Non-nutritive Sweeteners: To Sweeten or Not To Sweeten

How about non-nutritive sweeteners?  There are now a plethora of non-nutritive sweeteners on the market, from saccharin, to NutraSweet, to Splenda.  They are all much sweeter than sugar, ranging from 30 to 600 times sweeter than sugar.  Many diet programs and health-care professionals highly advocate the use of these foods, and foods in them to decrease the amount of sugar and calories one takes in.  What is interesting is that the longer these foods have been on the market for consumption, the more obese our nation becomes.  Personally I believe when you are trying to fake your body out, your body knows what you are taking in is indeed false.  Therefore, it keeps giving you the signal to have something sweet. 

Sharon Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio collected data for eight years which was reported at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting in San Diego in 2005. They reported finding that people who drink diet soda do not lose weight, but gain weight.  “What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,” Fowler stated.  “What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.  There was a 41 percent increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day.”

A more recent study done with rats in February 2008 at Purdue University looked at fats that were fed regular feed and yogurt sweetened with saccharin vs. rats that ate regular feed and yogurt sweetened with regular sugar.  The rats that ate the feed and the saccharin- sweetened yogurt took in 20% more calories than the rats consuming regular feed and yogurt sweetened with sugar, and gained body fat.  Some researchers have theorized that taking in large amounts of non-nutritive sweeteners over time conditions the body to no longer associate sweetness with calories, which can disrupt the body’s ability to accurately assess caloric intake, leading to overeating.

Early in my practice, I would observe clients who went on trips to other countries, and see them coming home weighing 5-10 pounds less than when they left. At first I thought the additional exercise with walking around (which is required in most other countries vs. sedentary America) was the cause of weight loss.  However, my opinion changed over several years after realizing most of them reported that they were consuming more food then they usually do at home.   In other countries most of the food is fresh and there is a lot less processed, “fake” foods with non-nutritive sweeteners, and the multitude of low fat, or “light” foods.  Most of these products just lead to the illusion one can eat more of them, and not gain weight.  The body was made to process real foods that are fresh and whole, not manufactured processed foods.

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