MiO Water additive

[abraspamlincoln]

I've recently switched from a ALL soda liquid diet, to water and... tap water here tastes pretty terrible and while I do have a nice Britta filter pitcher I still don't really like the taste. So I've been using this MiO liquid water flavoring. No sugar or anything besides coloring, flavoring, and sucralose. Any opinions on if this is a good choice or not?

http://www.kraftbrands.com/mio/

[Silvergamma]

I'm personally not a fan of artificial sweeteners. There was a study performed in 2008 on the effects of sweeteners on appetite. While they don't have calories themselves they still signal the brain to rev up for a caloric load. When that doesn't happen, the body starts craving calories cause it's all ready to go. Here's a link to the Scientific America article about it:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-sweetener-linked-weight-gain

Lemon juice is a highly effective method for masking tap water taste due to the tartness and the acidity. Cucumber also can neutralize tastes in water. Herbal tea is another calorie/chemical free option. I also dislike the sweetener aftertaste more than I dislike the taste of tap water .

[CalvinHobbes]

I'm personally not a fan of artificial sweeteners. There was a study performed in 2008 on the effects of sweeteners on appetite. While they don't have calories themselves they still signal the brain to rev up for a caloric load. When that doesn't happen, the body starts craving calories cause it's all ready to go. Here's a link to the Scientific America article about it:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-sweetener-linked-weight-gain

Lemon juice is a highly effective method for masking tap water taste due to the tartness and the acidity. Cucumber also can neutralize tastes in water. Herbal tea is another calorie/chemical free option. I also dislike the sweetener aftertaste more than I dislike the taste of tap water .

I agree 100% with this!

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Yeah, I'd say make natural iced tea or if that's too much or you don't like it, squeeze a bit of lemon in.

[Waldo]

I use it.

Granted I don't drink water exclusively, I do drink diet soda and coffee as well (plus chocolate milk post-workout and beer on occasion). But when I work out I drink water, sometimes quite a bit (upwards of 40 oz), and I usually put a splash of Mio in the water bottle to give it some taste.

I wouldn't worry about it making you hungry, as you realy don't have to use much of it, and water is a hunger surpressant. Then again I'm from the diet soda is perfectly fine for you and basically is an expensive form of water school of thought. Most of the research regarding diet soda nowadays is essentially "there absolutely has to be something wrong with this stuff, and we think we found it" as opposed to something objective, but most of the objective studies found it perfectly healthy a solid 30-40 years ago.

And that Scientifican American article, oy. That study with rats done at Purdue and the way it was done has virutally no bearing on humans, it was not a very well done experiment. Does drinking diet soda give you the need to all of a sudden devour everything in sight? That study also confirms that drinking regular soda is good for you and doesn't make you fat (by reversing the results and using the artificial sweetner group as the control).

Then the other study they mention that shows fat people are more likely to drink diet soda. These rocket scientists apparently haven't heard of chickens or eggs. Most fat people have tried dieting at one time. And most people that try dieting quickly learn to cut out liquid calories and at least switch to diet soda, it being the one habit they keep from a failed diet attempt. You could also make similar groundbreaking finds such as artificial sweeteners make you lazy, blaming it as the culprit for poor fitness in this country, by finding that diet soda drinkers are on average less fit than the general population, whereas it is the same chicken egg problem, poor fitness led to fatness which led to diet soda, not the other way around. This type of poor logic is found everywhere. Every football sunday you hear that teams need to run the ball more to win, as the stats show when they run this much they win more, making the absolutely wrong logic leap out of the data; winning leads to running, running does not lead to winning.

[msuroo]

Well, the merits for and against artificial sweeteners aside, if your goal is ultimately to just drink plain water (only you can decide if that is what you actually want), MiO (or Crystal Light, or whatever else) can certainly be used as a stepping stone to help you get there. The flavor helps to curb the sweet tooth, but you still feel like you are drinking water. You can start using less of it over time (or if you find yourself without any flavoring on hand, just grab a glass of real water) - and I'll bet that before long you'll find that water tastes a whole lot better than you thought it did before. At this point, I actually prefer the taste of water to a soda - and I used to guzzle the stuff.

[oystergirl]

I know for me that I cannot eat any artificial sweeteners because of my own heath issues. Aspartame gives me severe rheumatism and I have known it for a long time but started chewing sugarless gum to curb appetite (LOL) and started aching like crazy--the gum contained both aspartame an sucralose.

We have for so long wished for foods with no preservatives and chemicals in them and then embrace whole heartedly chemically created non-caloric sweeteners. Kind of strange if you ask me. Its also funny how the folks I know who use a lot of diet products with artificial sweeteners are the most unhealthy folks I know.

If your water tastes strange you can filter it through a britta and then put it into a glass container with slices of apple, or cucumber, lemon, orange, lime etc. and make an infusion with great flavor and no artificial sweeteners. I also like to make some herb tea for additional flavors but to me the most important thing is to get your water in!

[Waldo]

We have for so long wished for foods with no preservatives and chemicals in them and then embrace whole heartedly chemically created non-caloric sweeteners. Kind of strange if you ask me. Its also funny how the folks I know who use a lot of diet products with artificial sweeteners are the most unhealthy folks I know.

The chicken and egg problem. Switching from regular products to diet products is a lazy man's diet and totally ineffective, but most overweight people have at least taken that step.

If the fear of chemically created things is that strong, why drink water? The process of water treatment uses a lot of chemicals (disinfectants, flouride, chemical coagulants/flocculators) and biological processes (biological clarification). Bottled water may use a different type of disinfectant (usually ozone) than the good 'ol chlorine used for the tap, that doesn't mean it is any better, and usually the rest of the process is actually worse than tap water.

Aspartame is made from protein and alcohol.

