Cyle swears by this. Addict that I am, I don't know....:
Casting doubt on the benefit of low-calorie sweeteners, research released Sunday reported that rats on diets containing saccharin gained more weight than rats given sugary food.
The study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience found that the artificial sweetener appeared to break the physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, driving the rats to overeat.
Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the latest report, said the study offers a possible explanation for the unexpected association between obesity and diet soda found in recent human studies.
Researchers have puzzled over whether diet soda was a marker for poor eating habits, or whether the ingredients in diet soda caused people to put on pounds, she said.
"This rat study suggests a component of the artificial sweetener may be responsible for the weight gain," Steffen said.
Steffen's research, published last month in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Assn., showed that people who drank diet soda had a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, a cluster of symptoms that includes obesity, than people who drank regular soda.
...The number of Americans who consume soda, yogurt and other products containing sugar-free sweeteners more than doubled to 160 million in 2000 from fewer than 70 million in 1987, according to the report. Over the same period, the incidence of obesity among U.S. adults rose to 30% from 15%. One interpretation of the trends is that people have been turning to lower-calorie foods to control an increasing problem with weight gain.
...Swithers said that normally, sweet tastes signal the body that it is about to receive a large number of calories, and the digestive system prepares to react. When sweet tastes aren't followed by lots of calories, as in the case of artificial sweeteners, the body becomes conditioned against a strong response.
...Adam Drewnowski, director of the nutrition sciences program at the University of Washington, cautioned against interpreting the results broadly.
...He added: "We now have studies showing that sugar calories are associated with obesity and the absence of sugar is associated with obesity. Pity those people trying to do something about obesity."
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