The Relationship Between Diabetes And Sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners are always a “hot topic” and many people tend to have strong feelings about them, one way or another. It seems like every other month we get a report on the latest study on what artificial sweeteners do or don’t do to us. The data alternates between saying artificial sweeteners are good for us or they are going to kill us – so which is it? It can be hard to know what to believe and what to do, especially if you have diabetes and see artificial sweeteners as a healthy alternative. They seem like a great option for lowering calories and carbohydrates, but are they too good to be true? Let’s look at some of the claims, myths and facts related to artificial sweeteners. We’ll start with the basics. The Background and the Basics Artificial sweeteners, also called sugar substitutes, were originally created to help people lose weight and manage diabetes. They were thought to be a great alternative. Saccharin was the first artificial sweetener, accidentally discovered by scientists at John’s Hopkins. Eventually there were concerns over the safety of saccharin based on studies done in rodents. Even though the FDA was leaning toward banning it, but they didn’t, and it was partially because of consumer uproar over that possibility. The final ruling was that saccharin was only required to have a warning label about cancer, but could remain on the market. In 2000, the warning label was removed because they could only prove its carcinogenic affect in rodents and not in humans. You will still find saccharin “the pink packet” on the market today. Now, we have a total of 8 sugar substitutes. There are two different kinds, nutritive and non-nutritive. Nutritive means it adds to the caloric value of food and it contains more than 2% of the amount o Continue reading >>
You May Want To Skip The Splenda
Before you sweeten your coffee with the contents of a little yellow packet, read this. A popular artificial sweetener known as sucralose and marketed as Splenda can adversely affect how some people metabolize sugar, according to a new study from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis. The study compared overweight people with normal sugar metabolism to see how they reacted when they were given either water or sucralose—about as much as is in one can of diet soda—to drink before a glucose challenge test, which involves drinking a glucose mixture and then having blood taken at multiple intervals. Researchers found a kind of insulin-and-blood-sugar roller-coaster scenario. People’s blood sugar levels peaked higher if they got sucralose, rather than water, before the glucose challenge test. Insulin levels also climbed higher. And, a few hours into the test, at the lowest blood sugar point, sucralose consumption led to lower blood sugar levels than did water, which can set the stage for carb cravings. “Everyone got the same amount of glucose, both times, but their bodies secreted much more insulin when they got sucralose first,” says M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, the study’s main researcher. Insulin is needed for the body to use sugar for energy, but too much is harmful, Dr. Pepino says. High blood levels of insulin keep fat from being broken down for energy, making it hard to lose weight. And chronically high insulin levels can lead to insulin resistance, a precursor to type-2 diabetes. Does that mean that people who drink diet soda all the time are setting themselves up for type-2 diabetes? No one knows, Dr. Pepino says. However, in two large population studies, consumption of non-nutritive sweeteners (think all of those pastel packets at your local coffee Continue reading >>
Sucralose Affects Glycemic And Hormonal Responses To An Oral Glucose Load
Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load Center for Human Nutrition, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri Corresponding author: M. Yanina Pepino, [email protected] . Received 2012 Oct 29; Accepted 2013 Mar 5. Copyright 2013 by the American Diabetes Association. Readers may use this article as long as the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit, and the work is not altered. See for details. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS), such as sucralose, have been reported to have metabolic effects in animal models. However, the relevance of these findings to human subjects is not clear. We evaluated the acute effects of sucralose ingestion on the metabolic response to an oral glucose load in obese subjects. Seventeen obese subjects (BMI 42.3 1.6 kg/m2) who did not use NNS and were insulin sensitive (based on a homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance score 2.6) underwent a 5-h modified oral glucose tolerance test on two separate occasions preceded by consuming either sucralose (experimental condition) or water (control condition) 10 min before the glucose load in a randomized crossover design. Indices of -cell function, insulin sensitivity (SI), and insulin clearance rates were estimated by using minimal models of glucose, insulin, and C-peptide kinetics. Compared with the control condition, sucralose ingestion caused 1) a greater incremental increase in peak plasma glucose concentrations (4.2 0.2 vs. 4.8 0.3 mmol/L; P = 0.03), 2) a 20 8% greater incremental increase in insulin area under the curve (AUC) (P < 0.03), 3) a 22 7% greater peak insulin secretion rate (P < 0.02), 4) a 7 4% decrease in insulin clearance (P = 0.04), and 5) a Continue reading >>
The Awful Truth About Diet Soda And Weight Gain, According To Science
