OT sugar substitutes

I don't think this is particularly new information, similar research has come from different sources for a few years now and there are other concerns with artifical sweetners, they have a place, for some people, but they definitely aren't the magic solution advertising led us to believe. Can't stand the stuff myself, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and that's not just one of them, that's the newer ones too, so a plate of biscuits with sugar substitute is great for me, I eat none of them!

Cheers Anne

I know. But the research met JAMA's scrutiny! That's not a small feat.

Does this include the newer substitutes such as Splenda (tm) and copies?

I just reread through the whole article. It basically named the substitutes as "low calorie sweeteners". There wasn't any differentiation between the different kinds. They did say that sucralose didn't have the same mechanism that sucrose does. Sucrose is sugar.....I'm not sure what all the other artificial sweeteners are made from. Saccharine, sucralose...what else? The article said there were studies in 2007 that provided an unclear picture of all this....but now there are much clearer research based finding. rats.

only available in the usa as a 'foodsupplement'(edict from the FDA, fwiw) in health food storestho it is freely available in other countrys. it has beenused by the people of south america (native to paraguay) forover 400yrs as a natural herbal sweetener and it calorie free. Stevia is used by Coca Cola in Japan, Brazil and other countrys where it is approved for use. NAYY but if i could find some seeds i'd be grow'n it in my back and front yards. fwiw, j.

Stevia does nasty things to me. Someone gave me Stevia as an Equal substitute one day. My heart raced and I sweated like crazy. I don't want to see that stuff again!

I was checking these articles out (I have access at work to online journals). The first study (by Davidson and Swithers) was done in rats so my first query is to wonder how the results would translate to humans.

The JAMA article is a review of recent publications. They mention the Davidson references and also a study done in humans (by another group) where they did MRI to measure the brain response to sugar vs artifical sweeteners. Even though people could not taste the difference there was a difference in the brain response. I find this more intriguing.

Allison