If you’re trying to lose weight you be be tempted to order a diet soft drink instead of
a regular one.
But a new
study suggests making this common diet swap does not actually
help people lose weight.
Researchers looked
into the impact of non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) such as stevia, monk fruit
and aspartame, which are becoming increasingly popular in soft drinks.
They found that
participants tended to eat more food after consuming NNS-based drinks, compared
to regular sugar-based soft drinks.
Researchers led by Siew Ling Tey, of the Agency for Science,
Technology and Research in Singapore, tested the effect of four drinks on the
body.
One
drink contained sugar (sucrose), another the artificial NNS aspartame and two
others with natural NNS made from stevia or monk fruit plants.
A
group of 30 healthy male study participants randomly consumed one of the four
sweetened drinks on each of the different days of the investigation.
On
each test day, participants ate a standardised breakfast and by mid-morning
received one beverage to tide them over until lunch.
An
hour later they were provided with a lunchtime meal and asked to eat until
comfortably full.
Their
blood glucose and insulin concentrations were measured closely, while
participants also kept a food diary of what they ate for the rest of the day.
The
researchers described the findings as “surprising”. There was no difference in
the total daily energy intake across all four drinks, meaning that overall
participants consumed the same amount of energy (calories) during the course of
a day.
They
either reduced meal intake after the sugar-sweetened drink or ate significantly
more at lunchtime and the rest of the day to compensate for the three
calorie-free drink options.
The
study found that although participants felt slightly hungrier and looked
forward more to eating something again when they drank NNS beverages, they did
not overindulge.
They
did however eat more following the NNS drinks than when they consumed the
sugar-sweetened drink.
“The
energy ‘saved’ from replacing sugar with non-nutritive sweetener was fully
compensated for at subsequent meals in the current study, hence no difference
in total daily energy intake was found between the four treatments,” Tey
explained.
“It
appears that the source of non-nutritive sweeteners, whether artificial or
natural, does not differ in its effects on energy intake, postprandial glucose
and insulin.”
The
study is published in the International Journal of Obesity.
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