alt Hacker News> It actually impacted my blood glucose, and when I read more of the research, sucralose actually did cause an insulin reaction in many people who consumed it
Yeah the research has been pointing this out for a while now: even if it doesn't contain digestible sugars, the body, once again, is not a furnace and might activate similar pathways when ingesting something that tastes sweet.
Sweeteners are the biological equivalent of bait-and-switch. Taste the sweet, prepare the body to accept glucose by increasing insulin response, but then there's no glucose coming in in the blood stream. The downstream effect of this is that all that insulin with no sugar causes a minor glucose drop in the blood. In fact, due to this phenomenon, other research indicates that sweeteners causes people to be hungrier/eat more food than if they had simply consumed non-sugar-free food.
As always, there is no such thing as (sugar) free lunch.
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From personal experience (sorry, n=1), I can eat pure Aspartame powder and have zero reaction - no increase in glucose, no "anticipatory" response - nothing.
When I have other sweeteners such as taking a swig of a stevia-laden diet iced tea, I have a reaction. I used to be able to drink the exact same iced tea when they used Aspartame with no effect. I don't think your body is "fooled" by sweet tastes - it only reacts when there is actually something to process.
The fact sucralose is being added into all kinds of products has removed many choices for me, which is unfortunate as the selection was quite small to begin with.
This is an article of faith on the Internet, but I haven't seen a credible cite to back up a material, meaningful insulin response to the mere taste of sweetness. Worth remembering: insulin response to aspartame has always been a major research focus, like a day-one concern; it was tested fasted, unfasted, in great quantities and small, with food and in beverages.