Does diet soda make people gain weight? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Sweet taste without the calories sounds like a perfect example of no pain, all gain but unfortunately cumulative data suggests otherwise. A poster child for unintended consequences, diet soda (Diet drink) typically contains a type of non-caloric artificial sweetener, a sugar substitute called Aspartame, e.g., NutraSweet or Equal (sweetener). Unintended consequences in the form of not just weight gain but also increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, hypertension and metabolic syndrome, all vigorously disputed, of course (see some examples in references 1, 2), which brings us to the glaring caveat we need to keep front and center when considering the science about artificial sweeteners. Historically the food and beverage industry has funded nutrition research so substantially that the ensuing entrenched conflict of interest renders the phrase "nutrition science" an oxymoron (3). North America currently leads in sales and consumption of diet beverages (see below from 4): Artificial sweetener consumption patterns tend to change rapidly in response to widespread perception of harm attendant to one type of artificial sweetener or another. U.S. artificial sweetener consumption, for example, moved from cyclamate in the 1960s to saccharin, e.g. Sweet'n Low, to aspartame, which reigned supreme for several decades until being upstaged in the 2010s by sucralose, e.g. Splenda, mainly because it's highly stable in food (5) while acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), e.g., Sunett, Sweet & Safe, Sweet One, is also increasing in use. Pepsi embodies such rapid change. In 2015 it changed its U.S. Die Continue reading >>
Do Artificial Sweeteners Cause An Insulin Spike?
178 Comments The notion that artificial sweeteners (and sweet tastes in general) might produce an insulin response is one of those murky memes that winds itself around the blogs, but it’s never stated one way or the other with any sort of confidence. I briefly mentioned the possibility of non-caloric sweeteners influencing satiety hormones in last week’s diet soda post, and a number of you guys mentioned the same thing. Still, I’ve never seen unequivocal evidence that this is the case. This whole idea first came to my attention some time ago when my dog Buddha got into a bottle of “alternative sleep assists” which contained, among other things, 5 HTP (version of l-tryptophan) and xylitol (sugar alcohol). Long story short, dogs can’t take xylitol because it causes a spike in insulin, which then severely depletes blood glucose. Buddha got past this with a trip to the vet’s at 10:30 Sunday night (thanks, Dr. Dean). But it occurred to me that the same effect might be seen in humans, which is why I pose the question today… Do artificial sweeteners induce insulin secretion (perhaps via cephalic phase insulin release, which is sort of the body’s preemptive strike against foods that will require insulin to deal with)? One of the reasons a definitive answer is rarely given is that the question is improperly framed. Artificial sweeteners is not a monolithic entity. There are multiple types of sweeteners, all of them chemically distinct from each other. A more useful question would be “What effect does [specific artificial sweetener goes here] have on insulin?” So let’s go around the circle and ask. Does aspartame (aka Equal and Nutrasweet) affect insulin? Aspartame is pretty gross stuff, what with its awful taste and hordes of people who get terrible react Continue reading >>
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A new study may make you think twice before adding Splenda to your coffee. Published in the journal Diabetes Care, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis researchers found that sucralose, most popularly known by the brand name Splenda, has effects on the body’s responses to sugar (glucose) — which could thereby affect diabetes risk — despite the fact that it has zero calories. “Our results indicate that this artificial sweetener is not inert — it does have an effect,” study researcher M. Yanina Pepino, Ph.D., research assistant professor of medicine at the university, said in a statement. “And we need to do more studies to determine whether this observation means long-term use could be harmful.” The new study included 17 people who were severely obese (they had a body mass index over 42; 30 is considered the starting point for obesity) and who didn’t regularly consume artificially sweetened products. The study participants drank sucralose or water before taking a glucose challenge test. This test involves drinking a sugary solution before undergoing blood sugar measurements in order to see how well the body responds to sugar; it’s typically used as a tool to determine if a woman has gestational diabetes, according to the Mayo Clinic. After that, the researchers asked all the study participants who first drank water to then drink sucralose before undergoing another glucose challenge test, and all those who first drank sucralose to then drink water before undergoing another glucose challenge test. Researchers found that consuming the sucralose was associated with higher blood sugar peaks and 20 percent higher insulin levels compared with consuming the water, though they noted more studies are needed to determine the actual health effects Continue reading >>
Sucralose May Not Affect Blood Sugar Or Insulin Resistance, Study Suggests
