Drinking sugar-free drinks won’t make you fat? That’s a lie!

Artificial sweeteners are chemicals that taste sweet but are not sugars. Since most artificial sweeteners are hardly converted by the human body, people call them sugar without calories. According to a new study by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, beverages containing the artificial sweetener sucralose may increase food cravings and appetite in women and obese people.

More than 40% of adults in the United States consume nonnutritive sweetener (NNS) foods as a non-caloric way to enjoy dessert and, in some cases, to achieve weight loss goals. Despite the prevalence of artificial sweeteners, their health effects remain highly controversial, with much to be learned about their effects on appetite, glucose metabolism, and body weight.

To study the effects of non-nutritive sweeteners, the researchers looked at 74 participants who, over the course of three different visits, drank 300 milliliters of a drink sweetened with sucrose (table sugar), a drink sweetened with the non-nutritive sweetener sucralose, or water as a control. Over the next two hours, the researchers measured three things: activity in areas of the brain responsible for appetite and food cravings in response to pictures of high-calorie foods such as burgers and donuts, using an imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); levels of glucose (blood sugar), insulin, and other metabolic hormones in the blood; and the amount of food consumed from a snack buffet provided at the end of each visit. The study groups consisted of an equal number of men and women who were categorized as healthy weight, overweight, or obese, allowing the researchers to explore potential differences between different demographic groups.

The study found that women and obese people had increased activity in the areas of the brain responsible for food cravings and appetite after drinking drinks containing sucralose compared to drinks containing real sugar. The study also showed that participants experienced an overall decrease in levels of the hormone that tells the body "I feel full" after drinking the drinks containing sucralose compared to the drinks containing sucrose, suggesting that artificially sweetened drinks may not be effective in curbing hunger.

Finally, after the female participants drank the sucralose-containing beverage, they ate more at the snack buffet than those who drank the sucrose-containing beverage, while there was no difference in snack intake among the male participants. All participants fasted overnight before the study and were likely hungrier than usual.

By studying different groups, the researchers said women and people with obesity may be more sensitive to artificial sweeteners. For these people, drinking artificially sweetened beverages may trick the brain into feeling hungry, which in turn may lead to consuming more calories.

The related research paper titled "Obesity and Sex-Related Associations With Differential Effects of Sucralose vs Sucrose on Appetite and Reward Processing" was published in JAMA Network Open.

(Source: Qianzhan.com)