Tag: Artificial Sweeteners

Six FDA Approved Sweeteners Proven Toxic To Human Digestion

(Prevent Disease) Using artificial sweeteners causes biochemical changes in the body and actually throw off the body’s ability to monitor how many calories we consume. FDA-approved artificial sweeteners and sport supplements have now been found to be toxic to digestive gut microbes, according to a new paper published in Molecules.

Artificial sweeteners are one of the most common food additives worldwide, frequently consumed in diet and zero-calorie sodas and other products. Large examinations have tracked biochemical changes in the body using high-throughput metabolomics.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

The collaborative study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore examined the relative toxicity of six artificial sweeteners:

1. aspartame
2. sucralose
3. saccharine
4. neotame
5. advantame
6. acesulfame potassium-k

And 10 sport supplements containing these artificial sweeteners. The bacteria found in the digestive system became toxic when exposed to concentrations of only one mg./ml. of the artificial sweeteners.

“We modified bioluminescent E. coli bacteria, which luminesce when they detect toxicants and act as a sensing model representative of the complex microbial system,” says Prof. Ariel Kushmaro, John A. Ungar Chair in Biotechnology in the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering, and member of the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev. “This is further evidence that consumption of artificial sweeteners adversely affects gut microbial activity which can cause a wide range of health issues.”

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives & More

Artificial sweeteners are used in countless food products and soft drinks with reduced sugar content. Many people consume this added ingredient without their knowledge. Moreover, artificial sweeteners have been identified as emerging environmental pollutants, and can be found in drinking and surface water, and groundwater aquifers.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 11 to 27 percent of ingested sucralose is absorbed by the human body (FDA 1998). Research published by the manufacturer of sucralose (Roberts 2000) shows that when 8 healthy male adults where given sucralose (in 1 mg/kg amounts), between 10.4% and 30.6% of the sucralose was absorbed. In addition, 1.6% to 12.2% of the sucralose accumulates in the body.

Related: Foods That Promote Candida Overgrowth and Lead To Leaky Gut

Aspartame is a multi-potential carcinogen, even consumed daily at 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That is a lower quantity than the maximum recommended by the FDA (50 mg/kg of body weight) and the European Union (40 mg/kg).

It increases the incidence of malignant tumours in rats. In the females it increases leukaemia and lymphomas, as well as cancerous cells in the pelvis and urethra. In the males, it especially increases the incidence of malignant tumours in peripheral nerves.

“The results of this study might help in understanding the relative toxicity of artificial sweeteners and the potential of negative effects on the gut microbial community as well as the environment.

Furthermore, the tested bioluminescent bacterial panel can potentially be used for detecting artificial sweeteners in the environment,” says Prof. Kushmaro.

Also Read: Exposed: 85 Percent of Major Brands of Chewing Gum Still Contain Aspartame and Sucralose

Marco Torres writes for Prevent Disease, where this article first appeared.

New Study Shows Artificial Sweeteners Lead to Diabetes

Artificial sweeteners are displayed, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014, in New York. Artificial sweeteners may set the stage for diabetes in some people by hampering the way their bodies handle sugar, according to results of a study released Wednesday by the journal Nature. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

(Dr. Mercola)

The American Diabetes Association states foods and drinks that use artificial sweeteners are an option that “may help curb your cravings for something sweet” if you have diabetes. They’re among a number of public health organizations spreading the deceptive and incorrect message that artificial sweeteners make a sensible alternative to sugar for diabetics even as the research continues to accumulate to the contrary.

In a small, preliminary study presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Lisbon, Portugal, researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia revealed that artificial sweeteners impair the body’s response to glucose, reducing control of blood sugar levels.1,2 The study involved 27 healthy participants who were given either capsules of the artificial sweeteners sucralose (brand name Splenda) and acesulfame K in an amount equivalent to consuming 1.5 liters of diet drinks a day or a placebo.

