Foods and beverages that contain no-calorie artificial sweeteners may be ruining our ability to control our food intake and body weight, according to new research by psychologists at Purdue University’s Ingestive Behavior Research Center.
In their study, rats that ate yogurt sweetened with the zero-calorie artificial sweetener, saccharin:
Consumed more calories (and didn’t make up for it by cutting back later)
Gained more weight
Put on more body fat
It’s thought that consuming artificial sweeteners breaks the connection between a sweet sensation and a high-calorie food, thereby changing our body’s ability to regulate food intake.
The researchers also measured the rats’ core body temperatures, which typically rise after eating. However, after eating a sweet, high-calorie meal, rats that ate saccharin had a lower rise in body temperature than rats that ate sugar. Researchers believe that this blunted biological response led the rats to overeat, and made it harder to burn off the calories later.
The conclusion? Consuming foods sweetened with saccharin, aspartame, sucralose (Splenda), and acesulfame K, leads to greater weight gain and body fat than eating the same foods sweetened with sugar.
Some researchers are even so bold as to say that the belief that eating artificially sweetened foods and drinking artificially sweetened beverages will help us lose weight, is a carefully orchestrated deception — simply a marketing ploy to sell products. With this in mind, maybe we ought to seriously consider drinking more water and eating more REAL, whole foods? “Food for thought…”
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