People report being hungrier after consuming the artificial sweetener sucralose and experience heightened brain activity in regions involved with appetite. The finding suggests that artificial sweeteners may encourage overeating instead of satisfying our sweet tooth.
Artificial sweeteners have become as awareness around sugar’s health risks grows. Unlike sugar, these additives sweeten foods and drinks without adding substantial calories. But they may come with their own set of health concerns. Studies in and have shown, for instance, that they can stoke hunger rather than abate it.
at the University of Southern California and her colleagues analysed brain activity in 75 adults before and after they consumed a drink containing sucralose, sugar or plain water. The participants, aged 18 to 35, consumed each drink on separate days after fasting overnight and rated their hunger before and after. The researchers also tracked blood flow in participants’ brains – a marker of neural activity – for 35 minutes after each drink.
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On average, blood flow to the hypothalamus, a brain region involved in hunger, increased by about 3 per cent after participants consumed sucralose. After they drank water or the sugar-sweetened drink, blood flow to the hypothalamus decreased by around 6 per cent. Participants also reported feeling three times hungrier after drinking the sucralose beverage compared with the sugary one.
This may be because, unlike sugar, sucralose didn’t trigger the release of the hormones insulin and GLP-1, which tell the brain when food is consumed. “If you don’t get that signal, then you are going to continue to be hungry,” says Page. She believes sucralose causes a mismatch in the brain because it registers the sweet, sugary taste, but doesn’t detect other signals of fullness. “In turn, that might, over time, make people crave these [sweet] foods,” she says.
Based on these findings, food regulatory agencies should consider reassessing the safety of artificial sweeteners, says at Florida State University. “Instead of reducing food consumption, [sucralose] may sort of encourage more food consumption – the opposite of what we thought,” he says.
Nature Metabolism
