Artificial Sweeteners Trick Your Brain into Eating Too Much

A controlled experiment explains why sugar substitutes, already linked to many health risks, don’t help with weight loss

Image: Peter Hermes Furian/Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license.

Calorie-free artificial sweeteners seem like logical alternatives to white sugar, especially for anyone hoping to control or lose weight. But a burgeoning body of research has linked these sugar substitutes, including sucralose, aspartame and erythritol (monk fruit) to a higher risk of cancer, heart attack, stroke and death. And a new controlled experiment confirms what previous research has hinted at:

Sucralose messes with the mind by making you think a bunch of sugar calories are coming, and when they don’t arrive, you’re left feeling hungry, so you eat more.

The study results help explain why artificial sweeteners, which are nutritionally hollow, don’t help people lose weight, as previous studies have found.

“Replacing free sugars with non-sugar sweeteners does not help with weight control in the long term,” says Francesco Branca, WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety.

In a randomized experiment, researchers split 75 people (men and women whose weight ranged from healthy to obese) into three groups and had them drink plain water, a…