly what’s in it, you’re never studying one nutrient. Even if your data set is focused on a nutrient, you’re never studying one nutrient, and that’s what makes nutrition science so difficult to draw, you know, solid conclusions from.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah. Probably why we often see, like, conflicting headlines sometimes, like, the back and forth on different things, so, anyway…

Paul Kriegler:
Yes.

David Freeman:
No, I think the reason why such a high intake of sugar…we got to go back to Def Leppard. They ended up singing a song, Pour Some Sugar on Me, and then everything hit the fan, right? So…

Jamie Martin:
We’re going to blame Def Leppard?

David Freeman:
No, I’m joking, I’m joking. Are you familiar with the song, though, yes?

Paul Kriegler:
Yes.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah.

Paul Kriegler:
I was born in the ‘80s.

David Freeman:
There you go. All right, so, for those who, obviously, have fell victim to Def Leppard’s lyrics here, what can they do if they’re struggling in this space, and they need to obviously, you know, take a step back? Once again, I want to think of how can we help support and coach them, to say, hey, this is the reason why, this is why it’s problematic. I know it’s addictive, I’m here to help support you on how you need to pull back. What would you suggest there?

Paul Kriegler:
Well, there’s two approaches. You can do a gradual process, where, like, and I’ve done this with clients, can you buy the mini-cans of diet soda, the 6-ounce cans instead of the 12? You know, can you go from a 2-liter to a 1-liter? You know, it’s the step-down approach. So, you’re, you know, still keeping whatever ingredients you’re trying to limit eventually in the plan, but you’re just reducing the amount while you’re making other changes, like adding more sufficient protein, and fiber, and other flavorful produce items, and that sort of thing.

So, that’s one approach. The other approach is just, rip the Band-Aid off, and go no sweeteners at all…

Jamie Martin:
Cold turkey.

Paul Kriegler:
…for a few weeks.

David Freeman:
What would be some of the side effects? Are you going to probably have withdrawal, like headaches, and…?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, most people would maybe recognize, like, a low-carb flu type of…you know, like, the lights just go dim, you feel like junk, you’re irritable, you’re anxious. You don’t know where your sweet foods went, those types of things, and it takes a while for your body to, you know, recognize a ripe raspberry or a strawberry as something that is truly sweet, and it’s okay to replace whatever your high-intensity sweetener habit was with naturally-sweet things that have all the nutrients, and fiber, and those sorts of things.

Even if you take, like, the more dramatic, rip-the-Band-Aid-off approach, and kind of detox yourself from high-intensity sweeteners, it’s going to take several weeks to reset your tastebuds, essentially. But I can tell you, when you do that, everything…some sea salt tastes sweet when you do that, and that’s another thing to pay attention to, is if you reduce total sugar, and total carbohydrates are moderate, and you’re reducing the amount of high-intensity sweeteners that you’re consuming, you probably need to replace or amp up your sodium intake.

And you got to be really on top of your hydration habits, because if your brain has been depending on basically a continuous infusion of sugar, and a really strong sweetness signal from other non-calorie sweeteners, you got to keep the lights on, you know, nice and bright with some other method, and that usually ends up being really great hydration and proper electrolyte balance, so you’re getting sodium, potassium, magnesium, chloride, and calcium from natural sources or a really well-designed supplement.

Jamie Martin:
And you mentioned before that, like, oftentimes people hear sodium, and they think that’s the culprit of so many things, but really, you were saying that actually sodium gets blamed for a lot of sugar’s bad effects.

Paul Kriegler:
For sure, yeah.

Jamie Martin:
That’s interesting, just because it’s, you know, you think about its effects on blood sugar, blood pressure, and all those other things.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah, and if you look at it, so, sugar is not essential. Our body can make glucose. Sodium is essential. We have to consume it to stay alive. So, you’re like, okay, can you slowly swap one for the other, and rewire your tastebuds, and your nervous system, and your taste preferences, and still be energetic, and you know, have the lights fully on?

