Is that cancer in your coffee?. Photo by slopjop on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.

You haven’t even had your morning coffee yet and you are already confronted with a decision: which of the white, pink, yellow and blue sweetener packets to choose. Sure, the regular sugar adds unwanted calories, but are the zero-calorie sweeteners any better for you? In a fat nation obsessed with getting thin, it is not surprising that artificial sweeteners have taken the spotlight when it comes to low-calorie diets. But are they truly a dieter’s best friend, or do the sweeteners come with a hefty health price tag?

Some hail the variety of artificial sweeteners as a great blessing. Weinberg freshman Matt Strumpf, who has been drinking diet soda since he was a kid, says “I don’t like useless calories. [Diet sodas] taste better.” Eli Bader, a Weinberg junior, praises the non-nutritive value of the sweeteners. “I think artificial sweeteners are great because they pass right through your body,” he says.

Despite the flavor and low-calorie benefits of artificial sweeteners, others are not so easily swayed. Robert Han, a Weinberg freshman, states, “I’m not really a fan of anything not real, that just comes out of a science experiment.”

The main non-nutritive sweeteners include saccharin, aspartame and sucralose, which are artificial, and rebaudioside A (Reb A), a recently-introduced, natural sweetener. Saccharin and sucralose are safe to use as tabletop sweeteners for cooking and baking, while aspartame degrades at high temperatures.

Chemically, artificial sweeteners are a sugar or amino acid derivative that have been modified so that they are not absorbed by the intestines, and can simply pass through the body. Each non-nutritive sweetener boasts of intense taste, hundreds of times sweeter than sucrose, without packing on the pounds. However, these sweeteners have been tainted by a string of health concerns. Are zero-calorie sweeteners a blessing or poison?

Artificial Sweeteners and Dieting

Lots of people use artificial sweeteners, including diabetics and dieters. In Western countries, around 10 percent of a person’s daily calorie intake is from sugar. Substituting some of that with a non-nutritive sweetener means cutting calories without compromising taste.

Aspartame has been shown to help weight loss. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that studied the effect of adding aspartame to the diet as part of a weight loss program found that subjects who consumed the sweetener lost significantly more weight overall and regained less weight during maintenance.

However, a study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that artificially-sweetened foods may actually trick the brain into consuming more calories. Our bodies can naturally count calories by the sweetness of a food, but this ability is thrown off when foods are artificially sweetened, causing a tendency to eat more. In the study, two groups of rats were trained for 10 days on sugar solutions. One group was fed a solution of glucose and sucrose that was consistent with the number of calories it contained, while the other group was fed a solution of glucose and saccharin, which was not a good predictor of calories. Researchers found that after ten days, when the rats were offered the same pre-meal high calorie chocolate snack, the rats in the two groups consumed the same amount, but the group of rats trained on the artificially sweetened solution consumed significantly more of the meal than the group trained on sugar solution. The rats in the “consistent” group were able to compensate for their high calorie pre-meal by consuming less of the actual meal, while the rats in the “inconsistent” group seemingly lost their innate ability to tell calories by sweet taste.

Saccharin

Saccharin, the oldest artificial sweetener, is what’s in the packets labeled Sweet’n Low or Sugar Twin. 300 to 500 times sweeter than sugar, it has a metallic aftertaste that causes some to shy away. This chemical sweetener has been controversial from its early beginnings in 1878, when it was accidentally discovered by Constantin Fahlberg, a scientist researching coal tar derivatives. Later, a 1970 study published in Science found that saccharin caused urinary bladder carcinomas, a malignant cancer, in mice. Studies such as these caused Canada to ban saccharin in 1977. After much debate, the FDA responded by requiring products containing saccharin to carry a warning label.

However, further studies showed that saccharin does not increase the likelihood of bladder cancer in humans. In 2001, the FDA repealed the warning label on saccharin products. The sweetener is now generally regarded as safe for consumption, excluding pregnant women. Bethany Doerfler, MS, RD, a clinical research dietician and Exercise Specialist in the Division of Gastroenterology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, explains, “From a safety perspective, we still don’t have great data for saccharin in pregnant women, so dieticians discourage pregnant women from consuming saccharin and steer them toward a different sweetener.”

Aspartame

Aspartame, the popular artificial sweetener used in Equal and NutraSweet, has its fair share of notoriety. Sites such as SweetPoison.com and AspartameKills.com condemn this “dangerous chemical food additive” as a major cause of “illness and toxic reactions in the human body.”

Refuting these claims, a major study, published in the September 2006 edition of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, found that aspartame is safe for consumption. In the study, no link was found between high aspartame consumption and the risk of developing brain malignancies. “I certainly don’t think aspartame is health food; it’s not something we should rely comfortably on. But at the same time, moderate intake is absolutely safe for a variety of populations,” Doerfler says.

Aspartame has the potential to degrade at high temperatures and gives a bitter taste when cooked. However, food manufacturers use recipes that avoid the heat associated with the breakdown of aspartame.

Sucralose

Sucralose, or Splenda, is about 600 times sweeter than sugar. As stated on their website, “It starts with sugar. It tastes like sugar. But it’s not sugar.” Sucralose is essentially chlorinated sucrose. It is very stable, a characteristic that allows it to be used in acidic beverages and baked goods without compromising taste. A 2000 study in Food and Chemical Toxicology researched how sucralose was metabolically processed in rats. With more than 90 percent of the sucralose passing unchanged into the urine and no evidence of degradation or dechlorination, the study concluded that sucralose is safe.

Rebaudioside A

Reb A, derived from the leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana plant, is the United States’ first encounter with an “all-natural” zero-calorie sweetener. Reportedly 250 to 400 times sweeter than sugar, it is marketed under the trade names Truvia and PureVia. Though the FDA currently recognizes Reb A as a supplement rather than an artificial sweetener, the process to approve Reb A is ongoing. A recent study found that Reb A is not genotoxic, fortifying the case for Reb A’s safety.

So which color packet should go into your morning coffee? In general, most recent studies suggest that the main zero-calorie sweeteners are safe in moderate amounts. If you buy the research, go with what you think tastes best. However, while using zero-calorie sweeteners may cut down the number of calories you consume in a day, it doesn’t replace essential nutrients. “I encourage people to use artificial sweeteners to round out taste in their diet without adding additional calories,” Doerfler says. “But more importantly, I focus on the nutrient-density of the diet, namely consuming adequate fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and heart healthy fats.”