• Question: Do sweeteners alter metabolism?

    Asked by yourmum to Meeks, Pete, Stephen, Steve, Tom on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Steve Roser

      Steve Roser answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      They don’t work like sugars if thats what you mean giving a quick burst of low quality energy – It has been claimed that the major ones (like aspartame) are dangerous, mostly because of cancer causing in rats after huge doses, but it apopears theres no evidence in humans. Yellow colouring however…..

    • Photo: Marieke Navin

      Marieke Navin answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      The main thing I think with sweetners is they are a waste of energy, empty energy, give you no nutitional value and cause you to have sugar highs and lows…also what are they?? chemicals i think

    • Photo: Tom Hartley

      Tom Hartley answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I’m not really an expert on this, I looked things up on wikipedia (which is not always a reliable source of information – I always double or triple check it with other sources). The three main sweeteners are saccharine, aspartame and sucralose. Aspartame in particular has had a controversial history with some doubts raised about its safety, however it seems to have been checked pretty thoroughly and regularly.

      I am a little bit unscientific about sweeteners and tend to avoid them myself. They taste funny. But then I eat too much refined sugar and fat, so I am overweight, which is a definite health risk. Such problems result from the fact that the modern Western diet is very different to that which early humans evolved with, but I think artificial sweeteners “treat” the “symptoms”, rather than the “disease”.

    • Photo: Stephen Curry

      Stephen Curry answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I think they will since their use will not feed sugars into the pathways responsible for using carbohydrate molecules.

      I’m not sure how many different sweetners are in use. Aspartame is reasonably common, I think, and that is based on an amino acid. The body has plenty of enzymes for processing amino acids – which would be called into service.

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