David Freeman:
I think that’s just powerful in itself, that you can evolve your tastebuds. You’re saying, you know, after going through that detox of resetting the system, and how new things will be introduced from a flavor standpoint two, three weeks out, so, that in itself is interesting. And I think it’s also that immediate…when I say immediate, play on words, as far as two to three weeks out…but you can actually start to notice the change from taste, that that’s pretty interesting in itself.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah, you just think about how our tastebuds have been hijacked in so many ways because of how much is ultra-processed, and how much sugar there are in things, but it is…we did an article on that as well, we’ll have to link to that, too, but it is a process, to have to turn that…but when all of a sudden you start to notice that that berry is, like, wow, that is just as good as anything, that bar of chocolate or whatever that looks like. That’s kind of an amazing transition to have happen.

So, I want to go back to a little bit of the research, because there’s been a ton of research coming out about the effects of sugar, artificial sweeteners, and you know, low-calorie sweeteners, and you provided ahead of this episode recording, like, several studies, and just kind of notable, like, the effects on health. So, I wonder if you just want to run through a couple of those, even high-level to talk through, because I think it is just so important to know, like, how much this is studied, again, with caveats sometimes, right?

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah. Yeah, and I pulled some human studies, because, I mean, that’s what matters to us, and some of these are what’s behind the World Health Organization’s recent report on high-intensity sweeteners. They came out warning against using artificial sweeteners to control body weight, and you know, as a tool to reduce the risk of non-communicable or chronic diseases, metabolic-related diseases. So, basically, the WHO came out and said, these things aren’t adding anything beneficial.

You know, even if they’re replacing sugar, they’re not doing anything good for the population, based on the evidence. But one study, you know, it was a well-controlled study, sucrose-sweetened beverage increases fat storage in the liver. So, this is sugared beverages, compared to…so, one group had 1 liter a day, about 33 ounces of sugar-sweetened soda. One group had 1 liter a day of milk, which does have sugar in it, 12 grams per cup.

So, in that, there’s, you know, 48 grams of sugar, in that amount of milk that this group got. One group that got aspartame-sweetened soda, so diet soda, and a group that had 1 liter a day of water, and this was six months, six-month randomized interventional study. The sugared-soda group gained 22 and a half pounds in that six-month timeframe, just by adding sugared soda to their normal, baseline dietary intake. The milk group, even though milk has calories, too, and quite a bit of sugar, no weight gain, on average.

The diet-soda group gained an average of 3 and a half pounds, which is odd, zero calories added, but they gained weight. And the 1 liter of water-group lost an average of 4 and a half pounds. So, super interesting, to just extrapolate out what a simple pattern change can do in six months. Drinking more water and less other stuff appears to be really helpful. Drinking milk appears to be neutral, you know? Super interesting. There’s another study, the effects of replacing diet beverages with water on weight loss and weight maintenance, an 18-month follow-up randomized clinical trial.

So, people in this study who replaced diet sodas with water lost an average of 6 pounds over the six-month study period and 12-month follow-up period, so a year after the study concluded, or the intervention phase concluded, they had maintained their weight loss. And the water-drinkers also had more improvements to fasting insulin, glucose tolerance, and postprandial glucose levels, so, like, how their body responds after a meal.

So, all in all, total metabolic health was improved in the water group replacing diet beverages, so zero-calorie beverages swapped out for water, which is also zero calories. And then, a ten-week study of sucralose consumption in healthy young adults induced gut dysbiosis and altered glucose and insulin levels. So, daily consumption of sucralose, or Splenda, at levels below what’s considered acceptable by the FDA, induced negative changes in gut microbiome and insulin production and sensitivity.

So, basically, it made these healthy young adults look more diabetic, just by adding a zero-calorie artificial sweetener.

Jamie Martin:
Isn’t that interesting?

Paul Kriegler:
All these patterns should tell us, like, if it’s not adding to our health, we really need to scrutinize it, make that individual choice, go through the hard steps to minimize it. I’m not saying cut it out completely, but think about it.

