The hype behind artificial sweeteners is easy to understand. Also referred to as nonnutritive sweeteners, manufacturers can use them to sweeten food and drink products without adding sugar—and therefore, consumers don’t need to worry about excess calories or a spike in blood sugar. So, what do the health experts say about this? Many of them say don’t get too excited—the fact that diet soda is sugar-free isn’t a go-ahead to consume endless amounts of it.
Weight Management Made Easy?
According to the latest guidance released by the World Health Organization in spring 2023, you shouldn’t be relying on artificially sweetened products to lose weight or to reduce your risk of disease.
Replacing sugar with nonnutritive sweeteners can offer some benefits in the short term. People are able to cut back on calories without sacrificing taste, which can help them lose weight at first. The problem is that a person who consumes artificially sweetened products is still accustomed to the taste of highly sweetened foods and drinks. This is why the WHO says artificial sweeteners aren’t good for long-term weight loss. It’s better to reduce your overall taste for sweetness and consume water or unsweetened coffee or tea.
As you cut back on artificially sweetened products, you’ll be able to satisfy yourself with light sweetness found in natural foods. For example, the Cleveland Clinic recommends adding frozen fruit to your sparkling water, a sliced banana to your oatmeal, or berries to your plain yogurt.
A Potential Carcinogen?
Artificial sweeteners are not the carcinogen that many people believe them to be. Much of this misconception goes back to the 1970s, when some research found a connection between the artificial sweetener saccharin (used to make Sweet ‘N’ Low) to bladder cancer in lab rats. But since then, further research has shown this isn’t the case with people.
Still, it might have been alarming last year when the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized aspartame (the sweetener used to make NutraSweet and Equal, and the sweetener commonly used in diet sodas) as a Group 2B carcinogen. By definition of Group 2B, this means it’s possibly carcinogenic to humans based on limited evidence.
But you would need to consume large amounts of aspartame for it to be harmful, according to the WHO. The acceptable daily intake set by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives is 40 milligrams per kilograms of bodyweight. That means a 150-pound person would need to drink more than 10 cans of diet soda a day to exceed this amount.
Which Option is Best?
The market has no shortage of artificial sweeteners to choose from. Among the many options is aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), saccharin (Sweet ‘N’ Low), sucralose (Splenda), and stevia leaf extracts (Truvia, PureVia). Is there any one that’s better than the others? It depends on whom you ask. For example, the Center for Science in the Public Interest discourages people from consuming saccharin, though it does deem sucralose and stevia extract to be safe. But a study published last year in the journal Nature Medicine linked erythritol, a sugar alcohol often combined with stevia extract in some products, to heart attacks and stroke.
Your best option? Think of artificial sweeteners as better than too much added sugar, but cutting back on the sweetness altogether is best.