It took just two weeks for the artificial sweetener group to show adverse effects to their blood sugar levels, including a reduction in numbers of the gut peptide GLP-1, which limits the rise in blood sugar after eating. Lead study author Richard Young, associate professor at the University of Adelaide, said in a news release, “This highlights the potential for exaggerated post-meal glucose levels in high habitual NAS [noncaloric artificial sweeteners] users, which could predispose them to developing Type 2 diabetes.”3

Related: Healthy Alternative Sugars & More

Science Increasingly Suggests Artificial Sweeteners Contribute to Glucose Intolerance, Diabetes

Critics of the University of Adelaide study suggested it was too small and “impossible from the data available” to conclude that the observed changes would lead to diabetes.4 However, it’s not the first study to suggest such a link. For instance, drinking aspartame-sweetened diet soda daily increased the risk of Type 2 diabetes by 67 percent (regardless of whether the participants gained weight or not) and the risk of metabolic syndrome 36 percent in one study.5

Artificial sweeteners may increase your risk of weight gain, obesity, metabolic syndrome and other related problems like Type 2 diabetes by inducing “metabolic derangements,” according to a report published in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism.6 Research published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism also found aspartame intake is associated with greater glucose intolerance in people with obesity.7

Glucose intolerance is a condition in which your body loses its ability to cope with high amounts of sugar, and it’s a well-known precursor to Type 2 diabetes. It also plays a role in obesity, because the excess sugar in your blood ends up being stored in your fat cells. This means obese individuals who use aspartame may have higher blood sugar levels, which in turn will raise insulin levels, leading to related weight gain, inflammation and an increased risk of diabetes.

Artificial Sweetener in Four Cans of Diet Soda Daily May Increase Fat Production, Inflammation

As far as sucralose goes, in April 2017 research presented at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, also found that this artificial sweetener promotes metabolic dysfunction that may promote the accumulation of fat.8

Sucralose was tested on stem cells taken from human fat tissue, which revealed that a dose similar to what would be found in the blood of someone who drinks four cans of diet soda a day increased the expression of genes linked to fat production and inflammation, as well as increased fat droplets on cells.9

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

The study’s lead author, Dr. Sabyasachi Sen, associate professor of medicine and endocrinology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., noted in a press release, “From our study, we believe low-calorie sweeteners promote additional fat formation by allowing more glucose to enter the cells, and promotes inflammation, which may be more detrimental in obese individuals.”10

The fact that the artificial sweetener was associated with increased glucose uptake in the cells was particularly concerning, as it could have detrimental effects for people with elevated blood sugar levels, like those with diabetes or prediabetes.11

Consuming Artificial Sweeteners Alters Gut Flora, Exacerbating Metabolic Disease

It’s a little-known fact that artificial sweeteners have been shown to induce glucose intolerance by altering gut microbiota.12 Research led by Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, first showed that mice fed artificial sweeteners developed glucose intolerance after 11 weeks. They then revealed that altering the animals’ gut bacteria influenced their glucose response.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Specifically, when they transplanted feces from glucose-intolerant mice consuming saccharin to mice with sterile intestines, the latter group developed glucose intolerance, “indicating that saccharin was causing the microbiome to become unhealthy,” Scientific American reported.13 Perhaps the most revealing part of the experiments came when the researchers tested artificial sweeteners on people. Scientific American continued:14

“[Elinav’s] team recruited seven lean and healthy volunteers, who did not normally use artificial sweeteners, for a small prospective study. The recruits consumed the maximum acceptable daily dose of artificial sweeteners for a week. Four became glucose intolerant, and their gut microbiomes shifted towards a balance already known to be associated with susceptibility to metabolic diseases.”

Splenda has also been found to reduce the amount of beneficial bacteria in rat intestines by 50 percent15 and depending on which ones are affected it could certainly affect your diabetes risk. Studies have found that the microbial composition in diabetics differ from nondiabetics.16

In particular, diabetics tend to have fewer firmicutes and more plentiful amounts of bacteroidetes and proteobacteria compared to nondiabetics. A positive correlation for the ratios of bacteroidetes to firmicutes and reduced glucose tolerance has also been found.

