Few can deny America’s sweet tooth. One trip to the grocery store will find almost every isle contains some sort of sweetened product…from yogurts, milks, juices and fruit cups, to cookies, crackers, sauces and dressings, even meats with sweetened sauces…you get the idea. We somehow manage to add sugar to everything. It seems our dependence upon sugar has grown along with our waistlines!
Then along came a variety of artificial sweeteners…the potential answer to our sugar cravings. We were hopeful that these sweeteners would allow us to eat our cake and stay thin too. Unfortunately, a growing body of research (reviewed in this week’s JAMA, May 14, 2008) isn’t supporting this vision. It seems from some studies, in fact, that artificial sweeteners may leave satiety receptors in the brain feeling…umm, unsatisfied which can lead to over eating. So it appears they’re probably not the quick answer to weight control that everyone was looking for.
Dietitians have long felt that reliance on artificial sweeteners does nothing to teach individuals important lessons in controlling portions. If you don’t change your behavior, how can you expect to change your body?
I’ve had clients (and friends) eat twice as much of something like ice cream ‘because it’s sugar free’, as if that meant there were no other calories present. Many use ‘sugar free’ or ‘fat free’ as license to indulge and then seem shocked when the scale goes up. Apparently, if you don’t actually read the calorie info on the label, it doesn’t count…yeah, right!
So the battle will continue between sugar and sweeteners as we all struggle to convince ourselves. So which is better…using artificial sweeteners and not worrying so much about amounts, or having small amounts of sugar sweetened foods and learning to control your portions?
Hungry for more info on this topic? Check out these links:
Foodnavigator.com
Journal of the American Medical Association
- ReneeLabels: Diet, Fact vs. Fiction, Health, Recent Research, Renee, sweetners
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