Sweeteners and weight control

[Guest guest]

I found this interesting. The basic premise is that using

non-nutrative sweeteners (healthy or otherwise) can

sabatoge the part of your brain that tries to figure out

how much food you should be eating. Also that it's

easier to overeat on sweet liquids ... so I say, if you

have sugar, have it in something that counts, like

german chocolate cake <g>.

-- Heidi Jean

http://thyroid.about.com/b/a/097511.htm

son and Swithers' findings are based on two studies.

In the first study, two groups of rats were given two different sweet-flavored

liquids. In the first group, both liquids were sweetened with natural

high-calorie sweeteners so there was a consistent relationship between sweet

taste and calories. For the second group, one of the flavored liquids was

artificially sweetened with non-caloric saccharin so that the relationship

between sweet taste and calories was inconsistent.

After 10 days of exposure to the flavors, the rats were allowed to eat a small

amount of a sweet, high-calorie chocolate flavored snack. The researchers

compared the two groups' ability to compensate for the calories contained in the

chocolate snack. The rats that had experienced the inconsistent relationship

between sweet taste and calories were less able to compensate for the calories

contained in the snack and ate more than the rats that had experienced the

consistent relationship between sweetness and caloric intake.

" This suggests that experience with the inconsistent relationship reduced the

natural ability of the rats to use sweet taste to judge the caloric content of

the snack, " Swithers said.

In the second study, two groups of rats were given a high-calorie dietary

supplement along with their regular food every day for 30 days. Although the

supplements were identical in calories and nutritive content, they differed in

viscosity. For one group the supplement had the consistency of thick chocolate

pudding, whereas for the other group, the supplement was similar to chocolate

milk. son and Swithers found that over the course of the study, the rats

given the milk-like supplement gained significantly more weight than the rats

given the more viscous, pudding-like supplement.

" This finding indicates that rats are less able to estimate and compensate for

the calories contained in liquids than in semi-solid foods, " son said. " If

the body is less able to detect and compensate for calories contained in

liquids, then intake of high-calorie beverages compared to semi-solid or solid

foods could increase the tendency to gain weight. "

The number of Americans consuming sugar-free products increased from less than

70 million in 1987 to more than 160 million in 2000. During the same period, the

consumption of regular soft drinks increased by more than 15 gallons per capita

annually.