A researcher in Amsterdam, Dr. Max Nieuwdorp, has published a number of studies looking at changes in the microbiome that are characteristic of Type 2 diabetes.17 In one trial, he was able to reverse Type 2 diabetes in all of the 250 study participants by doing fecal transplantations on them. Remarkable as it may sound, by changing the makeup of the gut bacteria, the diabetes was resolved, so it’s not a stretch to think that the opposite could also hold true.

Diet Drinks May Trigger a Greater Metabolic Response Than Sugary Drinks

Part of the problem with artificial sweeteners is that the sweet taste they provide (in many cases even hundreds of times sweeter-tasting than sugar) does not match up with the energy (or calories) the food provides.

Your body, however, is designed to relate the two, and a recent study by Yale University School of Medicine researchers revealed that the mismatch that occurs when consuming artificially sweetened foods and beverages leads to disruptions to metabolism.18,19 In a Yale University press release, senior author and psychiatry professor Dana Small said:20

“The assumption that more calories trigger greater metabolic and brain response is wrong. Calories are only half of the equation; sweet taste perception is the other half … Our bodies evolved to efficiently use the energy sources available in nature. Our modern food environment is characterized by energy sources our bodies have never seen before.”

The study found that an artificially sweetened, lower-calorie drink that tastes sweet can trigger a greater metabolic response than a drink with a higher number of calories.21 Your body uses the drink’s sweetness to help determine how it should be metabolized. When sweetness matches up with the calories, your brain’s reward circuits are duly satisfied. However, when the sweet taste is not followed by the expected calories, your brain doesn’t get the same satisfying message.22

This may explain why diet foods and drinks have been linked to increased appetite and cravings, as well as an increased risk of diabetes and other metabolic diseases.23,24 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 sugar (calories), but when the sugar doesn’t come, your body continues to signal that it needs more, which results in carb cravings.

Yale Cardiologist — and Ex-Diet Soda Fiend — Speaks Out Against Them

Dr. Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist at Yale University School of Medicine who openly states, “I used to pound down diet drinks.”25 Like so many Americans, he believed the low-calorie, sugar-free drinks to be a guilt-free source of caffeine that helped him keep his weight down. Now he feels betrayed, and he’s speaking out against them. Krumholz cited a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) — the gold standard of research — which found:26

“Evidence from RCTs does not clearly support the intended benefits of nonnutritive sweeteners for weight management, and observational data suggest that routine intake of nonnutritive sweeteners may be associated with increased BMI [body mass index] and cardiometabolic risk.”

He also mentioned other concerning studies, like one that found artificial sweeteners activate different areas in the brain than regular sugar,27 which could ultimately influence feelings of hunger and reward pathways.

Another, conducted by his Yale University colleagues, found artificial sweeteners “are not physiologically inert compounds” and may “impact energy balance and metabolic function, including actions on oral and extra-oral sweet taste receptors, and effects on metabolic hormone secretion, cognitive processes (e.g., reward learning, memory, and taste perception), and gut microbiota.”28 Krumholz wrote in The Wall Street Journal that he’s stopped his daily diet drinks and is removing them from the rest of his diet as well.

“It is reasonable to ask why these substances were not evaluated as drugs in the first place,” he says. “Millions of people are exposed to them every day, and yet their long-term effect is uncertain. Could they be actually causing the health problems they were intended to prevent? I don’t know the answer at this point, but it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the manufacturers to show benefit and demonstrate safety through clinical trials …

If, in the end, we discover that large-scale consumption of diet drinks and foods helped fuel the obesity epidemic, it would be more than ironic. It would be tragic.”29

Are You Ready to Ditch ‘Diet’ Foods From Your Diet?

I would not recommend waiting for public health agencies to catch up to the science and change their stance on artificial sweeteners before making changes to your diet. If you’re currently an artificial sweetener fanatic, or even if you consume them in moderation, ditching them from your diet is a smart move for your health. Be aware that they’re found not only in diet sodas but also in many low-calorie and reduced-calorie foods, from yogurt and ice cream to bread and salad dressing.