Sucralose may not affect blood sugar or insulin resistance, study suggests Sucralose may not raise levels of blood sugar or increase the likelihood of insulin resistance, according to the results of a new study published in the journal Nutrition Research, comparing the bodys response to sucralose and sucrose. Although many products today are sweetened with zero-calorie sweeteners, obesity rates have continued to rise, leading some to hypothesize that zero-calorie sweeteners may contribute to obesity in other ways. Some have suggested that artificial sweeteners may trigger insulin release, which could lead to weight gain. The authors of this latest study pointed out that some epidemiological and animal evidence indicates an association between weight gain or insulin resistance and artificial sweetener consumption. Insulin resistance is a condition in which a person produces insulin, but their body does not use it efficiently to break down blood sugar, thereby raising their chances of developing diabetes and heart disease. However, the American Dietetic Association has said that zero-calorie sweeteners could play a useful role in improving dietary compliance by increasing palatability of foods without adding calories. The studys authors, from Iowa State University, gave eight normal-weight female volunteers one of three drinks sucrose in water, sucralose in water, or both sucrose and sucralose in water and took blood samples at fasting, and 30 and 60 minutes after consumption. They were then given a standardized breakfast and blood samples were taken 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes after breakfast. Samples were tested for glucose, insulin, glucagon (a hormone that raises blood glucose levels), triglycerides (which tend to be raised in response to carbohydrates and fatty foods Continue reading >>
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How Artificial Sweeteners Affect Blood Sugar And Insulin
Sugar is a hot topic in nutrition. Cutting back can improve your health and help you lose weight. Replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners is one way to do that. However, some people claim that artificial sweeteners aren't as "metabolically inert" as previously thought. For example, it's been claimed that they can raise blood sugar and insulin levels. This article takes a look at the science behind these claims. Artificial sweeteners are synthetic chemicals that stimulate the sweet taste receptors on the tongue. They are often called low-calorie or non-nutritive sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners give things a sweet taste, without any added calories (1). Therefore, they're often added to foods that are then marketed as "health foods" or diet products. They're found everywhere, from diet soft drinks and desserts, to microwave meals and cakes. You'll even find them in non-food items, such as chewing gum and toothpaste. Here's a list of the most common artificial sweeteners: Artificial sweeteners are synthetic chemicals that make things taste sweet without any extra calories. We have tightly controlled mechanisms to keep our blood sugar levels stable (2, 3, 4). Blood sugar levels increase when we eat foods containing carbohydrates. Potatoes, bread, pasta, cakes and sweets are some foods that are high in carbohydrates. When digested, carbohydrates are broken down into sugar and absorbed into the bloodstream, leading to an increase in blood sugar levels. When our blood sugar levels rise, our body releases insulin. Insulin is a hormone that acts like a key. It allows blood sugar to leave the blood and enter our cells, where it can be used for energy or stored as fat. If blood sugar levels drop too low, our livers release stored sugar to stabilize it. This happens when we fas Continue reading >>
Sugar Substitutes: Sucralose
Last week we took a look at aspartame, a popular nonnutritive sweetener that’s been around for a long time and is found in a “little blue packet.” It’s interesting to hear and read about people’s reactions to and opinions about sweeteners. Some people won’t touch them with a 10-foot pole, while other people find them to be helpful to include in their diets. The good news, I suppose, is that there are many different types of sweeteners (caloric and non-caloric alike) to choose from. This week, we’ll look at another very popular sweetener called sucralose. What is sucralose? Not surprisingly, sucralose is a very different type of sweetener than aspartame. This sweetener, which is 600 times sweeter than regular sugar, is actually made from sugar. For you chemistry buffs, sucralose is made by replacing three hydrogen-oxygen groups on a sucrose molecule with three chlorine atoms. These chlorine atoms help to create a structure that is very stable. Sucralose was discovered in 1976 and was approved for general use in 1999. Sucralose is found in over 4500 foods and beverages. Unlike aspartame, which breaks down at high temperatures, sucralose is approved for cooking and baking. It’s heat stable and it’s sold in granular form, just like sugar. Many people prefer the taste of sucralose over other sweeteners, claiming that it tastes more like sugar and without an aftertaste. What are the concerns about consuming sucralose? Like aspartame, sucralose has undergone extensive safety testing. Studies conducted over a 20-year period have determined that sucralose is safe for the general population, including children, and pregnant and breast-feeding women. It’s a good choice for people who have diabetes as it does not impact blood sugar levels (although keep in mind Continue reading >>
You Asked: Do Sugar Substitutes Cause Type 2 Diabetes?
