Remember when low calorie foods were marketed almost exclusively to diabetics and dieters? When did it become for everyone? It seems as though everyone is "watching their weight" which means the sugar substitute, Aspartame, is virtually everywhere! This sugar alternative can be found in hundreds of foods such as lollipops, drinks, chewing gum, medicines, and even Metamucil. But do these "diet" foods containing sugar substitutes really help us lose weight and help keep it off? Research says that the opposite is true. What? How can a diet food make you gain weight?
Aspartame is known to stimulate the release of insulin and leptin. These two hormones are primarily responsible for making you "feel full" or satisfied, and more importantly, they are the two primary hormones that regulate your metabolism. This is significant because despite the fact that you are not ingesting calories in the form of sugar, aspartame can still raise your insulin and leptin levels. If consumed on a regular basis your body starts to become immune to increased amount of leptin release and starts to form a resistance. This in turn is the driving force behind obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. As time goes on, your body will develop this resistance to leptin, and your body no longer responds to the hormonal messages that instruct your body to burn fat, and maintain proper sensitivities to sweet tastes in your taste buds. Translation- You crave sweets, are never full, and sadly, your body stores fat because leptin levels must be much greater to allow you to have the sense of being full. In other words, you are always hungry although your body has enough caloric intakes to sustain itself. This leptin resistance specifically causes more visceral fat to be stored, covering your organs in fat, and increasing your risk of heart disease, diabetes and more. Ouch, that does not sound nearly as sweet as the taste of this so called healthy alternative to sugar. Please keep in mind that sugar in its self is not a health food choice as well and also carries the same characteristics as other weight gaining foods. The best substitute for sugar would be No sugar at all!
The "status quo" use artificial sweeteners to lose weight by drinking diet sodas or perhaps by eating sugar free foods. The amazing irony is that nearly all the studies that have carefully analyzed their effectiveness show that those who use artificial sweeteners actually gain more weight than those that drink regular sodas and eat regular foods containing sugar. Common sense would also strongly suggest that they don't work, because while their use has exploded in the last three decades, that increase closely parallels the obesity epidemic which continues to worsen, not improve, despite the use of these artificial sweeteners.
The irony of it all is that most people that use artificial sweeteners are doing so primarily to lose weight. One particular study to take note of actually shows that people who consumed diet sodas gained more weight than the people who consumed regular sodas! (1) If we just look around, it is quite obvious that obesity continues to worsen despite the fact that more and more people consume diet food. This may very well be another topic that will need more depth information later. Rather, maybe the answer should be eliminating sugar and all of its substitutes permanently from our diets. Think of the health possibilities associated with this change of a few ingredients.
There are many worse things than weight gain associated with aspartame use. Reports from the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as other medical journals, have linked aspartame to miscarriages, headaches, numbness, altered behaviour, fatigue, brain tumours, fatigue irritability, depression, insomnia and sexual dysfunction. Need I say more?
1) Peter J. Rogers, Jo-Anne Carlyle, Andrew J. Hill and John E. Blundell, "Uncoupling sweet taste and calories: Comparison of the effects of glucose and three intense sweeteners on hunger and food intake", Physiology & Behavior 1988; 43(5): 547-552
