Everything about that video was amazing.

Stevia is too new to make any real determinations on. Currently, there is a lot of uncertainty. Just because something comes from a plant doesn't make it safer. Almonds used to be loaded with cyanide before we eliminated the trees that had those kinds of almonds. There have been recent studies questioning the safety of stevia, and this will likely be dealt with over the next decade. Unfortunately, certain countries have gotten around the necessary procedures for sufficient scientific inquiry because they are marketing it not as a food additive or sweetener but as a dietary supplement, which makes it easier to avoid such scrutiny. Unlike xylitol, which is perfectly fine for human consumption and has been shown to inhibit growth of oral bacteria that leads to caries and plaque, stevia is simply an unknown at this point.

However, stevia has also been around for a while. It has been a product since the 90s and has been banned and un-banned in numerous countries. European reports have shown that it is safe, but it is also still banned in many countries there.

For those of you think that it is "natural" and thus safer, I urge you to look up the naturalistic fallacy on wikipedia before going any further here. It has also been used as a sweetener by certain tribal peoples for centuries, so that means absolutely nothing as far as science goes, but it will still sway many people over, just like traditional herbal Chinese medicines like tiger penis powder and rhinoceros horn powder.

However, it is not a "natural" substance whatsoever, even though that word means nothing in nutrition anyways. Basically they take a small amount of Rebaudioside A from the stevia plant and use a bunch of alcohols and other chemicals to extract out the active sweetening ingredient and then crystallize it. This is then renamed steviol. It is significantly less sweet than most of the other sweeteners, except maybe saccarin, at only about 150x the sweetness of sugar.

Basically, Stevia is probably not bad for you, although the verdict is definitely not in on this one. It is no more "natural" than any of the other sweeteners. You need more of it to reach the same level of sweetness as your other sweeteners so dosage could be an issue. But you have to understand that each of the companies that makes these sweeteners has to find a way to sell their product. So, what do they do? They claim that their sweetener is "natural" and "safe" which implies that all of the other sweeteners that came before it aren't, and as evidence by my previous tirades, this is simply not the case. But they profit from our unwillingness to look at the data for ourselves and play on our natural tendencies to trust them.

In short, we are not certain about stevia yet, but we are certain that sugar is bad and aspartame is fine. However, you probably shouldn't eat any processed food, but we already know that in our bones. We all know that cooking up a delicious meal from simple ingredients is the best way to eat healthy but we don't do it because we are lazy. I am just as guilty of this as the next person. We can only dream of a future similar to "The Invention of Lying" where marketers aren't allowed to lie to us and can simply say that their food is bad for you but you drink it because it tastes good and because you have been for years. A world where they can't market to our children so we don't all grow up addicted to halloween candy or cereals that are more sugar than grains. The best way to do this is to cut your cable from the television and live on the internet with AdBlock installed. Then those fuckers can't get at you as easily.

Sure lucky760, I'll do Splenda, since some varieties of Coke Zero have Splenda in them.

First off it is important to note that the majority of the anti-sweetener "science" has been done by one man: Dr. Joseph Mercola. Now, watch out here, because his name is deceptive. You see, Mercola is an osteopathic physician. Osteopathy is a form of pseudoscience that believes that all pathology can be solved by manipulation of the bones and muscles. There is little science to back up these claims because they are clearly insane and worthy of ridicule. So, much like his doctorate, the claims he makes against sweeteners are pseudoscientific. A number of his beliefs are: that AIDS is not cause by HIV but by psychological stress; that immunizations and prescription drugs shouldn't be prescribed but people should instead buy his dietary supplements; that vaccinations are bad for you and your children (a belief which is the cause of recent outbreaks of whooping cough, measles and mumps); and that microwaves are dangerous machines that irradiate their products (they do, but not with the kind of radiation he is thinking of). Since he made a movie called Sweet Mistery: A Poisoned World, he has been at the forefront of anti-sweetener rhetoric. If you watch the movie, note how hilariously bad it is at actual science; the majority of the "evidence" is people claiming side effects after having ingested something with a sweetener in it (anecdotes are worth nothing in science except perhaps as a reason for researching further). So, you have a movement against something seen as "artificial" by a man who is not a doctor, not a scientist and is clearly lacking in the basics of logic.