Stevia is an acceptable replacement, but I also suggest curbing your sweet cravings by eating fermented vegetables or drinking water with lemon or lime juice added — the sour taste helps reduce cravings, as does organic black coffee.30,31 To learn more, my book “Sweet Deception” has the details about why artificial sweeteners are so hazardous for your health as well as common artificial sweetener-related side effects to watch out for.

Aspartame Tied to Weight Gain, Increased Appetite, Obesity

(U.S. Right To Know) Aspartame, the world’s most popular sugar substitute, is found in thousands of sugar-free, low-sugar and so-called “diet” drinks and foods. Yet the scientific evidence described in this fact sheet links aspartame to weight gain, increased appetite, diabetes, metabolic derangement and obesity-related diseases.

Please share this resource. See also our companion fact sheet, Aspartame: Decades of Science Point to Serious Health Risks, with information about the peer-reviewed studies linking aspartame to cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, strokes, seizures, shortened pregnancies and headaches.

Recommended Reading: Healthy Sugar Alternatives & More

Quick Facts

  • Aspartame — also marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, Sugar Twin and AminoSweet — is the world’s most widely used artificial sweetener. The chemical is found in thousands of food and beverageproducts, including Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, sugar-free gum, candy, condiments and vitamins.
  • The FDA has said aspartame is “safe for the general population under certain conditions.” Many scientists have said the FDA approval was based on suspect data and should be reconsidered.
  • Dozens of studies conducted over decades link aspartame to serious health problems.

Aspartame, Weight Gain + Obesity Related Issues 

Five reviews of the scientific literature on artificial sweeteners suggest that they do not contribute to weight loss, and instead may cause weight gain.

  • A 2017 meta analysis of research on artificial sweeteners, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found no clear evidence of weight loss benefits for artificial sweeteners in randomized clinical trials, and reported that cohort studies associate artificial sweeteners with “increases in weight and waist circumference, and higher incidence of obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular events.”1
    • See also: “Artificial sweeteners don’t help with weight loss and may lead to gained pounds,” by Catherine Caruso, STAT (7.17.2017)
  • A 2013 Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism review article finds “accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,” and that “frequent consumption of high-intensity sweeteners may have the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements.”2
  • A 2009 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition review article finds that the “addition of NNS [nonnutritive sweeteners] to diets poses no benefit for weight loss or reduced weight gain without energy restriction. There are long-standing and recent concerns that inclusion of NNS in the diet promotes energy intake and contributes to obesity.”3
  • A 2010 Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine review of the literature on artificial sweeteners concludes that, “research studies suggest that artificial sweeteners may contribute to weight gain.”4
  • A 2010 International Journal of Pediatric Obesity review article states, “Data from large, epidemiologic studies support the existence of an association between artificially-sweetened beverage consumption and weight gain in children.”5
Recommended Reading: Diet Soda, Aspartame Linked to Premature Deaths in Women

Epidemiological evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners are implicated in weight gain. For example:

  • The San Antonio Heart Study “observed a classic, positive dose-response relationship between AS [artificially sweetened] beverage consumption and long-term weight gain.” Furthermore, it found that consuming more than 21 artificially sweetened beverages per week – compared to those who consumed none, “was associated with almost-doubled risk” of overweight or obesity.”6
  • A study of beverage consumption among children and adolescents aged 6-19 published in International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition found that “BMI is positively associated with consumption of diet carbonated beverages.”7
  • A two-year study in of 164 children published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that “Increases in diet soda consumption were significantly greater for overweight and subjects who gained weight as compared to normal weight subjects. Baseline BMI Z-score and year 2 diet soda consumption predicted 83.1% of the variance in year 2 BMI Z-score.” It also found that “Diet soda consumption was the only type of beverage associated with year 2 BMI Z-score, and consumption was greater in overweight subjects and subjects who gained weight as compared to normal weight subjects at two years.”8
  • The U.S. Growing Up Today study of more than 10,000 children aged 9-14 found that, for boys, intakes of diet soda “were significantly associated with weight gains.”9
  • A 2016 study in the International Journal of Obesity reported finding seven tentatively replicated factors showing significant associations with abdominal obesity in women, including aspartame intake.10
  • People who regularly consume artificial sweeteners are at increased risk of “excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,”11 according to a 2013 Purdue review over 40 years published in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism

