Do sugar-free drinks help you lose weight? Artificial sweeteners may make you crave more

Many zero-calorie or low-calorie diet drinks are popular in today's society where people pay much attention to health. However, Cell Metabolism published a new study from the University of Sydney, Australia, which found that artificial sweeteners added to diet drinks may increase the body's desire for calorie intake, thereby causing individuals to eat more.

The study used fruit flies and mice as experimental animals and found that the total food intake of the test animals on a sugar-free diet supplemented with sucralose, a sugar substitute, was about 30% higher than that of the control group on a normal diet. The research team observed that if animals are exposed to artificial sweeteners in their daily diet for a long time, their food intake will increase significantly.

The authors suggest that artificial sweeteners provide a sweet taste but do not provide calories to the body, which may prevent them from fully activating the brain's reward centre and putting the body into a satiety state. The brain may be confused and stimulate the body's hunger response in order to take in enough energy.

The study was published in Cell Metabolism, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 75-90

This article is from ELSEVIER Global Pharmaceutical News