Not So Sweet

by WiredBerries Editors — February 19, 2008

Surprising research suggests a popular artificial sweetener has the unexpected and unwelcome effect of packing on the pounds. Purdue researchers report in the February issue of Behavioral Neuroscience that saccharin altered the ability of rats to control their appetites.

"We found that the rats that were getting artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight and ate more food," said study author Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the Ingestive Behavior Research Institute at Purdue University. "The take-home message is that consumption of artificially sweetened products may interfere with an automatic process."

That process, she said, involves the body's ability to detect that it will soon be full. It seems to be a subconscious process based on automatic estimations of how much energy certain foods will provide, she said. For example, a sweet taste might be a sign that "calories are coming, and I should prepare my body for the arrival of those calories." However, when the sweetness is not followed by a lot of calories, the body's digestive system gets confused, and the metabolism rate does not gear up as much the next time sweetness is tasted.

To test this theory, the researchers fed two different types of plain Dannon yogurt to male rats. Some received yogurt sweetened with glucose, a form of sugar, while others ate saccharin-sweetened yogurt. All also ate unsweetened yogurt. The rats who ate artificially sweetened yogurt consumed more food overall and gained more weight.

Guess our bodies are smarter than we thought!