Jamie Martin:
Exactly. Well, I mean, that really gets us to…you’re saying don’t, maybe not cut it out completely, because it’s hard to say, like, we’re never going to include sugar in our diets, right? And so, if that’s the case, like, what’s your advice around the best sources, and then, how do we try to even limit that, you know, and really be thoughtful? I mean, you mentioned, like, even just kind of balancing the sodium and sugar can make a difference, but what else?

Paul Kriegler:
You know, for most people who are, they’re not highly active, if they have relatively sedentary jobs, moderating their total carbohydrate consumption, especially from simple sugars, is kind of step one. And if it means you have to increase the flavor in your food through other means, like adding more sea salt, adding more spices and herbs, and basically amping up the flavor profile of your foods with something other than sugar, those are the initial steps to take care of.

And if weight management is part of the equation, too, then opting for the zero-calorie sweeteners, I think, is the best approach. So, not even using alternative sugars, so, instead of sugar, using honey, blah blah, I’m not in favor of that. Stevia and monk fruit are probably the best alternatives. Stevia can be up to 400 times sweeter than sugar, so you don’t need much. If people are baking with it, they’ll notice that it’s not the best alternative for that purpose, because it takes on a bitter aftertaste after it’s been heated too high.

Very few people have side effects with stevia. Mostly it’s, like, a bitter aftertaste, a bitter note, but that seems to go away if you’re using a really high-quality stevia source. So, you might have to play around with different brands of using pure stevia extracts. And there’s different rebaudiosides that make up the steviol glucosides, right? So, very technical terms, but you’ll see it on packages not just as stevia, but sometimes it’ll say Reb-A or Reb-M. Those are different components of the sweet chemicals found in the stevia plant.

Reb-M tends to have a more even sweetness profile, in terms of, like, how it hits the palate, peaks in sweetness, and then mellows out on the back end of the palate. So, the organoleptic qualities of Reb-M are more favorable than Reb-A, and there’s a new Reb-M source from fermented sugar cane that’s actually super-great. That’s what we’re experimenting with in some of our upcoming powder changes in our own products. So, we’re constantly trying to evolve, like, you never hit a hundred percent acceptance on a nutritional supplement powder, but you can get pretty darn close if you continue to evolve the sweetener system.

So, stevia, I think, is still very favorable. Reb-M from sugar cane, fermented sugar cane, is what we’re experimenting with. Monk fruit is another good alternative. However, stevia and monk fruit, they require quite a bit of water and land use to be produced, only for a small amount of stevia, or sweetness in the food products, and they can vary pretty widely in their sweetness levels. That’s why it makes it difficult to say, here’s the one solution, if somebody’s looking at reducing their chemical sweeteners. There isn’t one simple solution.

Jamie Martin:
Right. So, you mentioned something about honey. You said, like, you’re not necessarily in favor of replacing, like, you know, table sugar with honey, or maybe maple syrup. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Paul Kriegler:
Sure. Honey is mostly fructose, and fructose is a five-carbon sugar, so our body has a different processing method for that, compared to the six-carbon glucose that we’re more accustomed to. Basically, your liver has to do extra work to convert the sweet five-carbon fructose molecule to a six-carbon sugar that the body can actually metabolize. So, the liver is the only organ in the body that can metabolize fructose into something else that is usable by the rest of the body, and the liver’s got enough jobs, right?

Jamie Martin:
Pretty important organ we’ve got there.

Paul Kriegler:
So, adding more fructose and thinking it’s benign, it’s not the best first step.

David Freeman:
So, Paul, anything else that we didn’t hit on that you want our listeners to tap into?

Paul Kriegler:
If people are truly trying to change or optimize their health for their long-term, like, chronic wellness, improving their health span, just take a really long look at all the foods you’re consuming on a habitual basis, and see what you can swap out for something more natural, less adulterated, less processed, especially when it comes to high-intensity sweeteners and added sugars.

Jamie Martin:
Absolutely. And one thing just to add onto that, I know we didn’t go in-depth on this at all, but inflammation and the role of sugar. I don’t know if you want to speak to that, just real briefly, kind of going into that a little bit more. I know we have a full episode that we can point people to for more on inflammation itself.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah, the reason sugar kind of gets put under the microscope is, our body can burn it pretty efficiently. It can also convert it to fat very efficiently, and the more fat we accumulate, the more inflammation we can potentially produce. And you know, when there’s too much sugar in the bloodstream, there’s a non-enzymatic unidirectional reaction that takes place, which means, basically, it gets put on auto-pilot, in a direction that’s hard to reverse unless you remove the sugar, or reduce it, and it produces advanced glycation end-products.

