Artificial Sweeteners Make You Eat More (& Cause Disease) by Joan Kent, PhD

Artificial Sweeteners Make You Eat More (& Cause Disease)
By Joan Kent, PhD

U.S. sales of diet soda are down, and that’s good. University of Sydney researchers have found a brain pathway that could explain why sugar substitutes promote consumption of more sweet foods.

According to a recent article in Mother Jones, fruit flies will eat 30% more calories after consuming Splenda (sucralose) over an extended period of time when given access to sugary food. Based on the neural activity of the sucralose-primed flies, the brain reward centers respond to the sweet taste by expecting calories.

The theory is artificial sweeteners, which have no calories, spur the seeking and consuming of calories not delivered by sugar substitutes. The Sydney researchers attributed this to the pleasure response triggered by sucralose, which makes the brain think it’s starving – or at least not getting the calories it thinks it should have.

Apparently, the sweeten-and-stuff response reversed once the flies were taken off sucralose.

Mice did the same thing when given sucralose. They ate more food, but the Mother Jones article didn’t specify whether it was more sugary food or more of any food offered.

The Sweeten & Stuff Response Is Familiar

In a study done in 2008, rats fed artificially sweetened yogurt consumed more total food over 14 days than rats eating sugar-sweetened yogurt. They also gained more weight and body fat – and showed a decrease in core body temperature, indicating a metabolic slow-down.

Years ago, the New York Times Magazine ran an article linking artificial sweeteners with increased appetite. Just as sugar triggers the release of insulin, the sweet taste of fake sugar can trigger insulin in people who are susceptible to it. That causes blood glucose to drop, and that causes hunger – for the calories they didn’t get from the diet soda or what-have-you.

Why might the food selection go in the direction of sugar? I’ll go to my doctoral research.

Like sugar, artificial sweeteners trigger the release of beta-endorphin (often called endorphins) in animals and humans. The endorphin does two things.

One is to block the brain’s primary center of satiety – the feeling that we’ve had enough food for now and don’t need to start another meal for a while.

Another is to change food preferences – toward foods that trigger more endorphins. Those foods are high in sugar, high in fat, or both.

So whether it’s the expectation of a calorie blast, or lack of satiety plus a preference for sugar and fat – either way, we’re likely to eat more after using artificial sweeteners.

More Bad News About Fake Sugar

According to the Mother Jones article, people who drink diet soda regularly have an increased risk of stroke, heart attacks, and type 2 diabetes. Diet sodas can also change gut microbes, the bacteria in the intestines.

In fact, the change in gut microbes may actually be the way those diseases develop. A 2014 study on mice, done at the Weitzmann Institute of Science, showed that artificial sweeteners led to glucose intolerance. That’s a first step toward metabolic disorders, including type-2 diabetes.

This appeared to be due to microbiotic changes that are associated with obesity and diabetes.

Further, when the changed microbes were transferred to germ-free mice not exposed to sweeteners, the glucose intolerance was transmitted, as well.

Doesn’t Matter If You’re Man or Mouse

Human volunteers who don’t eat artificial sweeteners were given sweeteners for a week. Many of them began to develop glucose intolerance after just that one week.

Researchers’ theory: the type of bacteria that brought on glucose intolerance had provoked an inflammatory response. Inflammation, a highly complex subject, is currently recognized as a root cause of most, if not all, disease.

In 2013, researchers studied 17 participants who were obese but not diabetic, and had normal insulin sensitivity. Two tests occurred one week apart. In Test 1, participants drank water only before a glucose tolerance test. In Test 2, participants drank water plus the same amount of sucralose contained in a 12-ounce diet soda.

The results revealed that the sucralose in Test 2 provoked the following changes:
• 12% higher peak blood glucose levels
• 20% higher total insulin secretion
• 22% faster insulin secretion rate
• 7% slower clearing rate of insulin from the blood.

These factors may lead to insulin resistance.

Sweeteners May Be Worse For Women

Women may be even more sensitive to the effects of sweeteners. For example, artificial sweeteners seem to bring on menstruation at an earlier age in girls.

NIH and George Washington University researchers found that sweeteners show up in breast milk, even in women who don’t drink diet beverages. That may be due to their use in foods labelled “light”, reduced-sugar, or reduced-calorie.

Sweeteners are even in toothpaste, so that’s another possible source that should encourage label reading.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a 14-year study of over 66,000 women. Results indicated that artificial sweeteners seem to be more addictive than sugar. Diet soda drinkers tend to consume two times as much soda as regular soda users.

I had a weight-loss client many years ago who was addicted to sugar – but far more addicted to aspartame. She couldn’t stay away from it, then kept binge eating and not losing weight.

Another client once ate a sport bar that she thought would be “safe” because it had no sugar. It contained sucralose as the last and least plentiful (by weight) ingredient on the label. She couldn’t stop eating the bars once she started and kept going back for more.

What To Do? Take the Hint!

Avoid artificial sweeteners. If that sounds like a perfect excuse to eat sugar, it’s not meant to be.

Sugar’s terrible – for many of the same reasons described above. But sugar substitutes are clearly just as bad, and in some cases worse.

What to do? Begin to get away from sweet foods and sweet tastes. If you must have something sweet, limit yourself to 1 or 2 servings of fruit per day.

But don’t do what a client of mine did several years ago. He ate 3 quarts of watermelon at a barbecue because the Food Guide Pyramid suggested 2 to 4 servings of fruit a day.

He didn’t realize how small a serving is: half a cup of berries, for example, or 1 medium-size fruit.

Stay cautious with fruit. It’s quite addictive for some people. And it contains fructose, arguably the worst sugar to eat (and a topic for its own article). If you’re at all sugar-sensitive, the vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients in fruit will not override the fructose horrors.

Ultimately, training yourself not to expect sweet food is the most solid plan. I realize it’s easier said than done, but there’s help. And the freedom you’ll achieve is worth the change.

Are you looking for a way to get away from sugar’s negative effects? Perfect, because that’s what I do. Please visit Coaching on the home page and request a Food Freedom Session, at no charge. Find out how your moods, your energy, your health can shift so you feel fantastic every day!