Over the past decade, the world have soured on artificial sweeteners. Once heralded as sweet substitutes for sugar without as many belt-busting calories, people once couldn’t get enough sucralose and aspartame. But recently, people have started looking at the molecules with increasing suspicion, amid studies that linked them to increased belly fat – and bogus but widespread rumours that they led to things much worse.
But their draw remained because of the simplest of math equations: Fewer calories means fewer pounds.n international group of researchers has tried to figure out whether low-calorie sweeteners really live up to their promise over time. Meghan Azad, a researcher at the University of Manitoba, and others reviewed dozens of studies about the long-term health effects of sugar substitutes, trying to see whether there was a prevailing trend.
The study found that not only were artificial sweeteners dodgy when it came to weight management, but people who drank them routinely had an increased body mass index and risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
