Article: "Artificial sweeteners: sugar-free, but at what cost?"

sweeteners
(Adriana) #1

I read this and I found it really interesting.

I don’t agree with everything, but the part that says:

“Artificial sweeteners may play another trick, too. Research suggests that they may prevent us from associating sweetness with caloric intake. As a result, we may crave more sweets, tend to choose sweet food over nutritious food…”

Really resonated with me, mostly because I find is really hard to stop adding stevia to my food/drinks and this is one of my purposes: no more artificial sweeteners, they can be as addictive as sugar.

#2

I found this article troubling:

(Adriana) #3

Didn’t saw stevia on the article… but yeah, definitely one more reason to stop using artificial sweeteners.

(Jane) #4

Stevia is processed, but not artificial. May be why it didn’t make the list.

But it still fools your body into thinking you’ve consumed calories and some (not all) have an insulin response in spite of zero calories.

(Wendy) #5

This article is on sucralose but was interesting as well.

(Wendy) #6

After chronic exposure to a diet that contained the artificial sweetener sucralose, we saw that animals began eating a lot more," said lead researcher Associate Professor Greg Neely from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science.

“Through systematic investigation of this effect, we found that inside the brain’s reward centres, sweet sensation is integrated with energy content. When sweetness versus energy is out of balance for a period of time, the brain recalibrates and increases total calories consumed.”

(Edith) #7

I’m going to pipe in here without reading any of the articles you all kindly posted, because I’m not even sure if artificial sweeteners are truly the problem. Sugar is. We wouldn’t even want to use artificial sweeteners if sugar wasn’t so pervasive.

When I first started eating this way and really, I mean really, reading food labels, I was shocked about how many food items have added sugar. Food items that truly do not need sugar. Sweet potato fries come to mind along with tomato sauce. Because sugar is in so many food items, our taste buds have come to expect some sense of sweetness in almost everything we eat.

I think if sugar wasn’t so pervasive we wouldn’t feel the need to have some kind of sugar substitute.
I have to admit, artificial sweeteners and even the all natural substitutes don’t taste that good to me; stevia is bitter and I don’t like erythritol’s cooling effect.

The longer I follow this way of eating the less and less I like the taste of sweet things. What I do miss sometimes is the social aspect of dessert and idea of it.

(Central Florida Bob ) #8

I think that both of those statements together are about a mile deep. I recall noticing the taste of sugar in spaghetti sauce when I was in my early 20s (long, long ago). It was a real put-off. Didn’t like it at all, and always made my own from scratch. But we do get used to it and expect it. I subscribed to a barbecue mailing list and found that I couldn’t use 99% of the recipes. Too much sugar - and this from a guy who uses a little brown sugar in the dry rubs, for the help with the texture it gives.

Thing is, I’ve always had a sweet tooth, and still use sweeteners in my coffee (and the hot tea I’m having now). I’m lucky in that I don’t seem to get any negative effects from them, as others have reported. Not minimizing that some people do get effects, just that I don’t seem to.

(MelissaH) #9

I def agree with this! Takes back to Christmas eve years before keto… cookies made with splenda instead of sugar. I spent the whole night in the bathroom​:tired_face::tired_face:

(Jane) #10

Great point about all the added sugar. I remember when Campbell’s tomato soup was tart and that is why I liked it so much as a kid. Years later I made some and threw it out. It now has HFCS in it.

I live in Arkansas and even before keto we had to bring our own BBQ sauce to restaurants. The local population has gotten so addicted to sugar that EVERYTHING served around here is way too sweet. Syrupy sweet tea, cloying sugary BBQ sauces, all the sauces at the local hibachi grill sweet except for soy sauce. Yuck.

(Chris) #11

Wow, Virginia this is just super-insightful. It’s a picture perfect illustration of what I think could be one of the biggest underlying issues.

(Adriana) #12

This is so true! We come to expect some sweetness in our food because everything processed has added sugar.

I have gotten to a point where berries (when I eat them) are super sweet, or I find some foods, without added sugar, sweet. I hope that as I adapt more to this WOE I stop using sweetners all together, right now the only one I use is stevia and I have noticed is less every time.

(Wendy) #13

Your tastes change for sure. I even like my unsweetened yogurt now that I don’t add sweetener to really much of anything.
But I still like icecream. :blush: