It’s better to have a little sugar than any sweetener at all, says Gut Health Guru Dr Megan Rossi

Let me be honest about added sugar – yes, it tastes good, but the reality is that most of us ingest way too much of it.

Not only does it add calories without any nutritional value, but excessive consumption of sugar has been linked to tooth decay, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

But are sugar alternatives really better? Given their growing prevalence, this is an important question.

Low- or no-calorie sweeteners are now popping up in everything from bread and lemonade to toothpaste and desserts.

A 2017 study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that a quarter of children and 40 percent of adults consumed these sweeteners.

Since then, its use has become even more widespread – in part due to the introduction of the sugar tax in 2018, which required manufacturers to pay more tax if their goods contain 8g (or more) of added sugar per 100ml.

According to a recent survey, 3.5 million people now use sweeteners at least twice a day.

You can see why. The idea of ​​a sweet hit without worrying about your health or waistline is appealing.

But is it that simple? Rather than sparing our waistlines, research suggests that sweeteners can increase them in some cases.

That may sound counterintuitive – but research on fruit flies and mice (admittedly not humans – we’re trickier to study) has shown that consuming sweeteners increases appetite.

For one such study, published in the journal Cell in 2016, researchers gave fruit flies the low-calorie sweetener sucralose for three days. Surprisingly, this encouraged the flies to eat more food and calories. When they stopped the sucralose, their consumption dropped.

The researchers went on to investigate why this is and discovered that the sweeteners activated AMPK, an enzyme that plays a role in stimulating the production of hunger hormones.

The researchers said that while the find came from flies, the same process likely takes place in the human brain.

This is not an isolated result. Other studies have shown that consuming sweeteners one day leads to increased calorie intake the next day.

There are now 21 sweeteners approved for use in the UK. These include low-calorie options such as xylitol and sorbitol — our bodies can only absorb a small amount of the calories in them, ie they are usually poorly absorbed (and too much can lead to abdominal pain, bloating and diarrhea).

Then there are the zero-calorie sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, and stevia, which technically have no calories at all because we can’t digest them.

Sweeteners are between 200 and 20,000 times sweeter than sugar, so most come with fillers to bulk them up. If it were pure sweetener, the flavor would be too intense. Even when used in small amounts, sweeteners are so intensely sweet that they can make us desensitized to sweetness (and the problem with that is that when we then have a sweet treat, we may want more of it than we otherwise would ).

This desensitization was demonstrated by researchers who asked volunteers to cut out all forms of added sugar and artificial sweeteners for two weeks.

At the end of the study, published in The Permanente Journal in 2015, 95 percent of the 20 participants felt their regular foods now tasted too sweet.

Meanwhile, recent research suggests that certain sweeteners may alter the makeup of our microbiome — the microbes that live in our gut and so support much of our health.

In a groundbreaking study published last year in the journal Cell, 120 people were split into six groups and given a daily sachet of one of four sweeteners (saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, stevia), glucose, or nothing.

After two weeks, the volunteers were then given a week off from the sachets.

During this time, the scientists took stool and blood samples. They also gave the volunteers 50 g of glucose before and after the trial to see how their bodies reacted.

They found that those taking sucralose and saccharin couldn’t process the sugar as effectively as they could before the experiments (and as we know, blood sugar spikes have many health knock-on effects).

What’s more, when the scientists transplanted a stool sample from these people into mice, the rodents also had trouble digesting glucose effectively.

In addition, all those taking sweeteners experienced a change in the enzymes and chemicals their gut bacteria produced, which was not apparent in the other two groups. What we don’t know yet is what that means for our health. But it’s worth noting that many “healthy” products contain sweeteners, even some probiotics or kombucha (fermented black tea), for example. So check your food and drink labels.

And it may be worth sticking with the real deal whenever possible. So if you want sweetness, choose a little sugar over sweeteners. Or better yet, I go for the whole food options, like fruits – especially for kids.

And get creative if you crave a sweet hit. If you like sweet drinks, keep a bag of berries in the freezer and add them to sparkling water to make a flavorful and refreshing drink.

If you’ve added sugar or sweeteners to your tea and coffee, try cutting back slowly; your taste buds take two to three weeks to adjust. Reduce the amount you have by a quarter of a teaspoon each week and you probably won’t even notice it.

Personally, I believe that cutting back makes for a brighter future.

Ask Megan

In 2017 my taste buds went wrong and now everything tastes like salt. My eyes and mouth are dry – for which I use eye drops and suck sugar-free candies. I don’t drink caffeine, just water and fruit tea. I use salt-free bouillon cubes when cooking, but still everything, even home-baked cakes and biscuits, taste salty. I am 85, losing weight and depressed.

Elizabeth Burgess, Chorley, Lancashire.

many factors can cause taste loss and disturbance – unfortunately one of the most common is old age: the number of taste buds naturally decreases and the remaining taste buds gradually dwindle.

But here are four strategies that can help you enjoy food more:

1. Try Sour Flavors: Sharp or sour foods can stimulate your taste buds by sending messages down nerves to your brain where you can detect what a specific taste is – sweet, sour, bitter, salty or umami. For example, add a squeeze of lemon juice to a pasta sauce or half a lime with Thai green curry and see if this helps.

2. Brush Your Teeth: Making sure your mouth is clean before eating will help you taste food better. Try brushing your teeth ten minutes before a meal and gently brush your tongue to remove excess tongue film (including microbes and their by-products).

3. Stay hydrated: Dry mouth can hinder your sense of taste. Drink large glasses of water between meals and sip while eating.

4. test your taste buds: purposefully try to eat foods with strong flavors and try to identify them. Something like chocolate for sweet, citrus for sour, coffee for bitter and cheese for salty. Depending on the cause of your taste disturbances, this may help retrain taste buds.

If your weight loss exceeds 5 percent of your body weight, see your doctor, as certain forms of weight loss can be inflammatory, not to mention the resulting increase in nutritional deficiencies. Some, such as folic acid, zinc and vitamin B12, can make taste disorders worse.

Please contact Dr. Megan Rossi

Email drmegan@dailymail.co.uk or write to Good Health, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London, W8 5HY — please include contact details. Dr. Megan Rossi cannot comment on personal correspondence. Answers should be taken in a general context; Always consult your doctor in case of health problems.