So, the more sugar in your bloodstream, the more likely you are to combine that sugar with a protein, and then it goes through a browning reaction, similar to when bread or something sweet is baked or grilled, it’ll brown.

David Freeman:
Yeah.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah.

Paul Kriegler:
That’s called oxidation, and advanced glycation end-products cause you to age faster, so, and it’s just ironic that the acronym for it is AGE. Basically, the more sugar you have, the more consistently that sugar amount is high, the faster you’re going to age.

Jamie Martin:
That is reason enough in itself to keep an eye on that thing.

David Freeman:
Yes, AGE.

Jamie Martin:
AGE.

David Freeman:
That keeps you honest right there.

Jamie Martin:
All right. You want to do a mic-drop moment?

David Freeman:
Well, I mean, I did a little Def Leppard, so I guess with that, I can play a little game with that one. Okay. Paul, you said…you’re an ‘80s baby, you said?

Paul Kriegler:
’83.

David Freeman:
’83, that’s a great year, me too. All right, so, with that, do you remember your first sweet that you had at a early age, and if so, what was it?

Paul Kriegler:
I used to love white toast with butter and cinnamon sugar on it.

David Freeman:
Okay. Yeah. There’s a little browning effect that happens there, too.

Paul Kriegler:
Yes.

Jamie Martin:
I just, my face actually lit up, you can’t see me, but…

David Freeman:
Yeah, I saw, you went to it.

Jamie Martin:
…like, that was, like, a treat for me when I was a kid, and actually, I craved it when I was pregnant, which was really funny you brought that up, like…that’s funny.

Paul Kriegler:
And I used to put loads of sugar in my Cheerios.

David Freeman:
Just the plain Cheerios, not Honey Nut, just regular…okay. Yeah. Okay, I was like, man, there’s sugar on sugar there.

Paul Kriegler:
Yeah.

David Freeman:
All right.

Jamie Martin:
I relate to you. I relate to those choices.

David Freeman:
Did you, like, while it was pouring, slow motion, pour some sugar on me…

Paul Kriegler:
No, this was before I knew…

David Freeman:
Okay. I didn’t know. I just wanted to throw it in there one more time.

Jamie Martin:
I mean, he would have really had to have been tuned into the music at that point. All right, Paul, well, we always love having you on. I know, make sure, we want to point people back to the episode you actually did on sodium, because that was a great episode, you guest-hosted that episode, but you also have a ton of other episodes that people can go back and listen to for your insights and your knowledge and expertise on all things health and nutrition-related.

So, thank you again for coming on. If people want to follow you, they can go to…where on Instagram?

Paul Kriegler:
My Instagram is, truthfully, it’s pretty lame, but it’s _CafePK.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah, and you have articles and things at ExperienceLife.Life Time.life. So, we will include several of those in the show notes as well. So…

David Freeman:
As always, we appreciate you, and his Instagram is pretty sweet. See what I did there? There you go, buddy. All right, as always.

Jamie Martin:
Thanks, Paul.

David Freeman:
Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today, and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life.

Jamie Martin:
And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us, too. Email us LTTalks@lifetime.life, or reach out to us on Instagram @lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel, and @freezy, and use the hashtag #lifetimetalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at Experiencelife.lifetime.life/podcasts.

David Freeman:
And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing, we invite you to rate and review the podcast and share it on your social channels, too.

Jamie Martin:
Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks.

Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time – Healthy Way of Life. It is produced by Molly Kopischke and Sara Ellingsworth, with audio engineering by Peter Perkins, video production and editing by Kevin Dixon, sound and video consulting by Coy Larson, and support from George Norman and the rest of the team at Life Time Motion.

David Freeman:
A big thank you to everyone who helps create each episode and provides feedback.