Now, Splenda. Created by Johnson and Johnson and a British company in the seventies, it's primary sweetener ingredient is sucralose. The rest of it is dextrose, which as I have said above, is really just d-glucose and is safe for consumption in even very large quantities. So really, we are asking about sucralose. Sucralose is vastly sweeter than sucrose (usually around ~650 times) and thus only a very small amount is needed in whatever it is you are trying to sweeten. The current amount that is considered unsafe for intake (the starting point where adverse effects are felt) is around 1.5g/kg of body weight. So for the average male of 180lbs, they would need to ingest 130g of sucralose to feel any adverse effects. This is compared to the mg of sucralose that you will actually be getting every day. The estimated daily intake of someone who actually consumes sucralose is around 1.1mg/kg, which leaves a massive gap. Similarly to aspartame, if you tried to ingest that much sucralose, you would be incapable due to the overwhelming sweetness of the stuff.

There is some evidence that sucralose may affect people in high doses, but once again, this is similar to the issues with aspartame, where the likelihood of you getting those doses is extremely unlikely.

The chemistry of sucralose is actually way too complicated to go into, but suffice it to say that unlike aspartame, sucralose is not broken down in the body at all and is simply excreted through the kidney just like any other non-reactive agent. The reason that it tastes sweet is because it has the same shape as sucrose except that some of the hydroxy groups are replaced with chlorine atoms. This allows it to fit in the neurotransmitters in the tongue and mouth that send you the sensation of sweetness without also giving you all of those calories. Once it passes into the bloodstream it is dumped out by the kidneys without passing through the liver at all.

In sum, if sweeteners were bad for you, they wouldn't be allowed in your food. Science is not against you, it is the only thing working for everyone at the same time. The reason sugar has gotten around this is because we have always had it. If you want to be healthier, don't drink pop, drink water or milk (unless you are lactose intolerant, then just drink water). Don't drink coconut milk, or gatorade, or vitamin water. Assume that when a company comes out with something like "fat free" it really reads "now loaded with sugar so it doesn't taste like fucking cardboard." Assume that when a company says something is "natural" it is no more natural than the oils you put in your car. IF you want to live and eat healthy, stay on the outside of the supermarket, avoiding the aisles. All of the processed food is in the aisles, not on the outsides and the companies know that you don't want to miss anything. Make your food, don't let someone else do it. And never, ever buy popped popcorn, anywhere, the mark-up on that shit is insane.

Sugar is sucrose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose combined and it is immediately separated in the body by the saliva in your mouth. Glucose is fine for your body, it is the energy storage system that metabolizes into glycogen in the liver. Fructose, on the other hand, is a toxin that is metabolized in the body similarly to alcohol, as ChaosEngine said. Essentially it is treated as a toxin and turned into numerous by-products which do things like: delay your leptin response (you feel full later, thus making you eat more), increase your high-density lipo-protein (increasing your cholesterol and storing fat in your liver), and decreasing your sensitivity to insulin (leading to type-2 diabetes).

As to what artician said, high-fructose corn syrup and sugar are treated exactly the same in the human body. In fact, here is a list of all of the things that companies call sugar to hide it when it is the exact same thing: brown sugar, caster sugar, fruit sugar, organic sugar (in fact sometimes they just put organic in front of any of these things to make it seem better for you but trust me, it isn't), evaporated cane juice, evaporated cane syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, glucose-fructose, brown sugar, honey, molasses, golden syrup, high glucose corn syrup, agave/agave nectar, corn sweetener, fruit juice solids, cane syrup solids, fruit juice concentrate, invert sugar, maltodextrin and even fruit juice.

All of the studies done in the last 15 years have shown that sugar is sugar and calories are not calories. All of the kinds of sugar that have quantities of fructose are bad for you, except when they have fiber. This is why fruit is still good for you while fruit juice is the same thing as soda.

The only things that you do not have to avoid as a sugar are these: brown rice syrup, dextrose and glucose. All of these things are completely glucose, no fructose whatsoever. Therefore, they are largely safe. However, large quantities of glucose can give you a large liver because of the stored glycogen.

Some links if you don't believe me:

Comparison: http://www.foods4betterhealth.com/what-evaporated-cane-juice-sugar-vs-evaporated-cane-juice-8645

Aspartame: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4127 ; http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-artificial-sweeteners-safe/

HFCS vs Sugar: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157

Dangers of Fructose: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/high-fructose-corn-syrup/

No. Aspartame is not bad for you. Sugar, however is absolutely bad for you. The purpose of this video is to show people how much aspartame is in Coke Zero vs the amount of sugar in Coke. Sugar, the number one cause of obesity, heart disease and other health issues, is far less sweet so you need a much larger amount to get the same level of sweetness as aspartame. The tiny amount of black stuff left over at the end of the Coke Zero pan is the aspartame. You need milligrams of aspartame compared to 30 grams of sugar.