[oystergirl]

I have a double doulton ceramic under sink filter drawn from deep artisan wells. I wouldn't touch bottled water or Dasani with a ten foot pole but I would drink water from an alpine spring, no filtration needed. Yep, I have done that...and it wicked ROCKED!

[Sloth the Enduring]

And that Scientifican American article, oy. That study with rats done at Purdue and the way it was done has virutally no bearing on humans, it was not a very well done experiment. Does drinking diet soda give you the need to all of a sudden devour everything in sight? That study also confirms that drinking regular soda is good for you and doesn't make you fat (by reversing the results and using the artificial sweetner group as the control).

Then the other study they mention that shows fat people are more likely to drink diet soda. These rocket scientists apparently haven't heard of chickens or eggs. Most fat people have tried dieting at one time. And most people that try dieting quickly learn to cut out liquid calories and at least switch to diet soda, it being the one habit they keep from a failed diet attempt. You could also make similar groundbreaking finds such as artificial sweeteners make you lazy, blaming it as the culprit for poor fitness in this country, by finding that diet soda drinkers are on average less fit than the general population, whereas it is the same chicken egg problem, poor fitness led to fatness which led to diet soda, not the other way around. This type of poor logic is found everywhere. Every football sunday you hear that teams need to run the ball more to win, as the stats show when they run this much they win more, making the absolutely wrong logic leap out of the data; winning leads to running, running does not lead to winning.

My own experience is that when I have fake sugar I crave real sugar, but I'll be the first to admit it may be totally psychological.

Agreed, it is a chicken and the egg question. I wonder why no one's ever devised a decent study? It wouldn't be that hard. I seem to recall another study about fake sugar claiming that it led to more visceral fat storage vs. sub-cutaneous fat storage. I'll see if I can't google up the details.

[Silvergamma]

Damn, there goes my plan to avoid drama by citing scientific studies .

I don't know that it's a chicken and the egg question so much as a correlation =/= causation. I will totally agree that a lot of nutritional studies are pretty much pure conjecture, and rarely have solid correlation = causation conclusions. Biology is complicated, and it's difficult to pin down specific causes a lot of the time. There is a reason that obesity research is so well funded. I still think that there are worth while studies out there to think about, if for no other reason than to make you aware of your own choices.

With all that said, I'll just stick to "I don't like the after taste" .

[Atalan]

I use it.

Granted I don't drink water exclusively, I do drink diet soda and coffee as well (plus chocolate milk post-workout and beer on occasion). But when I work out I drink water, sometimes quite a bit (upwards of 40 oz), and I usually put a splash of Mio in the water bottle to give it some taste.

I wouldn't worry about it making you hungry, as you realy don't have to use much of it, and water is a hunger surpressant. Then again I'm from the diet soda is perfectly fine for you and basically is an expensive form of water school of thought. Most of the research regarding diet soda nowadays is essentially "there absolutely has to be something wrong with this stuff, and we think we found it" as opposed to something objective, but most of the objective studies found it perfectly healthy a solid 30-40 years ago.

And that Scientifican American article, oy. That study with rats done at Purdue and the way it was done has virutally no bearing on humans, it was not a very well done experiment. Does drinking diet soda give you the need to all of a sudden devour everything in sight? That study also confirms that drinking regular soda is good for you and doesn't make you fat (by reversing the results and using the artificial sweetner group as the control).

Then the other study they mention that shows fat people are more likely to drink diet soda. These rocket scientists apparently haven't heard of chickens or eggs. Most fat people have tried dieting at one time. And most people that try dieting quickly learn to cut out liquid calories and at least switch to diet soda, it being the one habit they keep from a failed diet attempt. You could also make similar groundbreaking finds such as artificial sweeteners make you lazy, blaming it as the culprit for poor fitness in this country, by finding that diet soda drinkers are on average less fit than the general population, whereas it is the same chicken egg problem, poor fitness led to fatness which led to diet soda, not the other way around. This type of poor logic is found everywhere. Every football sunday you hear that teams need to run the ball more to win, as the stats show when they run this much they win more, making the absolutely wrong logic leap out of the data; winning leads to running, running does not lead to winning.

Off the topic: This is what makes me want to do a statistical analysis of football similar to sabremetrics. I need to learn advanced statistics first, though (epic quest: Money Football).

Anyway, water is good to drink because it hydrates you. Pretty much everything else is either a hydration wash or dehydrates you (unless you're particularly dehydrated. Your body is remarkably efficient at squeezing out every last drop of good from anything you eat if you're low on something). At least, as far as I've heard. Don't take this as fact.

[Guest guest4729]

I have yet to try it, but have considered it. My tap water here is really hard and tastes horrible, even after using a water filter. It has a strange taste that I can't quite put a name to. It almost tastes like stale water that's been sitting out for a few days? I have switched to drinking bottled water because I can't drink the water in my apartment unless I chug it (which makes me feel sick to my stomach). When at work I almost always drink plain water (unless I want a little flavor). At school I drink water as well, so I don't think a little of that MiO at home will kill me or suddenly make me crave crazy quantities of food.

[Waldo]

Off the topic: This is what makes me want to do a statistical analysis of football similar to sabremetrics. I need to learn advanced statistics first, though (epic quest: Money Football).

The rabbit hole goes very, very deep. Football is many orders of magnitude more complex than baseball. Writing program to predict games good enough to win a pick 'em league has been a hobby of mine for several years (along with other stat modeling such as draft success).

[Atalan]

For the kind of analysis necessary, I would imagine you'd have to start tracking things nobody actually has a stat for yet (Like if DE beat the OT with speed, hands, technique, or power). Baseball sabremetrics had a benefit that a large number of their simpler stats are combinations of totals people already tracked.