NC Healthcare Coverage Blog

A new study has discovered that people who drink diet sodas and consume other products that contain artificial sweeteners may not lose weight but actually gain instead.

A study from Purdue University that was released August 9 in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience reported that rats who were on diets that contained the artificial sweetener saccharin surprisingly gained more weight that rats that were given food containing real sugar. This disturbing news has cast a dark cloud on the benefits of low-calorie sweeteners.

Dr. Marie Savard, ABC News’ medical contributor, said that she thinks there is a component in diet foods that seems to change metabolic limit and brain chemistry. Although Savard admits that more research is needed to discover additional information concerning these findings, this recent study gives a glimpse into the notion that a person’s metabolism can be changed by these sweeteners. She also said that there was another study performed recently on more than 18,000 people which found that healthy adults who drank one diet drink per day might increase their chance for gaining weight.

The Purdue study found that the rats with diets containing artificial sweeteners seemed to have a physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, causing them to overeat.

Savard explains that “the taste buds taste sweet, but there’s no calorie load that comes with it. There’s a mismatch here. It seems it changes your brain chemistry in some way. Anything you put in your mouth, your body has a strong reaction to it. It’s much more than counting calories. It seems normally with sweet foods that we rev up our metabolism.”

According to a consumer survey from the Calorie Control Council, diet drinks are the second most popular low-calorie, sugar-free product in the U.S., so this may come as a big shock to the 59 percent of Americans who drink them.

Since there are lots of foods that now have artificial sweeteners in them, the results of this latest study may extend beyond just diet drinks. Savard warns that “we need to rethink what this artificial stuff does to us.”