Think you're helping your weight loss because you're saving calories with artificial sweeteners?

Put down that pink/yellow/blue packet and step away from your latte.

New research from scientists at Purdue University claim that artificial sweeteners, long thought to aid in dieting, actually makes it tougher to lose weight. Because sweet foods normally prompt the body to get ready to take in a lot of calories, the body gets confused when the taste of sweetness from an artificial sweetener is not followed by a calorie flux. You'll eventually end up eating more, or burning fewer calories.

Guess that means I'm going back to plain old sugar.

Citizens for Health, a national consumer group, is concerned that the artificial sweetener Splenda is causing side effects and making consumers ill. Though it isn't stated which specific side effects people are experiencing, the group is lobbying for additional research to be conducted on sucralose, the sweetening component of Splenda.

Merisant, the makers of Equal and NutraSweet, believe that the company which makes Splenda, McNeil Nutritionals, is misleading the public with their tagline "made from sugar so it tastes like sugar."

The Chairman of Citizens for Health, Jim Turner, has stated, "I encourage consumers to contact us if they have suffered any side effects from the use of the chlorinated artificial sweetener Splenda and to join us in demanding that FDA immediately conduct case studies on possible side effects from its use."

But that's what I eat every single day. And I'm only counting the tea I drink, not actual food.

I'm not a coffee drinker, I'm a tea drinker, so I'm probably healthy in that way, since tea has been proven to have many good health benefits. And I use fat free milk in my tea too. But the sugar. Oh, the sugar. I have 4 packets in each cup of tea that I make, and I have around 4 cups a day. That can't be good for me, can it? (And that's an average day - there have been some days when I've had 5 or 6 cups.)

I've tried sugar substitutes. I'm a fan of Splenda, though I can't get used to using it in tea (sorry). The other substitues don't do anything for me. I know, I know, I could either have flavored teas (nah, never liked them), or go without any sugar in the tea at all. No sugar? That's just crazy talk.

Millions of people drink aspartame each day in their diet sodas and other sugar-free foods, though there are many other sweetener options to choose from. The brand name artificial sweeteners made with aspartame include Equal and Nutra-Sweet. In the past, study results have suggested that there might be a link between aspartame consumption and increased risk of some types of cancer, particularly when aspartame consumption was unusually high. Virtually all of these previous studies were in groups of rats, not people, and the amount of aspartame given to rats was up to several times their body weight - a feat which might be physically impossibly to do via diet cola consumption.

A new federal study has looked at people, not rodents, and shows that there was no increased cancer risk from aspartame consumption. The researchers in the study looked at over 500,000 American diets to draw their conclusions. The study has been praised by consumer groups and was presented to the American Association of Cancer research earlier this week. (Our sister blog - The Cancer Blog - is also talking about this study.)

 

 New studies show that preference for artificial sweeteners is based on a lack of extraneous flavors in the sweetener, not not the sweetness level of the substance. Thirteen sweeteners were rated according to how prevalent bitter, sour or metallic tastes were in them. Sugar was, not surprisingly, ranked the highest in the test. Sucralose, also known as Splenda, was the second most popular sweetener, with a "lack of noticeable sour and bitter tastes." Xylitol (a sweetener commonly used in chewing gum), aspartame (Equal and Nutra-Sweet), saccharine (Sweet N'Low) and Stevia were also ranked highly by tasters. Sugar is the standard when creating artificial sweeteners, so it makes sense that the products that tasted most like sugar would be the most popular.

What sweetener do you prefer when sugar isn't available?