The next time you are about to tear open that yellow, blue, or pink packet or reach for a diet beverage, you may want to think twice. Throughout the 1900’s, artificial sweeteners seemed to be the miracle food - all the delicious sweetness people enjoy, without any of the sugar or calories. But now this “miracle food” might not be such a miracle after all. Recent research has been showing that these artificial sweeteners may be doing more harm than good!
Several research studies have found that, even though artificial sweeteners don’t have any calories, they did not help people lose weight. In fact, they found consuming more artificial sweeteners could lead to weight gain and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and dementia.
“Just because the sweeteners aren’t providing any calories, doesn’t mean we aren’t getting more calories elsewhere.”
How could this be possible? Less calories should mean more weight loss, right? Well, just because the sweeteners aren’t providing any calories, doesn’t mean we aren’t getting more calories elsewhere. One Harvard doctor explained that artificial sweetener consumption could cause overstimulation and desensitization of our sugar receptors, which causes people to crave sweeter and sweeter foods. It can also end up making un-sweet foods (such as vegetables) unpalatable. These sugar cravings and vegetable aversions lead to people eating more sugary and high calorie foods, which cancel out any reduction in calories from using artificial sweeteners.
The bacteria in the gut (also known as the gut microbiome) are also affected by using artificial sweeteners… and not in a good way. These sweeteners increase the number of “bad” and decrease the number of “good” bacteria in the gut creating an imbalance. This imbalance of bacteria resulting from use of artificial sweeteners is strongly linked to glucose intolerance and diabetes and can worsen symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease.
If you are looking for any bright sides, using artificial sweeteners in place of sugar can decrease likelihood of cavities and tooth decay, and while there is a lot of hoopla around artificial sweeteners causing cancer, there haven’t been any concrete studies to prove this. However, it is important to remember that we only have short-term studies…we don’t really know what the effects of long-term use are.
In the end, regardless of weight gain, cravings, and diabetes, artificial sweeteners are, well, artificial. I don’t know about you but I would rather avoid putting artificial chemicals in my body and stick with the real stuff (in moderation, of course) if I had the choice.