Why you should avoid diet food if you want to lose weight, and artificial sweeteners aren’t better than sugar: DR CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN’s essential guide to ultra-processed food

Until recently, I fed my family foods with no added sugar, like Heinz baked beans on toast, as a quick and easy weeknight meal.

I believed, like any other normal parent, that I was doing the pretty healthy, sugar-free thing for my wife Dinah, the fashion editor of this newspaper, our two children – Lyra, six, and Sasha, three – and me.

We all know that a diet high in sugar is associated with weight gain and rotting of your teeth. So swapping sugar for artificial sweeteners seems like a no-brainer, right?

But three years ago I started researching a book about the dangers of ultra-processed foods (UPF) – packaged convenience foods made with additives not normally found in the kitchen – and I discovered that artificial sweeteners have a are a common additive. .

In general, the main problem with ultra-processed foods is not the additives, but rather that those additives are a sign that a product has been designed to have addictive properties, so it can be very difficult to stop eating them.

But some of the science surrounding the additives themselves is concerning, especially when it comes to sweeteners.

In short, artificial sweeteners are sold on lies. They promise to be better for our health than sugar, but there is increasing evidence that this is not the case.

This isn’t just me talking about my book; The World Health Organization has just released official guidelines warning people not to use sugar substitutes to lose weight, because it simply doesn’t work and can even increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

However, avoiding them is easier said than done, especially if you are on a diet. Even the NHS recommends calorie counting as part of a healthy weight loss plan, and because artificial sweeteners contain very few calories, most ‘diet’ foods are packed with them.

While we still need to do a lot more research into the long-term effects of artificial sweeteners, the research at this point is enough to worry the WHO and have me clearing my kitchen shelves of them.

It is not entirely clear why artificial sweeteners are not better than sugar.

One theory is that when we replace sugar with a low-calorie alternative, our bodies sense the sweet taste and prepare for the influx of calories from real sugar — but then become confused when those calories don’t show up.

It’s possible that this confusion is messing up our metabolism. Exactly what happens is a scientific mystery, but the result is that our bodies maintain their weight in the long term and some people even gain more weight.

Some research shows that artificial sweeteners can even lead to an increase in sugar levels in our bloodstreams, which can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

It also appears that the chemicals in artificial sweeteners may disrupt the delicate balance of our gut microbiome – the teeming world of stomach bugs that help our bodies regulate sugar levels in our blood. Disrupt your intestines and increase your risk of diabetes.

It’s all the exact opposite of the ‘healthy’ halo that the makers of ultra-processed food and drink are building around their products with multi-million pound advertising campaigns.

No wonder we’re confused.

I’m a doctor, but even I was swept up by the apparently virtuous gloss surrounding products like Heinz Beans with no added sugar and Muller Light Greek Style Yoghurt, which contains the sweetener aspartame. (The Luscious Lemon flavor was my then three-year-old daughter’s favorite; now she has plain yogurt with honey or jam.)

Indeed, I found it harder than I thought to create a sweetener-free household. For example, it is very difficult to find fruit squashes without added sweeteners. Even the ‘full-fat’ Ribena contains sucralose.

To make a difference at home, I therefore had to make a pretty radical change: we don’t buy artificially sweetened, ultra-processed foods and instead of sweetened drinks, my children drink only milk or water.

I find that it is better for me to eat a little bit of something with sugar, knowing that sugar in large quantities is bad for me, than to consume artificial sweetener under the dangerous illusion that any amount of it is good for you .

I thought squirting low-sugar ketchup on my fries made them healthier. But I no longer believe that is the case.

How do the popular low-calorie foods compare to each other?

DIET DRINK CONFUSION

Cola Light

Artificial sweetener: Acesulfame K

If you look at the NHS-recommended Change 4 Life app, which recommends ‘healthy swaps’ for less healthy but popular foods, it recommends buying Diet Coke instead of sugary soft drinks.

I think that’s a big problem. Not just because artificial sweeteners themselves may not be better than sugar, but because Diet Coke is a great example of an ultra-processed drink, something created for the sole purpose of making a profit, rather than as food.

In addition to the sweetener Acesulfame K, caffeine, flavoring and coloring, it contains phosphoric acid, which rots the teeth and leaches the minerals from our bones. Whether it’s a little better or worse than full-sugar Coke is undeniable: they’re both terrible for your body.

Laboratory studies suggest that consuming Acesulfame K can disrupt the balance of your microbiome, the “friendly bacteria” that live in your gut.

This, in turn, can increase levels of harmful inflammation in the body and also lead to weight gain after a month, reports the University of North Carolina study on rats in 2017 in the journal PLoS One.

More recently, in 2021, Japanese researchers warned in the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology that Acesulfame K can cause inflammation in the intestines themselves in laboratory rodents.

This can cause bacteria from the intestines to leak into the bloodstream, causing inflammation throughout the body, which can increase the risk of serious diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cancer.

NOT-SO-SWEET SQUASH

Robinsons Pumpkin without added sugar

Artificial sweetener: Sucralose

Research published in the prestigious journal Cell in 2022, based on a microbiome study, reported that consuming sucralose disrupts the gut microbiome in ways that also disrupt a person’s blood sugar levels.

It can also reduce the effectiveness of their insulin response.

These two effects together can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

‘LIGHT’ IS NOT ALWAYS CORRECT

Muller Light Greek-style yogurt

Artificial sweetener: Aspartame

Some research also shows that aspartame disrupts human metabolism.

Research on more than 2,000 young girls in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2015 linked this to them hitting puberty earlier than normal.

And a Canadian study in the journal PLoS One last year in rats found that consuming aspartame increased their blood sugar levels and decreased the effectiveness of their insulin response, which could increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

UNANGELICAL ICE

Halo Top Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

Artificial sweetener: Erythritol

This year, researchers warned that consuming erythritol is associated with an increased risk of serious heart attacks and strokes.

It appears that erythritol may be involved in increasing the risk of developing blood clots that block veins or arteries, reports the Cleveland Clinic study in the journal Nature Medicine.

STAY AWAY FROM STEVIA

Heinz 50% Less salt and sugar Tomato ketchup

Heinz Baked Beanz without added sugar

Sweetener: Both contain Steviol glycosides

In the prestigious 2022 Cell report, stevia increased blood sugar levels in all participants who consumed it, and altered the microbiome in ways that appear to be linked to high blood sugar.

• Adapted from Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Things That Aren’t Food… And Why Can’t We Stop? by Chris van Tulleken. © Chris van Tulleken 2023. To order a copy for £19.80, visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.