Are artificial sweeteners good for you as you try to eat healthy and/or lose weight?
I have read a lot about artificial sweeteners over the last few years, while I remain NOT a nutritionist, I am comfortable sharing what I know and ENCOURAGING you to continue to learn more about them.
There are a few possible issues with artificial sweeteners:
- The most basic is what I am calling the “chocolate cake/diet coke syndrome”. I am having a diet coke, so I can have the cake. The belief is that you are SAVING calories by having the diet soda, so you feel justified in having the cake. You are left thinking that you have more calories to “give” than you actually do.
- The second one is science, so I am going to use this article from medicine.net (http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=171242).
Here is a quote from this article that explains it better than I can:
“…But Swithers said her animal studies support the counterintuitive notion that artificial sweeteners may lead to weight gain, even if they don’t have any calories.
She said she’s seen evidence of metabolic disruptions caused by artificial sweeteners in rats.
It basically goes something like this: In a world without artificial sweeteners, a taste of something sweet preps the brain and the gut for digestion of incoming calories. When the calories don’t show, as happens with artificial sweeteners, those metabolic responses don’t fire the way they should. Insulin doesn’t increase; hormones that increase the feeling of fullness and satisfaction aren’t triggered; and the brain doesn’t get a feeling of reward from the dopamine that sugars release.”
This reference – while not UNdisputed by the artificial sugar industry – leads me to QUESTION things more than anything else. It leads me to QUESTION if artificial sweeteners are the way to eat fewer calories, lose weight, etc.
Generally I look to natural as better than less natural.
One of my favorite examples of a food that was touted as the “healthier version of the original” is margarine. When margarine came on the scene, butter was vilified for being high in fat and bad for you. Upon further examination, margarine – and the hydrogenated oils from which it is made – were found to be the real problem.
Does that mean that we should be eating STICKS of butter? NO. It means that “the real thing” – i.e., BUTTER – in reasonable amounts is a healthier choice than margarine.
Lastly, I would NEVER recommend that you drink sweetened tea…like a Snapple or other pre-sweetened version. I would, however, recommend that you have unsweetened tea with a teaspoon of sugar in it INSTEAD OF one with artificial sugar.
To summarize, I am not a nutritionist, but based on what I have read, I think that SMALL amounts of NATURAL sugar are a healthier choice than artificial sugar.