Other types of studies similarly suggest that artificial sweeteners do not contribute to weight loss. For example, interventional studies do not support the notion that artificial sweeteners produce weight loss. According to the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine review of the scientific literature, “consensus from interventional studies suggests that artificial sweeteners do not help reduce weight when used alone.”12

Some studies also suggest that artificial sweeteners increase appetite, which may promote weight gain. For example, the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine review found that “Preload experiments generally have found that sweet taste, whether delivered by sugar or artificial sweeteners, enhanced human appetite.”13

Studies based on rodents suggest that consumption of artificial sweeteners can lead to consuming extra food. According to the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine review, “ Inconsistent coupling between sweet taste and caloric content can lead to compensatory overeating and positive energy balance.” In addition, according to the same article, “artificial sweeteners, precisely because they are sweet, encourage sugar craving and sugar dependence.”14

Recommended Reading: Why You Should Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup & Aspartame

A 2014 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that “Overweight and obese adults in the United States drink more diet beverages than healthy-weight adults, consume significantly more calories from solid food—at both meals and snacks—than overweight and obese adults who drink SSBs [sugar-sweetened beverages], and consume a comparable amount of total calories as overweight and obese adults who drink SSBs.”15

A 2015 study of older adults in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found “In a striking dose-response relationship,” that “increasing DSI [diet soda intake] was associated with escalating abdominal obesity…”16

An important 2014 study published in Nature found that “consumption of commonly used NAS [non-caloric artificial sweetener] formulations drives the development of glucose intolerance through induction of compositional and functional alterations to the intestinal microbiota … our results link NAS consumption, dysbiosis and metabolic abnormalities … Our findings suggest that NAS may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic that they themselves were intended to fight.”17

Diabetes and Metabolic Derangement

Aspartame breaks down in part into phenylalanine, which interferes with the action of an enzyme intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP) previously shown to prevent metabolic syndrome, which is a group of symptoms associated with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. According to a 2017 study in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, mice receiving aspartame in their drinking water gained more weight and developed other symptoms of metabolic syndrome than animals fed similar diets lacking aspartame. The study concludes, “IAP’s protective effects in regard to the metabolic syndrome may be inhibited by phenylalanine, a metabolite of aspartame, perhaps explaining the lack of expected weight loss and metabolic improvements associated with diet drinks.”18

  • See also: Mass General press release on the study, “Aspartame may prevent, not promote, weight loss by blocking intestinal enzyme’s activity”

People who regularly consume artificial sweeteners are at increased risk of “excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,” according to a 2013 Purdue review over 40 years published in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism.19

In a study that followed 66,118 women over 14 years, both sugar sweetened beverages and artificially sweetened beverages were associated with risk of Type 2 diabetes. “Strong positive trends in T2D risk were also observed across quartiles of consumption for both types of beverage … No association was observed for 100% fruit juice consumption,” reported the 2013 study published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.20

Recommended Reading: Foods That Feed Candida

Intestinal Dysbiosis, Metabolic Derangement and Obesity

Artificial sweeteners can induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota, according to a 2014 study in Nature. The researchers wrote, “our results link NAS [non-caloric artificial sweetener] consumption, dysbiosis and metabolic abnormalities, thereby calling for a reassessment of massive NAS usage … Our findings suggest that NAS may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic [obesity] that they themselves were intended to fight.”21

A 2016 study in Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism reported, “Aspartame intake significantly influenced the association between body mass index (BMI) and glucose tolerance… consumption of aspartame is associated with greater obesity-related impairments in glucose tolerance.”22

According to a 2014 rat study in PLoS ONE, “aspartame elevated fasting glucose levels and an insulin tolerance test showed aspartame to impair insulin-stimulated glucose disposal … Fecal analysis of gut bacterial composition showed aspartame to increase total bacteria…”23

Industry Science

Not all recent studies find a link between artificial sweeteners and weight gain. Two industry-funded studies did not.

