Which are the "best" sweeteners?

artificial sweeteners are they healthy or are they not seems like it should be a simple question answer but it's not always so easy is it I'm Dr Brett share the medical director at dietdoctor.com and I want to talk about a study that talks about the glucose variability with certain non-nutritive sweeteners or artificial sweeteners but then more importantly tie that into the bigger question of should we be eating non-nutritive sweeteners artificial sweeteners are they a net benefit in our diet could they serve a role or are they harmful for everybody and what questions you should probably be asking to know if it's right for you so first let's get into the basics of this study that was published in cell called personalized microbiome driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance now there's a lot in this study and I don't think it's all necessarily pertinent for sort of the average everyday person to know if if they should be eating um or drinking non-regitive sweeteners or eating too I guess either way you can get them either way but here's the key you're going to see a lot of talk about this study on social media but the first most important part was it was in healthy non-overweight normal glycemic people right completely healthy people nobody with pre-diabetes nobody with type 2 diabetes nobody who is has overweight or obesity so right away we have to question how translatable the findings of the study are to the other populations which is unfortunately the majority of the population in the United States and industrialized world so they had at the end 123 of these young healthy people separated into different groups and about 20 in each group and they there was a control group a group who drank liquids with glucose one with saccharin one with sucralose one with stevia and one with aspartame and look there's lots there's been some controversy about some of these chemical sweeteners in terms of their cancer risk we'll save that for another one it's really been found I guess I'm not going to say but I'm not going to talk about anyway it's really been found in real high doses and rodents um no real data in humans to show us a risk but if it's something that's a concern then you can certainly pick some that aren't um that are that are more natural basically things like Stevia or some of the sugar alcohols I'm interested in the sugar alcohols were not included in here and those are some of the more popular ones now I'd say like the erythritol um and some like monk fruit were not included or alulose weren't included but that's okay you can't include them all but in this study basically what they found was that the non-nutritive sweeteners could affect the microbiome in some people right it wasn't across the board and it could affect glucose variability after a glucose tolerance test in some people and Sucralose and saccharin had the biggest effect on the glucose response in the oral glucose tolerance test now the fact that I keep saying in some people is what made this sort of conclusion a personalized approach or a personalized response anything that can happen in some people and not in others and it seemed to be tied to the microbiome now I don't know the microbiome is always a little bit challenging because there's so much in there and how do we know what the what the differences really mean but the one interesting part was they did microbiome fecal transplants into rats and whatever the human was showing with their glucose tolerance says that translated to the rat as well so that was really interesting um now there's some pushback about this paper that they didn't really have clearly defined primary outcomes which seems to be true which kind of weakens the findings there's also pushback about does this really clinically meaningful if there if there's a mild variation in the glucose tolerance does that really matter does that apply clinically the other thing is though the timed response it was a 14-day experiment and it looked like there was a change over over time as people were were drinking the non-nutritive sweeteners more which then reverted back to Baseline once they stopped so the question then becomes if it's years and years and years of this non-nutritive sweetener what would happen now that's the short sort of clean and um clean version of the study without getting into too many details because the more important part is what does this mean for you right if you're someone who uses some of these non-nutritive sweeteners what does it mean should you stop should you change and a Diet Doctor our approach is look if you can get by without it that's the best because regardless of what effect it has on your glucose and Insulin which is important and I'll talk about that but regardless of that for some people it can keep that desire for a sweet taste around if you are one of those people then you are clearly better off not um using any of these non-nutritive sweeteners also if you combine it with caloric food like you put it in a dessert you put it in a treat you put it in a baked goods it can make you want more and more sort of that hedonic characteristic of it now if you're using it in a liquid a non-calorie liquid and you're using it to sort of satisfy that sweet tooth and it doesn't make you want more and more and crave more and more then it definitely can play a positive role these non-nutritive sweeteners can be very beneficial in that role to kind of tickle your sweet tooth a little bit get rid of it without making you crave even more so if you fall into that camp then it makes sense that they play a a a role but which ones are best and that can be a little confusing too it depends what you define by best so we have a whole guide at dietdoctor.com on low carb sweeteners and keto sweeteners and what we say are some of the you know best ones quote unquote best ones and what we mean by that are been shown to affect glucose and Insulin the least and those tend to be Stevia erythritol monk fruit and Xylitol now based on this study ones like sucralose and saccharin are probably ones that you might want to sub out for some of these other ones in our guide we also talk about why you probably want to avoid sweeteners like maltitol because that has been shown to be absorbed in the small intestine and can raise blood sugar and insulin and how packets of equal Sweet and Low Splenda even though they're labeled as zero calories can have calories and can have carbs in them so if you use a lot of them over time it can add up so we warn you about that in our guide as well but basically I think the most important thing to ask yourself is what role is this non nutritive sweetener plain isn't necessary and if it is playing an important role and you feel that it's necessary then it's fine to use but again probably best to fall back on some of the tried and true and and sort of most consistently shown to not raise glucose or insulin like Stevia erythritol monk fruit and Xylitol and chances are if you're using these to replace sugar it's a net benefit but if you can go without it of course it's probably better to go without it so that's sort of my basic way of trying to take this study and say look what does this mean for you what can you learn from it and what what about the bigger topic of non-nutritive sweeteners so if you want to learn more more about the studies and the details please go to dietdoctor.com and look for our keto sweetener guide or low carb sweetener guide we'll include the the links down below to help you understand for you if non-nutritious sweeteners are the right choice or not all right hope this was helpful we'll see you next time here on diet doctor news on YouTube thank you

Channel: Diet Doctor

Views: 33,288

Keywords: keto, low carb, diet doctor

Id: nYeBb2c_27c

Length: 7min 17sec (437 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022