All of the studies that have "shown" damaging effects of aspartame have given RATS not milligrams of aspartame, but GRAMS. This would be equivalent to a human being shoveling a pile of aspartame powder into their mouth, something that no one could even do because it would be too sweet to ingest.

Aspartame is a very simple chemical that when it enters the human body breaks down into three things, phenylalanine, methanol and aspartic acid. Once again, the amounts that these things break down into is smaller than you would get from eating comparable "natural products." You would get more methanol eating a few grapes or an apple. Aspartic acid is an amino acid that is good for you and you would once again find more of it in an oyster than in Coke Zero. And finally phenylalanine is the only thing that is of any danger to anyone. And even then, it is only dangerous to those who have phenylketonuria, a sensitivity to phenyl-groups that you would know if you have. Otherwise it is a hormone that only affects infants and is present in breast milk, one of the healthiest substances on earth for a human.

Sure, aspartame is one of the most complained about items by consumers at the FDA. But does that mean the science is wrong? No. It simply means that someone gets a headache and they blame it on the diet soda they just drank instead of the fact that they are dehydrated. Or someone has a dizzy spell because they got up too fast and they blame it on the diet soda they just drank. Aspartame has been investigated by every Federal Consumer Product group around the world and none of them have found a sufficient link to any health danger in order to take it off of the shelves. If you believe that this is a conspiracy, you are wrong. The bigger conspiracy is the rampant disregard for the danger of sugar in processed foods.

If you are curious about the dangers of sugar that are backed by solid nutritional and molecular biology, you should watch "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" on Youtube, or the movie Fed Up.

You can always tell when a video is idiotic when the youtube version has turned off comments.

This is a classic tautological argument. How do we know these are the only constants that allow for life? Do we have another universe to compare it against? If they mean Earth life, then even dumber.

Most of these words are the difference between North American (including Canada) English and UK English and its Non-North American Colonies. Although there are some distinctly Australian words.

Interestingly, most of the differences come from the fact that a lot of these words were invented after the US Revolution and the differences between adoption standards of the Oxford English Dictionary and Websters.

What I said was mostly in jest, but I will entertain my learned colleague's well-reasoned arguments with a response.

"Squirrel fella didn't know what was going on"? That's right. He didn't. He didn't know the intentions of the human, other than his general instinct of "stay away from non-squirrels." His fear of him was totally justified.

Deus Ex Machina? There was no unexpected intervention which led to a happy ending here, that is my point. The squirrel expected the guy to grab him, he just didn't want him to. My point is that if the guy had kept on riding down the river, the squirrel would have been fine. But for his interference, the squirrel wouldn't have been drowning. His actions were negligent. His actions caused a situation of peril for that squirrel. If the squirrel had jumped toward the man and entered the calm part of the river and failed to swim, I might agree that intervention would have been necessary. Instead, the squirrel jumped in the exact opposite direction of the person, likely fearing for his life and choosing the most direct escape route, thus dooming himself. But he wouldn't have jumped that way if the guy hadn't been there. We can't know where he would have jumped, but I doubt it would have been in the most violent part of the river. Animal instincts aren't dumb, otherwise that squirrel would have been long dead.

Guy saved his life? Did he? Did we see a drowned squirrel swimming away from the rock before the guy even got there? Was there something that I missed in this video? Was the squirrel in imminent danger of being eaten by a vicious squirrel-eating miniature river-swimming orca? My point is the guy put the squirrel in danger simply by being there. Even after the squirrel jumped, it is not known that the squirrel would have drowned if the man had simply swam away. We assume because we think that squirrels are shitty swimmers.

Self-righteous? Did I say that I don't touch wildlife? Did I say that I might not have done the same thing in his position? No. I am simply saying that we should all abide by the general principle that wild animals do not need our help. Our interactions with them should be constrained to watching them pass and keeping them out of our areas when necessary and shooting and eating them when legal and not deleterious to the species. None of us should assume that our interactions with wildlife are anything other than a semi-masturbatory effort that serves the single purpose of entertaining us and making us feel good with little to no actual understanding of the animal's position.

