Sweeteners: Time to rethink your choices?

When it comes to low-calorie sweeteners, you have a lot of choices. There’s the blue one, the pink one, the yellow one, or the green one. Whichever one you choose, know that scientists have probably studied it extensively. What they’ve found may surprise you. Artificial and other non-caloric sweeteners: The major players The marketers for artificial sweeteners have color-coded their products, but they differ in some important ways beyond their packaging. In the US, the most popular FDA-approved non-sugar sweeteners (NSSs) and their most common packaging color are: aspartame (blue): examples include Nutrasweet and Equal saccharin (pink), as in Sweet’N Low stevia-derived (green), including Truvia sucralose (yellow), as in Splenda. How are they different? Stevia is considered a “natural non-caloric sweetener.” Saccharin and sucralose are considered “non-nutritive sweeteners” (few or no calories). Aspartame is a “nutritive sweetener” (adds some calories but far less than sugar). Aspartame comes with a warning to be used cautiously (or not at all) by people with a rare genetic disease (called phenylketonuria, or PKU) because they have trouble metabolizing it; that’s not true for the other sweeteners. And all four vary on their level of sweetness and aftertaste, which is likely why people often prefer one over another. Researchers take on artificial sweeteners The reason these sweeteners exist is that people want to eat or drink sweet foods and drinks with...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Diet and Weight Loss Health Healthy Eating Source Type: blogs