How Artificial Sweeteners Cause Weight Gain

Out of the five different artificial sweeteners that are currently on the market, the one you’re most likely to encounter is aspartame. Unfortunately, aspartame is also probability the worst of the five to consume.

Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are primarily promoted to diabetics and those concerned about their weight. This is occurring despite the fact that artificial sweeteners have repeatedly been shown to produce weight gain, not weight loss.

Research shows that aspartame actually worsens insulin sensitivity to a greater degree than sugar does. Artificial sweeteners have now been added into a wide variety of products that are not directly targeting diabetics and dieters.

Artificial sweeteners are currently added to about 6,000 different beverages, snacks and food products, making label-reading more important than ever!

Artificial Sweeteners Cause Metabolic Confusion:

One of the reasons why artificial sweeteners do not help you lose weight, relates to the fact that your body is not fooled by a sweet taste without the accompanying calories. When you eat something sweet, your brain releases dopamine, which activates your brain’s reward center. The appetite-regulating hormone leptin is also released, which eventually informs your brain that you are “full” once a certain amount of calories have been ingested.

However, when you consume something that tastes sweet but doesn’t contain any calories, your brain’s pleasure pathway still gets activated by the sweet taste, but there’s nothing to deactivate it, since the calories never arrive.

Artificial sweeteners basically trick your body into thinking that it’s going to receive “a caloric reward”, being sugar, but when the sugar doesn’t come, your body continues to signal that it needs more. This results in carb cravings.

Research Overwhelmingly Refutes Claims of Artificial Sweeteners:

Contrary to industry claims, research over the last 30 years, including several large scale prospective cohort studies, have shown that artificial sweeteners stimulate appetite, increase cravings for carbs and produce a variety of metabolic dysfunctions that promote fat storage and weight gain.

Here are some of the studies:

Preventive Medicine, 1986- This study examined nearly 78,700 women aged 50-69 for one year. Artificial sweetener usage increased with relative weight, and users were significantly more likely to gain weight, compared to those who did not use artificial sweeteners—regardless of their initial weight.

According to the researchers, the results “were not explicable by differences in food consumption patterns. The data does not support the hypothesis that long-term artificial sweetener use either helps weight loss or prevents weight gain”.

Physiology and Behavior, 1988 - In this study, they determined that intense (no- or low-calorie) sweeteners can produce significant changes in appetite. Of the three sweeteners tested, aspartame produced the most pronounced effects.

Physiology and Behavior, 1990 - Here, they found that aspartame had a time-dependent effect on appetite, “producing a transient decrease followed by a sustained increase in hunger ratings.”

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 1991 - In a study of artificial sweeteners performed on college students, there was no evidence that artificial sweetener use was associated with a decrease in their overall sugar intake either.

International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, 2003 - This study, which looked at 3,111 children, found that diet soda, specifically, was associated with higher BMI.

International Journal of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders,2004 - This Purdue University study found that rats fed artificially sweetened liquids ate more high-calorie food than rats fed high-caloric sweetened liquids. The researchers believe the experience of drinking artificially sweetened liquids disrupted the animals’ natural ability to compensate for the calories in the food.

San Antonio Heart Study, 2005 - Data gathered from the 25-year long San Antonio Heart Study also showed that drinking diet soft drinks increased the likelihood of serious weight gain – far more so than regular soda. On average, for each diet soft drink the participants drank per day, they were 65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next seven to eight years, and 41 percent more likely to become obese.

Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2005 - In this two-year long study, which involved 166 school children, increased diet soda consumption was associated with higher BMI at the end of the trial.

The Journal of Pediatrics, 2006 - The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study included 2,371 girls aged 9-19 for 10 years. Soda consumption in general, both regular and diet, was associated with increase in total daily energy intake.

Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2010 - This study delves into the neurobiology of sugar cravings and summarizes the epidemiological and experimental evidence concerning the effect of artificial sweeteners on weight.

According to the authors: “Findings suggest that the calorie contained in natural sweeteners may trigger a response to keep the overall energy consumption constant. ...Increasing evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners do not activate the food reward pathways in the same fashion as natural sweeteners… Artificial sweeteners, precisely because they are sweet, encourage sugar craving and sugar dependence.”

Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2010 - This review offers a summary of epidemiological and experimental evidence concerning the effects of artificial sweeteners on weight, and explains those effects in light of the neurobiology of food reward. It also shows the correlation between increased usage of artificial sweeteners in food and drinks, and the corresponding rise in obesity. More than 11,650 children aged 9-14 were included in this study. Each daily serving of diet beverage was associated with a BMI increase of 0.16 kg/m2.

Appetite, 2012 - Here, researchers showed that saccharin and aspartame both cause greater weight gain than sugar, even when the total caloric intake remains similar.

Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2013 - This report highlights the fact that diet soda drinkers suffer the same exact health problems as those who opt for regular soda, such as excessive weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke.23,24 The researchers speculate that frequent consumption of artificial sweeteners may induce metabolic derangements.

Nature, 2014 - This study was able to clearly show causality, revealing there’s a direct cause and effect relationship between consuming artificial sweeteners and developing elevated blood sugar levels.

People who consumed high amounts of artificial sweeteners were found to have higher levels of HbA1C, which is a long-term measure of blood sugar, as compared to non-users or occasional users of artificial sweeteners.

Seven volunteers who did not use artificial sweeteners were then recruited, and asked to consume the equivalent of 10-12 single-dose packets of artificial sweeteners daily for one week.

Four of the seven people developed “significant disturbances in their blood glucose,” according to the researchers. Some became pre-diabetic within just a few days. The reason for this dramatic shift was traced back to alterations in gut bacteria. Some bacteria were killed off, while others started proliferating.

PLOS One, 2014 - This study, which was done on rats, using aspartame, also found an increased risk of glucose intolerance. Animals that consume artificial sweeteners ended up with raised levels of propionate—short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) involved in sugar production. Consumption of artificial sweeteners shifted gut microbiota to produce propionate, which generated higher blood sugar levels.

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