Search This Blog

De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Sour “study” on artificial sweeteners: Why the headlines?

Posted on July 12, 2013 by admin
Dr. Susan E. Swithers from the Purdue Department of Psychological Sciences and Ingestive Behavior Research Center authored a commentary entitled Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements. Her opinion piece was most often mistaken for a scientific study by sensation-seeking media. It appeared in the journal, Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Much of the media take on this position paper bought into the author’s theory, that somehow artificially-sweetened beverages (ASBs) are equivalent to sugar-sweetened beverages for provoking obesity and the various adverse biomarkers of metabolic syndrome, especially diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In the piece, she cites several studies, some of which assert an association between ASBs and adverse health effects, some of which do not. She also cites rodent studies in support of her hypothesis, most of which she authored.
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross had this assessment of the article and its stated mission: “What’s wrong with this commentary and its hypothesis? What’s right with it, is a better question. Dr. Swithers, despite her PhD, apparently never passed (or even took) Epidemiology and Statistics 101, as she flouts most of the key dictates of cause-and-effect and ignores the rest.....To Read More....

No comments:

Post a Comment