How Safe is Your Sugar Substitute?

Pros and Cons of Artificial Sweeteners

Sep 7, 2009 Nicole Van Hoey

Splenda is touted as a safe, zero-calorie alternative to sugar. But, does it match up to other sweeteners on safety, and are sweetener health risks really myths?

Zero-calorie sweeteners are synthetic alternatives to sugar that provide concentrated flavor without the calories or carbs, making them useful for people who have diabetes or who are trying to lose weight. These sugar substitutes are monitored and approved as foods, not drugs, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Sweetener Ingredients

Marketed sweeteners, such as Sweet and Low, Sweet One, Equal, and Nutrasweet, contain substitutes like aspartame, acesulfame, and saccharin. Splenda's main ingredient is sucralose, which is synthetic but is made directly from sugar; its structure resembles natural sucrose.

Health Benefits

Intuitively, sweeteners should help dieters lose weight by reducing calories and bulk in sweetened foods. In fact, a study by Phelan et al, reported in July 2009 online in the International Journal of Obesity, has shown that people with long-term weight loss have an easier time controlling that weight by using sugar substitutes as a method of food restraint. However, a previous study published in Behavioral Neuroscience and discussed in Time magazine online's Can Sugar Substitues Make You Fat? has shown unexpected increases in calories consumed by animals given sugar substitutes for 2 weeks compared with animals given sugar as glucose, possibly because the substitute did not provide extra bulk or because it did not trigger a sense of fullness.

Other health benefits attributed to sugar substitutes include flavor without an insulin trigger for diabetics and prevention of tooth decay. Specifically, the sweetener xylitol, a common addition to sugarless gums, has decreased decay in young children by reducing bacteria that cause cavities in a 2009 study by Milgrom et al in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Health Risks

Unlike Splenda, other substitutes have decades of research and reports available about side effects and health risks. A common belief is that sweeteners cause cancer; in reality, specific sweeteners called cyclamate have caused bladder cancer in rats and have been banned in the United States since 1970. According to the National Cancer Institute, no approved sweeteners have clear evidence of cancer risk in people. Saccharin was on the cancer-causing toxicity list because it caused cancer in animals, but the sugar substitute was removed from the list in 2000; humans are not at risk for that cancer, because they do not have the same body reaction that was affected to cause the animal cancer.

Apart from the suspected cancer risk for people, some side effects that may be linked to sugar substitutes include headache or migraine, agitation and panic, dizziness, and diarrhea. There are no scientific reports of these or other side effects, and it is possible that these problems can occur only in susceptible people. Aspartame in particular, which includes phenylalanine, is not recommended for people with phenylketonuria, because these people cannot break down the sweetener.

Safe Amounts of Sweeteners

The FDA has provided accepted daily intakes of approved sugar substitutes on the basis of studies in animals and current reports in people. The accepted daily intakes are doses for a 150-pound persion that are 100 times lower than the smaler dangerous amount in clinical studies. An equivalent safe amount of aspartame, the sweetener in Nutrasweet, for example, is 19 cans of diet cola each day; saccharin as Sweet and Low is considered safe up to 9 to 12 packets each day. Sucralose in Splenda is safe up to 5 mg/kg/day, or the equivalent of 6 cans of diet cola each day.

Although these equivalencies are useful for monitoring purposeful intake of sweeteners, current actual ingestion is probably much higher, because substitutes---particularly Splenda---are now commonly added to processed and prepackaged foods.

Nonsynthetic Sweeteners

Stevia and sorbitol are plant-based porducts that provide concentrated sweetening with fewer calories than sugar itself. In a 2006 taste test in Nutrition and Diet News, however, stevia was the least popular alternative to sugar when compared with synthetic sugar substitutes. In addition, both stevia and sorbitol are associated with side effects like diarrhea, bloating and gas. Check out some other natural options for providing flavor and bulk without the extra glucose in Nutrients in Natural Sweeteners by Jennifer Murray.

Safety in Moderation

Although Splenda may be the safe, flavorful weight loss alternative to sugar, it is too soon to tell what long-term effects will occur. Because Splenda is derived from sucrose, side effects may occur less often than with older synthetic sweeteners, but future reports still have to confirm that theory. For most people, Splenda and other sweeteners in moderation are likely safe and may be helpful for weight loss, dental heatlh, and diabetes control.

References

Artificial sweeteners: A safe alternative to sugar? by MayoClinic.com staff

Medline Plus Encyclopedia: Sweeteners

The copyright of the article How Safe is Your Sugar Substitute? in Weight Loss is owned by Nicole Van Hoey. Permission to republish How Safe is Your Sugar Substitute? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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