  • A 2014 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition meta-analysis concluded that “Findings from observational studies showed no association between LCS [low-calorie sweetener] intake and body weight or fat mass and a small positive association with BMI [body mass index]; however, data from RCTs [randomized controlled trials], which provide the highest quality of evidence for examining the potentially causal effects of LCS intake, indicate that substituting LCS options for their regular-calorie versions results in a modest weight loss and may be a useful dietary tool to improve compliance with weight loss or weight maintenance plans.” The authors “received funding to conduct this research from the North American Branch of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI).”24

According to a 2010 article in Nature, ILSI is “largely funded by food, chemical and pharmaceutical companies.”25 See also US Right to Know fact sheet: ILSI Wields Stealthy Influence for Food and Agrichemical Industries.

A series of stories published in UPI in 1987 by investigative reporter Greg Gordon describe ILSI’s involvement in directing research on aspartame toward studies likely to support the sweetener’s safety.

  • A 2014 study in the journal Obesity tested water against artificially sweetened beverages for a 12-week weight loss program, finding that “water is not superior to NNS [non-nutritive sweetened] beverages for weight loss during a comprehensive behavioral weight loss program.” The study was “fully funded by the American Beverage Association,”26 which is the main lobbying group for the soda industry.

There is strong evidence that industry-funded studies in biomedical research are less trustworthy than those funded independently. A 2007 PLOS Medicine study on industry support for biomedical research found that “Industry funding of nutrition-related scientific articles may bias conclusions in favor of sponsors’ products, with potentially significant implications for public health … scientific articles about commonly consumed beverages funded entirely by industry were approximately four to eight times more likely to be favorable to the financial interests of the sponsors than articles without industry-related funding. Of particular interest, none of the interventional studies with all industry support had an unfavorable conclusion…”27

Recommended Reading: Are You Buying Stevia or Something Else?

Is “Diet” Deceptive Marketing?

In April 2015, US Right to Know petitioned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the marketing and advertising practices of “diet” products that contain a chemical linked to weight gain.

We argued that the term “diet” appears to be deceptive, false and misleading in violation of section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and section 403 of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The agencies have so far declined to act citing lack of resources and other priorities (see FDA and FTC responses).

“It’s regrettable that the FTC won’t act to halt the deceptions of the ‘diet’ soda industry. Ample scientific evidence links artificial sweeteners to weight gain, not weight loss,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know. “I do believe that ‘diet’ soda will go down in U.S. history as one of the greatest consumer frauds ever.”

News coverage:

USRTK press releases and posts:

Related Reading:

 

Sources:

[1] Azad, Meghan B., et al. Nonnutritive sweeteners and cardiometabolic health: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies. CMAJ July 17, 2017 vol. 189 no. 28 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.161390 (abstract / article)

[2] Swithers SE, “Artificial Sweeteners Produce the Counterintuitive Effect of Inducing Metabolic Derangements.” Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, July 10, 2013. 2013 Sep;24(9):431-41. PMID: 23850261. (abstract / article)

[3] Mattes RD, Popkin BM, “Nonnutritive Sweetener Consumption in Humans: Effects on Appetite and Food Intake and Their Putative Mechanisms.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 3, 2008. 2009 Jan;89(1):1-14. PMID: 19056571. (article)

[4] Yang Q, “Gain Weight by ‘Going Diet?’ Artificial Sweeteners and the Neurobiology of Sugar Cravings.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2010 Jun;83(2):101-8. PMID: 20589192. (article)

[5] Brown RJ, de Banate MA, Rother KI, “Artificial Sweeteners: a Systematic Review of Metabolic Effects in Youth.” International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, 2010 Aug;5(4):305-12. PMID: 20078374. (abstract / article)