TIME Health For more, visit TIME Health. By now you’ve heard that sugary foods drive insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes. The more of the sweet stuff you swallow—whether it’s table sugar or organic honey—the more insulin your pancreas has to produce and release into your bloodstream in order to control your blood’s glucose levels. At some point, an overworked pancreas can become incapable of producing enough insulin to manage sugar loads in the blood, resulting in type-2 diabetes But what happens if you replace sugar with artificial sweeteners? The American Diabetes Association says on its website that sugar substitutes are safe by FDA standards, and “may help curb your cravings for something sweet.” But other experts are dubious. “The short answer is we don’t know what happens when you replace sugar with artificial sweeteners,” says Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist and sugar researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “We have data nibbling around the edges, but we don’t have enough to make a hard determination for any specific sweetener.” People who consume diet soda on a daily basis are 36% more likely to develop metabolic syndrome and 67% more likely to develop type-2 diabetes than people who don’t drink diet or regular soda, found a 2009 study. That may seem damning until you consider that overweight or obese people—the groups most at risk for type-2 diabetes—may be more likely to drink diet soda in an attempt to lose weight than their slimmer pals. Newer evidence, though still far from conclusive, is more telling. A 2014 study from Israel found that artificial sweeteners changed the microbiotic makeup of rodents’ guts in ways linked to metabolic disease. For another recent study, researchers at Washington Un Continue reading >>
Artificial Sweeteners: Agents Of Insulin Resistance, Obesity And Disease
Its pretty clear that if we follow the example of our hunter gatherer ancestors, artificial sweeteners should not be part of contemporary Stone Age diets. In my book, The Paleo Diet Revised (2010) 1 I warned against drinking artificially sweetened soft drinks and further strengthened my opposition to all artificial sweeteners in 2012 with The Paleo Answer .2 Over the past few years numerous epidemiological (population), animal, tissue and human studies have demonstrated the adverse health effects of these synthetic chemicals. A particularly powerful study just published in the October 2014 issue of Nature3 provides a convincing argument against the use of artificial sweeteners in our food supply. If you consume artificial sweeteners in the form of sodas or foods once in a blue moon, they will have little or no adverse effects upon your long term health. However, I would never recommend that you drink artificially sweetened beverages or foods on a daily or even weekly basis, as they may promote insulin resistance, 3, 4 obesity in adults5-7, 30-33 and children,8-11, 32, 44 metabolic syndrome diseases ,12-18, 33 migraine headaches,19-23 adverse pregnancy outcomes,24-26 childhood allergies,24 and certain cancers.27-29 The table* below shows the five artificial sweeteners that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved for consumption. *Note that the artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned in the U.S. in 1969, but is still available in certain countries outside of the U.S. In addition to these artificial sweeteners, the FDA has sanctioned a sugar substitute, stevia , as a dietary supplement since 1995. Stevia is a crystalline substance made from the leaves of a plant native to central and South America and is 100 to 300 times sweeter than table sugar. A conc Continue reading >>
Artificial Sweeteners Affect Metabolism And Insulin Levels
The artificial sweetener sucralose (Splenda®) is capable of changing the body's insulin response, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine reported in the journal Diabetes Care. The study included 17 severely obese people who didn't consume artificial sweeteners often and weren't diagnosed with diabetes. Splenda does have an effect First author M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, research assistant professor of medicine, said: "Our results indicate that this artificial sweetener is not inert - it does have an effect. And we need to do more studies to determine whether this observation means long-term use could be harmful." Study participants had an average body mass index (BMI) of around 42, which is 12 points above the threshold of obesity. The volunteers were given either water or sucralose to drink before a glucose challenge test, which involved consuming a similar glucose dosage to the amount given as part of glucose-tolerance test. The researchers wanted to determine whether insulin or blood sugar levels are affected by the combination of sucralose and glucose. Pepino said that they particularly wanted to study obese people as "these sweeteners frequently are recommended to them as a way to make their diets healthier by limiting calorie intake." However, it should be noted that artificial sweeteners don't necessarily help limit calorie intake. A previous study by scientists in the US suggested that consuming artificial sweeteners could make people put on weight because experiments on laboratory rats showed that those eating food sweetened with artificial sweeteners ate more calories than their counterparts whose food was sweetened with normal sugar. The participants were each tested twice. They were first tested after drinkin water followed by glucose, and then Continue reading >>
