Let’s Talk About Artificial Sweeteners!
What are they?
A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweet taste like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy. Some sugar substitutes are produced by nature, and others produced synthetically. Those that are not produced by nature are, in general, called artificial sweeteners.
So what seems to be the issue with artificial sweeteners?
There are currently five different artificial sweeteners on the market. The one you’re most likely to encounter is aspartame, which also tends to be the worst of the bunch.
Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are primarily promoted to diabetics and those concerned about their weight. This despite the fact that artificial sweeteners have repeatedly been shown to produce the exact opposite effects:
- Research shows that aspartame worsens insulin sensitivity to a greater degree than sugar
- Artificial sweeteners have also been found to promote weight gain, in more ways than one
Over time, artificial sweeteners have also crept into a wide variety of products not directly targeting diabetics and dieters.
Artificial sweeteners are added to about 6,000 different beverages, snacks, and food products, making label-reading an ever pressing necessity. Disturbingly, food industry groups are now trying to hide the presence of artificial sweeteners in certain foods!
So how do they do that?
One of the reasons why artificial sweeteners do not help you lose weight relates to the fact that your body is not fooled by sweet taste without accompanying calories!
When eating something sweet, your brain releases dopamine, which activates your brain’s reward centre. Simultaneously, the appetite-regulating hormone leptin is also released, which eventually informs your brain that you are “full” once a certain amount of calories have been ingested.
However, when you consume something that tastes sweet but doesn’t contain any calories, your brain’s pleasure pathway still gets activated by the sweet taste, but there’s nothing to deactivate it, since the calories never arrive.
Artificial sweeteners basically trick your body into thinking that it’s going to receive sugar (calories), but when the sugar doesn’t come, your body continues to signal that it needs more, which results in carb cravings.
But carb cravings and weight gain are no the only problems associated with artificial sweeteners. Some other major problems include:
- Worsening insulin sensitivity
- Cardiovascular disease and stroke
- Alzheimer’s disease
And many more!
Research has proven these effects to be true!
Now look, due to popular opinion and ingenious marketing campaigns, it can be a bit difficult to believe that artificial sweeteners are actually doing more to degrade our health than improve it. But there have been countless researches which have proven these outcomes numerous times!
Some of them include:
| Preventive Medicine 19869 | This study examined nearly 78,700 women aged 50-69 for one year. Artificial sweetener usage increased with relative weight, and users were significantly more likely to gain weight, compared to those who did not use artificial sweeteners—regardless of their initial weight. According to the researchers, the results “were not explicable by differences in food consumption patterns. The data do not support the hypothesis that long-term artificial sweetener use either helps weight loss or prevents weight gain.” |
| Physiology and Behavior, 1988 | In this study, they determined that intense (no- or low-calorie) sweeteners can produce significant changes in appetite. Of the three sweeteners tested, aspartame produced the most pronounced effects. |
| Physiology and Behavior, 1990 | Here, they found that aspartame had a time-dependent effect on appetite, “producing a transient decrease followed by a sustained increase in hunger ratings.” |
| Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 1991 | In a study of artificial sweeteners performed on college students, there was no evidence that artificial sweetener use was associated with a decrease in their overall sugar intake either. |
| International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, 2003 | This study, which looked at 3,111 children, found that diet soda, specifically, was associated with higher BMI. |
| International Journal of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders, 2004 | This Purdue University study found that rats fed artificially sweetened liquids ate more high-calorie food than rats fed high-caloric sweetened liquids. The researchers believe the experience of drinking artificially sweetened liquids disrupted the animals’ natural ability to compensate for the calories in the food. |
| San Antonio Heart Study, 2005 | Data gathered from the 25-year long San Antonio Heart Study also showed that drinking diet soft drinks increased the likelihood of serious weight gain – far more so than regular soda. On average, for each diet soft drink the participants drank per day, they were 65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next seven to eight years, and 41 percent more likely to become obese. |
And these are just the tip of the iceberg! There have been almost 8 to 10 more researches which have proved that artificial sweeteners or substances made using them are generally more harmful than regular sugar!
What should you be doing?
Well, to put it succinctly, you should completely ditch artificially sweetened ‘Diet’ foods!
When you add together the various routes of harm—from confusing your body with sweet taste without calories, to altering your gut bacteria for the worse—it becomes easy to see how artificial sweeteners have likely played a role in worsening the obesity and diabetes epidemics since their emergence in our food supply.
Today, health and wellness of the general public is hardly a priority for neither the food manufacturers nor the conventional medical industry. Hence, now more than ever, it is important to be completely aware of what all you are consuming and what they do once inside the body. The only way to reverse these trends is through education and personal example!
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Source: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/12/23/artificial-sweeteners-confuse-body.aspx