Artificial Sweeteners

I was catching up on my reading and I came across this small blurb in the October 3rd issue of the Week Magazine:

Beware of artificial sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners, among the most common food additives in the world, may be contributing to obesity rather than preventing it, reports the Financial Times. In a series of experiments, Israeli scientists found that exposure to three sweeteners widely used in low-calorie snacks and beverages—saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame—raised blood sugar levels in mice and increased their risk of glucose intolerance, a condition that often leads to obesity and diabetes. When the researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science then gave a regular dose of saccharin to seven human volunteers who did not typically use sweeteners, four of them developed glucose intolerance. Previous studies have suggested that certain artificial supplements can give consumers a “sweet tooth,” making them more likely to seek out sugary foods, but this research suggests that sweeteners might actually alter the body’s metabolism to make weight gain more likely. Sweeteners, the report found, “may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic that they themselves were intended to fight.”