Artificial Sweeteners Produce The Counterintuitive Effect Of Inducing Metabolic Derangements
Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements Department of Psychological Sciences and Ingestive Behavior Research Center, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA Susan E. Swithers, Department of Psychological Sciences and Ingestive Behavior Research Center, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA; Corresponding author: Swithers, S.E. ( [email protected] ) The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Trends Endocrinol Metab See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. The negative impact of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages on weight and other health outcomes has been increasingly recognized; therefore, many people have turned to high-intensity sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin as a way to reduce the risk of these consequences. However, accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. This paper discusses these findings and considers the hypothesis that consuming sweet-tasting but noncaloric or reduced-calorie food and beverages interferes with learned responses that normally contribute to glucose and energy homeostasis. Because of this interference, frequent consumption of high-intensity sweeteners may have the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements. Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB; see Glossary) has been increasingly associated with negative health outcomes such as being overweight, obesity, type 2 diabetes (T2D), and metabolic syndrome, for reviews, see [ 1 5 ]. Based largely on these associations, many researchers and heal Continue reading >>
Sucralose Affects Glycemic And Hormonal Responses To An Oral Glucose Load
Abstract OBJECTIVE Nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS), such as sucralose, have been reported to have metabolic effects in animal models. However, the relevance of these findings to human subjects is not clear. We evaluated the acute effects of sucralose ingestion on the metabolic response to an oral glucose load in obese subjects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Seventeen obese subjects (BMI 42.3 ± 1.6 kg/m2) who did not use NNS and were insulin sensitive (based on a homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance score ≤2.6) underwent a 5-h modified oral glucose tolerance test on two separate occasions preceded by consuming either sucralose (experimental condition) or water (control condition) 10 min before the glucose load in a randomized crossover design. Indices of β-cell function, insulin sensitivity (SI), and insulin clearance rates were estimated by using minimal models of glucose, insulin, and C-peptide kinetics. RESULTS Compared with the control condition, sucralose ingestion caused 1) a greater incremental increase in peak plasma glucose concentrations (4.2 ± 0.2 vs. 4.8 ± 0.3 mmol/L; P = 0.03), 2) a 20 ± 8% greater incremental increase in insulin area under the curve (AUC) (P < 0.03), 3) a 22 ± 7% greater peak insulin secretion rate (P < 0.02), 4) a 7 ± 4% decrease in insulin clearance (P = 0.04), and 5) a 23 ± 20% decrease in SI (P = 0.01). There were no significant differences between conditions in active glucagon-like peptide 1, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, glucagon incremental AUC, or indices of the sensitivity of the β-cell response to glucose. CONCLUSIONS These data demonstrate that sucralose affects the glycemic and insulin responses to an oral glucose load in obese people who do not normally consume NNS. Most people, like other m Continue reading >>
Ask The Doctor: Do Artificial Sweeteners Cause Insulin Resistance?
Ask the doctor Q. I've heard that artificial sweeteners increase the risk of developing insulin resistance. Is that true? Are some types worse than others? A. You've asked a question scientists are still working to answer. Studies of artificial sweeteners are mixed, with some indicating that people using them eat fewer calories and lose weight or maintain a stable weight. However, in a few studies, artificial sweeteners were associated with weight gain, which might increase the risk of developing insulin resistance—a condition in which body cells do not respond properly to insulin and thus cannot easily absorb glucose from the blood-stream. Subscribe to Harvard Health Online for immediate access to health news and information from Harvard Medical School. Continue reading >>
