How (un)healthy sweeteners?
Who has started the new year with the intention of a few pounds, is now perhaps the lemonade with artificial sweetener instead of sugar-containing variant. Finally, it should help with the diet, instead of consuming sugar sweeteners that have no calories.
However, if aspartame, cyclamate, Stevia, and other sweeteners actually help useful in losing weight and as you ever to the health act – many questions are still open.
The world health organization (WHO) has therefore commissioned an international team of researchers, the current state of knowledge, to sweeteners. The Team of Ingrid Toews from the Institute for evidence in medicine in Freiburg, Germany, analyzed all of the studies in which the consumption of sweeteners and sugar was compared.
In the Work it was
- if obese people lose weight by using artificial sweeteners more
- as the appetite for Sweets develops and
- whether the risk for Diabetes, cancer and other diseases is changing.
The Team summarized the results of 56 studies. Both were Experiments in which participants were randomly assigned to one group and more sugar or sweeteners consumed, as well as observational studies, in which participants will be asked only to your diet and health data have been documented over the years.
We know that we know little
Probably the most important conclusion of the analysis in the journal “BMJ”: to date, insufficient data are available to draw clear conclusions. The researchers are therefore well advised to consider their results with caution.
Overall, the studies show little evidence that it has a positive effect on health, if you replace sugar by sweeteners. Although some smaller studies came to the result that the weight drops easily. Whether the method is working actually, but not with certainty say, the researchers write.
Also, the data does not suggest that sweeteners stimulate the appetite for Sweet things and so maybe later cravings trigger, as is sometimes claimed.
Potential harm caused by sweeteners could previously not be excluded, as the researchers write, with a view to the few data. To answer this question with certainty you need from your point of view, studies which have followed participants over a longer period of time, as it is yet to happen. If so, the risk for Diabetes, cancer or heart disease through the Require of the sugar changes to a sweetener, you know it is simply not accurate.
There is a whole range of sweeteners, is also to accept that some may be healthier than others – but even here, only conjecture.
Sweetener lemonade only as an intermediate step
In an accompanying comment Vasanti Malik of Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (Boston, USA) indicates that it is for people who drink a lot of sugary lemonade, it may be sensible to products with artificial sweetener. But the goal should be to choose a long-term water or other healthy beverage alternatives.
She also calls for more studies of how sweeteners affect long-term health. On this Basis, better strategies for a sugar poor diet could then develop, for example, through appropriate taxation, writes the researcher.
Sugar consumption in Germany
In this country, people are consuming more sugar than experts recommend. According to the world health organization should take up less than ten percent of its energy from so-called free sugars. Including added table sugar, among other things, honey or syrup, as well as the naturally occurring sugar in fruit juices, in addition to the course. This WHO Position from the year 2015 has been connected to the end of December 2018, the German society for nutrition (DGE).
For many people, the recommended amount adds up to a maximum of 50 grams of sugar per day – the WHO advises to consume only half as much. The DGE has published the recommendation, together with the German Diabetes society and the German society of adiposity, understands the value as the upper limit and not as a recommended daily serving.
Their message is that men in Germany take up about 13 percent of your energy on free sugar, women 14 per cent, in children and adolescents, even as much as 17 percent. The recorded sugar comes mainly from the confectionery, fruit juices and sodas.