Are you still using sugar substitutes to lose weight?

The most irresistible thing when losing weight is sugary drinks. If you want to drink sweet drinks but don’t want to get calories, it seems that sugar substitutes are a very suitable choice. Therefore, there are many sugar substitute beverages on the market that claim to be calorie-free and sugar-free, and coffee shops also provide sugar substitute packets. So what is sugar substitute? Is it really harmless to eat these sugar substitutes?

What exactly is sugar substitute? ?

Sugar substitutes are a type of sweetener, which can be roughly divided into two types. One is sugar alcohol substances, such as xylitol and sorbitol. This type of sugar alcohol has some calories and makes our mouth feel cool, so sugar alcohols are used as sweeteners in sugar-free chewing gum or lozenges. The other type is artificial sweeteners that have no calories, such as aspartame, potassium acesulfame, cyclamate, saccharin, sucralose, neotame, etc.

This type of artificial sweetener is much sweeter than sucrose. For example, aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sucrose, and sucralose is 600 times sweeter. That is to say, to produce the same sweetness, aspartame and sucralose only need to be used in amounts of 1/200 and 1/600 respectively to achieve the same sweetness as sucrose. The most commonly used sweeteners in beverages are aspartame and acesulfame potassium. These sugar substitutes can be found in Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Because these artificial sweeteners have no calorie problem, they have become a favorite of those who want to lose weight!

Eating sugar substitutes does not help you lose weight

In the past, weight loss only focused on calorie control, and sugar substitutes were the main way to solve the calorie burden of sugary drinks. Even though some studies have found that eating sugar substitutes can help lose weight by reducing calorie intake, the numerous studies on sugar substitutes helping with weight loss have not yielded consistent results. Even a study published by Purdue University in the United States in 2015 concluded that in these studies on eating sugar substitutes to help with weight loss, the subjects lost weight because they paid more attention to their overall diet and changes in eating habits, rather than the effects of sugar substitutes.

Some studies have also found that consuming sugar substitutes stimulates the secretion of appetite-related hormones in the body. Therefore, scholars speculate that eating sugar substitutes may increase appetite and cause the problem of wanting to eat more. In addition, research in the past decade has begun to find that sugar substitutes seem to cause metabolic problems. Therefore, research from Purdue University in the United States even shows that sugar substitutes are not a good choice for controlling childhood obesity!

Sugar substitutes can also increase the risk of diabetes

It has been proven that being overweight and consuming too much sugar increase the risk of diabetes. Maintaining a normal body weight and limiting the intake of refined sugars are the top priorities in preventing diabetes. Therefore, sugar-free beverages were considered in the past to be a substitute for those who love sweet drinks. However, studies in recent years have found that the results are not as expected to reduce the risk of diabetes, but may even increase the risk of diabetes.

A study by the University of Texas Medical Center pointed out that people who regularly consume sugar-free cola have a higher risk of developing diabetes than those who generally consume sugary drinks! A study published in Nature in 2015 found that sugar substitutes were positively correlated with metabolic problems, such as higher fasting blood sugar, larger waist-to-hip ratio, and heavier body weight! In addition, the same study found that sugar substitutes are enough to cause our blood sugar intolerance in just 7 days.

All mysteries are related to intestinal bacteria

In the past five years, the mystery of the health of intestinal flora has gradually been solved, but sugar substitutes are also related to intestinal flora. Last year, Nature discovered that all this comes from the fact that artificial sweeteners affect the intestinal flora, causing it to tend toward an "unhealthy" distribution, leading to metabolic problems. This can provide some reasons to explain past research findings that people who consume artificial sweeteners have poorer blood sugar responses, higher blood lipids and body weight. Therefore, for the sake of health, Cofit nutritionists still recommend not to use sugar substitutes as a substitute for weight loss and health care. If you want to, just quit sweet drinks once and for all!

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