[6] Fowler SP, Williams K, Resendez RG, Hunt KJ, Hazuda HP, Stern MP. “Fueling the Obesity Epidemic? Artificially Sweetened Beverage Use and Long-Term Weight Gain.” Obesity, 2008 Aug;16(8):1894-900. PMID: 18535548. (abstract / article)

[7] Forshee RA, Storey ML, “Total Beverage Consumption and Beverage Choices Among Children and Adolescents.” International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition. 2003 Jul;54(4):297-307. PMID: 12850891. (abstract)

[8] Blum JW, Jacobsen DJ, Donnelly JE, “Beverage Consumption Patterns in Elementary School Aged Children Across a Two-Year Period.” Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2005 Apr;24(2):93- 8. PMID: 15798075. (abstract)

[9] Berkey CS, Rockett HR, Field AE, Gillman MW, Colditz GA. “Sugar-Added Beverages and Adolescent Weight Change.”Obes Res. 2004 May;12(5):778-88. PMID: 15166298. (abstract / article)

[10] W Wulaningsih, M Van Hemelrijck, K K Tsilidis, I Tzoulaki, C Patel and S Rohrmann. “Investigating nutrition and lifestyle factors as determinants of abdominal obesity: an environment-wide study.” International Journal of Obesity (2017) 41, 340–347; doi:10.1038/ijo.2016.203; published online 6 December 2016 (abstract / article)

[11] Susan E. Swithers, “Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements.” Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Sep; 24(9): 431–441.

[12] Yang Q, “Gain Weight by ‘Going Diet?’ Artificial Sweeteners and the Neurobiology of Sugar Cravings.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2010 Jun;83(2):101-8. PMID: 20589192. (article)

[13] Yang Q, “Gain Weight by ‘Going Diet?’ Artificial Sweeteners and the Neurobiology of Sugar Cravings.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2010 Jun;83(2):101-8. PMID: 20589192. (article)

[14] Yang Q, “Gain Weight by ‘Going Diet?’ Artificial Sweeteners and the Neurobiology of Sugar Cravings.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2010 Jun;83(2):101-8. PMID: 20589192. (article)

[15] Bleich SN, Wolfson JA, Vine S, Wang YC, “Diet-Beverage Consumption and Caloric Intake Among US Adults, Overall and by Body Weight.” American Journal of Public Health, January 16, 2014. 2014 Mar;104(3):e72-8. PMID: 24432876. (abstract / article)

[16] Fowler S, Williams K, Hazuda H, “Diet Soda Intake Is Associated with Long-Term Increases in Waist Circumference in a Biethnic Cohort of Older Adults: The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging.” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, March 17, 2015. (abstract / article)

[17] Suez J. et al., “Artificial Sweeteners Induce Glucose Intolerance by Altering the Gut Microbiota.” Nature, September 17, 2014. 2014 Oct 9;514(7521):181-6. PMID: 25231862 (abstract)

[18] Gul SS, Hamilton AR, Munoz AR, Phupitakphol T, Liu W, Hyoju SK, Economopoulos KP, Morrison S, Hu D, Zhang W, Gharedaghi MH, Huo H, Hamarneh SR, Hodin RA. “Inhibition of the gut enzyme intestinal alkaline phosphatase may explain how aspartame promotes glucose intolerance and obesity in mice.” Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2017 Jan;42(1):77-83. doi: 10.1139/apnm-2016-0346. Epub 2016 Nov 18. (abstract / article)

[19] Susan E. Swithers, “Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements.” Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Sep; 24(9): 431–441. (article)

[20] Guy Fagherazzi, A Vilier, D Saes Sartorelli, M Lajous, B Balkau, F Clavel-Chapelon. “Consumption of artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages and incident type 2 diabetes in the Etude Epidémiologique auprès des femmes de la Mutuelle Générale de l’Education Nationale–European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2013, Jan 30; doi: 10.3945/ ajcn.112.050997 ajcn.050997. (abstract/article)

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