Since April, I’ve been motivated to get healthy and fit and along my way, help others do the same. I have changed a lot in my life along my journey and that includes exercising more often and completely making over my eating habits. One part of my eating habits that I knew I had to change was reducing my intake of artificial sweeteners. Today, I’m here to talk to you about what artificial sweeteners are, what they can do to your body and how you can cut back on them and make healthier choices.
Artificial sweeteners are sugar substitutes that were developed in the 1950s as a way to help people reduce the number of calories people were eating each day and it remains the same today. Two of the most common types of artificial sweeteners are aspartame, also known as Equal or sucralose, also known as Splenda. The most common place they can be found is in soda. Americans tend to be big soda drinkers and as a result, 15% of us use or ingest artificial sweeteners each year. Can you believe that this amounts to $1.5 billion annually1?
With so many of us using artificial sweeteners each year, it’s no wonder that United States is the most obese country in the world2. Some of us may not even know that we’re ingesting them. How to identify artificial sweeteners in the foods and snacks that we buy? We look at the ingredients list. If you see a word that ends in “itol”, then the product has artificial sweeteners in it. For example, you may have bought Trident gum recently and if so, you have purchased a product that contains Xylitol. Another product that contains an artificial sweetener is Ricola cough drops; these contain another artificial sweetener called Sorbitol.
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As I continued my research I found out some more interesting facts about artificial sweeteners. The first thing I found surprised me. Artificial sweeteners actually cause weight gain, not weight loss. When I read this, my first thought was “Aren’t we all using these to help us reduce our calories?!” The answer is yes but because artificial sweeteners have no calorie value, they also do not have any substance to them and as a result, they trick us. Have you ever had some soda and when you’re done you want another one? That’s because artificial sweeteners make that happen. When we ingest something that has artificial sweeteners in it, a signal gets sent to our brain that let’s us know we got the sweetness we were craving but we didn’t actually get the sugar. What happens then? We crave more.
I also found out that using artificial sweeteners can make us sick even though we may not know it. The good news: using artificial sweeteners does not cause cancer. The bad news: having something called metabolic syndrome does. Metabolic syndrome is the name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for heart disease, strokes and diabetes3. You may be asking yourself know you know if you have this syndrome; well, the most common signs are a high blood pressure, excess belly fat and a resistance to insulin. I mentioned earlier that artificial sweeteners are most commonly found in soda and believe it or not, just having one soda a day has a correlation with having metabolic syndrome.
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Besides having metabolic syndrome, what else can artificial sweeteners do to our body? Well, have you ever found yourself running to the bathroom several times a day? Over time, artificial sweeteners can weaken your bladder over time by deteriorating the muscles that surround that organ. What that ultimately does, is make you have to use the bathroom more and more. Even just having one packet of artificial sweetener each day can cause you to go to the bathroom more than you’re actually supposed to. According to Dr. Oz, the average person should go to the bathroom approximately 8x per day; any more than that could be a sign of ingesting too much artificial sweetener.
If you are incorporating too much artificial sweetener in your daily routine, how can you cut back? One registered dietician recommends the three Rs: reduce, replace and renew. The first R is reduce; work on reducing your intake of artificial sweeteners to one serving per day. That would be equivalent to one packet in your morning cup of coffee or one soda at some point throughout the day. The second R is to replace; instead of using something artificial, try something natural. You can use the good old-fashioned sugar or if you keep your calories low, you can try Stevia. This is a natural sweetener that comes from a plant leaf and is actually sweeter than sugar which means you’ll end up using less. And the last R stands for renew; you want to renew your taste buds and find out what good food tastes like again. You can do this by including things like honey and berries into you daily routine.
Artificial sweeteners are just like anything else that we put into our bodies…anything is good in moderation. If you want to change your food intake, start slow and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Over time, your body will not want the artificial sweeteners anymore. Making this change is not a diet; it’s just one small change toward a healthy and fit lifestyle.
References
1. Dr. Oz show: Should You Give Up Artificial Sweeteners?, air date 10/08/12
2. Obesity (most recent) by country, NationMaster.com, Source: OECD Health Data 2005
3. A.D.A.M. Medicinal Encyclopedia, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004546/, last reviewed June 2, 2012
