Are Artificial Sweeteners Bad For Your Weight?
Low or no calories should help you to lose weight.
So imagine the surprise of doctors and clinicians when two scientists from Purdue University found that artificial sweeteners may actually make you gain weight.
That’s because people who eat food with artificial sweeteners may be eating more calories than people who eat food with normal sugar.
These conclusions come from a rat study, but the researchers believe it may explain why humans gain weight, too.
The Purdue scientists believe that the sweet taste of artificially sweetened foods like diet cola may make your body expect a higher calorie content.
But when your body doesn’t get those calories, you experience an energy imbalance. So you either have to increase your food intake or reduce your activity level to fix it.
The researchers conducted experiments on lab rats that were divided into 2 groups.
One group ate yogurt with glucose (which is like table sugar) and the other group ate yogurt with no-calorie saccharin.
The zero-calorie saccharin rats ate more calories, gained more weight and body fat, and didn’t reduce their calorie consumption over the longer term.
That’s why the scientists believe that when the sweet taste was not linked to the usual high-calorie food, the body didn’t know how to react. So the saccharin changed the rats’ ability to control their food intake.
Also, the body temperature of the saccharin rats went up less than the glucose (or table sugar) rats. That means the saccharin rats didn’t burn off as many calories.
So saccharin and other artificial sweeteners may cause a double whammy for dieters: you eat more calories and you burn fewer.
These results may explain why the human obesity epidemic has continued to grow as the use of artificial sweeteners has increased.
But all is not lost.
According to the researchers, if you really love artificial sweeteners, you can still control your weight by counting calories.
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