Sugar, spice and everything nice

July 6, 2016

Everyone craves for something sweet but what about artificial sugars? How do they compare and are they any good for you?

What are they?

Chemically processed substances that are used in place of sugar. They offer the taste of sweetness without any calories. Artificial sweeteners can be 200 to 20,000 times sweeter than regular sugar so only a minuscule amount is required. However, a metallic after-taste is common.

What are the differences between them?

There are currently five FDA-approved artificial sweeteners namely saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and neotame. 
Stevia, a natural sweetener which contains calories, although much less than that of sugar, was also recently approved. 
The 5 sweeteners differ in their levels of sweetness as compared to regular sugar. Aspartame, under the brand names of Equal and NutraSweet is 180 times sweeter than sugar. Saccharin under the brand name Sweet’N Low is 300 times sweeter and Splenda, which is sucralose, is 600 times sweeter.

Why take them?

Using artificial sweeteners wisely can help you reduce the number of calories you consume. Reducing your caloric intake can help one achieve or maintain a healthy body weight, thereby lowering your risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Are there any setbacks when taking artificial sweeteners?

Habitual usage of artificial sweeteners may condition our brains to perceive sweetness differently, negating the weight loss or health benefits it was intended to achieve. 
As mentioned, artificial sweeteners are super-intense in sweetness. Frequent use may cause overstimulation of taste receptors, limiting tolerance for more complex tastes. In other words, this group of users may find less flavour-intense foods such as fruits and vegetables bland and less appealing. This results in the shunning of healthy, unprocessed natural foods and choosing instead, heavily flavoured or seasoned foods which are very often less nutritious.

Cutting down calories from a drink to have another dessert is a common scenario. By replacing regular sugar with zero-calorie artificial sweeteners, one deceives oneself that there are calories to spare and there is room for more. An interesting research reveals that participants who drank more than 21 diet drinks per week were twice as likely to become overweight or obese as people who didn’t drink diet soda. So where does all the calories come from since diet soda doesn’t contain any calories? 
Researchers also discovered artificial sweeteners may not “satiate” the brain’s craving as effectively as sugar which signals a positive feeling of reward to the brain.

If you don’t have a sweet tooth, it is wise to keep away from artificial sweeteners. If you do, exercise your self-control with sugar before you spiral out-of-control with artificial sweeteners.