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Aspartame, saccharin, sucralose — sugar alternatives go by many names, but share an almost irresistible promise: all the sweetness of sugar without the calories or weight gain.
However, a new study links them to the opposite.
A report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in July this year suggests that sugar substitutes did not appear to help people lose weight.
Instead, people who regularly consumed them — by drinking one or more artificially-sweetened beverages a day — had a higher risk for health issues like weight gain, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
The research, which made 37 studies on artificial sweeteners to see if they were successful for weight management, adds to a growing body of research that suggests sugar substitutes are no magic bullet.
A study found that sucralose ingestion impairs the body's ability to process regular sugar.
A research published in Nature in 2014 reported that some artificial sweeteners can alter the gut microbe population in humans to promote calorie absorption.
A group of Australian and US scientists tested the effect of artificial sweeteners on fruit flies.
In the study, fruit flies were fed either a diet of yeast and sucrose or one with the synthetic sweetener sucralose, used in a variety of low-calorie foods.
Flies fed the sugar-free diet for five or more days consumed 30 percent more calories than those on sugar. When sucralose was removed from their diet, calorie consumption in the formerly sugar-free group fell back to normal.
The findings were also able to be replicated in mice.
Susan Swithers, a professor in the department of psychological studies at Purdue University who has also studied artificial sweeteners said,
Unfortunately, the quality of evidence that would support using sweeteners is not really strong… I think we are at a place where we can say that they don't help.
It is not yet clear whether artificial sweeteners actually cause harm.
So far, observational studies that link the sweeteners to health problems do not prove the sweeteners themselves are responsible. Other factors may be to blame and researches have not yielded definitive answers.
Regularly eating or drinking sugar substitutes may cause people to crave sweeter foods more often. People may also believe that because they haven't consumed calories, they have license to splurge elsewhere.
The bottom line is that cutting back on any sweeteners might be the optimal choice.
As Susan Swithers said,
People need to reduce their overall intake of sweeteners whether they have calories or not. If we are consuming them appropriately, it might not be a big deal.
Are artificial sweeteners good or bad?
Sources: Scientific American, Time
Editors: Zhang Xi, Zheng Peihan (intern)
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