Heroic? So, some river boarder sees a squirrel on a rock and thinks: "awww, how cute. I'm going to go over there and see if he needs help, because clearly he couldn't have gotten there on his own by swimming. Hey little buddy, you want a ride on my extremely non-natural looking piece of flotation device, something which doesn't exist in your environment."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH. Terrifying man-thing. It's going to eat me. I just came out to this rock to wait while I gathered up my energy to swim the rest of the way across the river and some monster slithered down the river and emerged, all yellow and black and hairy looking. Leave me alone, vile beast! Curse you!"

"You look scared little squirrel, are you afraid of the water? Here, get on my board. Come on. I'll move a little closer to you to make sure you get on. Stop backing away."

"OH NO! He is moving in for the kill, quick, where can I run! Ha, the silly monster can't swim up river, I shall go there! I shall jump to that rock with the fast moving water on it and show this evil monster how squirrels swim. That will show him not to mess with my kind!"

*JUMP*

"Glub Glub. Blargh, this is turning out to be much harder than I thought. Ahhhh, glub glub."

"Oh no, the little guy jumped in the river again. I'll just swim over and save him from his ultimate demise. Silly guy, why did he do that? I was offering him a ride, why didn't he understand that was what I was doing?"

"Glub glub; AAAAAHH, it's coming closer. I am doomed. Farewell cruel world, I knew thee not long but I loved thee so well."

"Gotcha. Here, take a ride on my board. That's better, isn't it little guy? Here, I'll bring you to shore."

"Wah! You have trapped me! Are you going to take me back to your friends to feast on me together? Wait. What is this thing? What magics be this? How does this trap float so well. It must be made of some sort of advanced tree structure that only the giants know how to grow. I am tempted to jump back in the river but I am certain you will catch me again and my energy will have been wasted. No, I will play the possum and wait for my moment. Yes, just when you think you have got me, I shall spring away to safety. Silly giants, they do not know anything. You are bringing me closer to shore, yes. Closer. Closer. *Jump* Hahahahhahaha. Silly giant, now I am up a tree, you will never catch me. Of course, you could have avoided all of this by leaving me alone! Next time, don't waste both of our time and energy by trying to catch a squirrel, we are too smart for you giant monsters!"

"There you go little buddy, now you are safe. Shouldn't have jumped in the river like that, though. Next time you see a human, expect them to be trying to help you, man. Now I will go and cover myself in patchouli oil and smoke some weed."

Moral of the story: Leave wild animals the fuck alone.

I like how you say that Southern Christian Values are being made illegal when Florida is one of the most Southern, most Christian places on the fucking Earth.

This is a dumb exchange. When the officer says "you are free to go," you go. If an officer asks you a question, you answer with this "am I being detained?" If they say "no," then you refuse to answer the question. If they say "yes," you say, "then I would like a lawyer present to represent me."

It's really simple: they can't ask you questions if you don't let them.

His whole point at the end about how you should criticize the Filipinos doing the kidnapping needed to be rebutted with the following: "Ok, but if 70% of Filipinos agreed that the kidnapping of white children for slavery was acceptable, then you would have to admit that the issue was systemic and the Philippines should be condemned as a country."

Fair point, missed the channel part of the statement.

His points are, on the face of it, correct. However, the whole question here is whether religion itself creates these issues or if they are inherent in society. One might argue that they are inherent, but that would be incorrect. The fact of the matter is that the more a society is based on science and secularism, the more peaceful and prosperous they will be. See pre-McCarthy United States or Sweden or Canada today.
So I agree with him that painting a large brush across all Muslim countries is idiotic, but at the same time, we can do that quite successfully with secular countries. They are, quite simply, more moral countries. And for those of you who want to argue that Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia were extremely secular and atheist, I urge you to re-evaluate the evidence you have of this. Nazi Germany was distinctly religious in numerous ways, including in the deep relationship they had with the Catholic Church. And it would be easy to succeed on the argument that Soviet Russia, while appearing atheist to the outsider, worshiped an altogether different kind of religion: communism.
While Reza is correct that not all Muslims or their countries are violent or willing to subject women to numerous horrors, they are certainly more likely to than secular countries.

They're called Honorable Mentions and they are a part of the Darwin Awards. Usually applies when they already have kids or when modern medicine maintains they're ability to reproduce post-idiocy.