And to be fair, my comment doesn't change the basic premise of the article: that if you're going to drink a sweetened beverage, artificial sweeteners have fewer negative health effects than sugar.
I just found the statement odd. It seems the author's and my ideas of "reduced intake" don't align with one another... I mean, I can't imagine anyone would say a bag of candy every day constitutes "reduced intake". But for some reason it's acceptable when it comes to beverages.
A bag of candy daily isn't a usual occurrence. In the US, multiple sodas a day is pretty usual.
One by itself at some point in the day, one with lunch, and often times once with dinner as well.
That's how my teenage years went and I wasn't alone. As an adult I "limit" myself to 1 a day - although more typically I limit it to 2 or 3 a week. Which I still feel is too much.
Water all the time is "boring", I'm lactose intolerant so milk is out of the picture, juice makes me more thirsty. I often have tea, but I dislike chilled tea and hot tea during a hot summer isn't pleasant.
I feel like my dislike of having "plain old water" all the time is my only issue with consuming less soda. If I could get over that hurdle I'd be fine.
I also dislike drinking "plain old water", but cold water with a little fresh lemon squeezed into it is delicious. Also try taking fruit juice and watering it down by 2/3. At this point I can't even drink straight-up fruit juice any more; it's too syrupy.
I think the difference between having a bag of candy every day and a diet pop every day is that it isn't healthy to have candy that often. As far as we currently know, there isn't anything wrong with that level of diet pop consumption.
I am in the same boat, I probably have 4-5 diet pop drinks per week. However, if it was naturally sweetened pop I wouldn't consider it OK to drink more than one a week. Everything in appropriate moderation. Although, to be fair, I don't consider the level of pop I drink to be "reduced", but it's less than what some children will drink if left unmoderated.
Yeah, but keep in mind, the author of the article isn't saying daily intake is okay because of the artificial sweeteners.
I read it to mean, the kids are going to drink pop 4-5 times a week. We give them artificially sweetened pop so that it's "healthy".
Contrasting this again with candy: if a parent said "I give my kids candy every day with their dinner, but I make sure it has sucralose in it", I'd still find it odd, because candy shouldn't be a daily occurrence.
I read it as that all of quantity, sugar content, and caffeine content are concerns, so the parents have:
1. Limited overall quantity of soda permitted to less than is typical for the age range,
2. Limited most of the consumption within that limited quantity to caffeine-free options,
3. Limited most of the consumption within that limited quantity to sugar-free options.
I don't see anything to suggest that sugar-free soda is perceived as positively "healthy", only that it is a mitigation of one of the sources of unhealthiness (as is the caffeine-free limitation), but that other concerns exist, hence the overall quantity limitation.
> I just found the statement odd. It seems the author's and my ideas of "reduced intake" don't align with one another... I mean, I can't imagine anyone would say a bag of candy every day constitutes "reduced intake".
"Reduced" means "at a level lower than it was previously".
If you are eating two bags of candy every day, one bag of candy a day is reduced intake of candy.
If you aren't eating any candy before, then one piece of candy a day is increased intake of candy. What level of intake is "reduced" depends on what the starting point is.
