Have you ever wondered what the difference between natural sugar and sweetener is? Today this topic is actually heated because both have advantages and disadvantages, but choosing the right one is the problem. Many people that like to watch calories, usually prefer to take sweetener because it will have a less calories than its counterpart with sugar. We’ve all heard many say, sugar is bad for you. But have we wondered how bad the sugar substitutes are?

Artificial sweeteners are a common substitute for natural sugar. Many use it in order to reduce their weight by increasing their daily caloric deficit. Many, to control blood sugar levels also use it. People with diabetes tend to have sweetener to use it as a substitute to sugar, because they believe taking natural sugars will drastically change their sugar levels.

There are eight different types of sweeteners; Aspartame, Sucralose, Saccharin, Stevia, Acesulfame K, Neotame, Monk fruit, and Cyclamates.

Aspartame is found in some of the common sweeteners such as Equal and Nutrasweet. Statiscally aspartame is 220 time sweeter than sugar.

Sucralose is found in Splenda, and is 600 time more sweeter than sugar. It’s also found in common items the average person purchases such as fruit juices and gum.

Saccharin is found in Sweet ‘N Low and Sweet twin sweeteners. It is known that Saccharin is somewhere between 200 to 700 times sweeter than regular sugar. This type of sugar substitute is found in many diet soft drinks.

Stevoa is a plant based sweetener and is made from the plant Stevia rebaudiana. But Stevia as a sweetener is not used much in the United States.

Acesulfame K is found in the Sunett and Sweet One, sweeteners. The most common use of Acesulfame in the United States is to sweeten low-calorie beverages.

Monk Fruit is a fruit that grows in central Asia, and the extract of this fruit is used as sweetener. Monk fruit is around 150 to 200 times sweeter than sugar.

Cyclamates is a sweetener that is 30 times sweeter than sugar. But Cyclamates have been banned from the United States because it was proven that it causes bladder cancer among animals.

The most common person knows that more sweet is never better, neither in taste nor for prosperous health. The human body cannot digest artificial sweeteners, so for years scientist have wondered, that if it can’t be digested how could it cause diabetes? Experiments were performed on humans and lab rats. Depending on the microbes in the mice and human bodies would show an increase of blood sugar for a short time after having artificial sweeteners. Over time, high blood sugar levels from the excessive consumption of artificial sweeteners could potentially lead to diabetes. “The magnitude of the differences were not just a few percentages. These were actually very dramatic differences we saw both in the mice and in the human settings, said Eran Segal, a study co-author who is a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute”. The study consisted of 400 people who were all given sweetener than tested upon; researchers found that those that consumed more sweeteners had a more difficult time monitoring their own blood sugar. Among the 400 participants, 7 of them didn’t consume much artificial sweetener in their daily lives. So during the study their blood sugar level spiked drastically. The mice that were given artificial sweetener also saw increases in their blood levels. And as I mentioned before having blood sugars high consistently over a period of time leads to diabetes.

More about the following study could be read at this link:

In another study done among mice concluded that aspartame causes tumors in the urinary tract. This study consisted of 108 rats, over the duration of 2 ½ years. 60 rats were placed in the experimental group, which consisted of 30 males and 30 females. The remaining 48, (24 males and 24) females were placed in the controlled group. The scientists then gave NutraSweet sweetener to the mice to ingest. The males were given Nutrasweet proportional to 13 cans of diet soda, and the females were proportional to 14 cans of diet soda. After the duration of 2 ½ years, 67% of the female rats in the experimental group developed tumors, and 21% of male developed tumors. Since this experiment was done on mice it is difficult to know how the outcome would turn out if humans participated in the study.

More about this study could be read at this link:

In conclusion, there is not a clear link between artificial sweeteners and diseases among humans.  More experiments must be performed in order for a correlation to be evident among the science community. The first study concluded that most participants had their blood sugar levels spike and that could potentially lead to diabetes in the long term, but in the short-term the evidence is not there. In the second experiment most of the mice regardless of gender developed tumors. But mice are different than humans, therefore humans may not have the same affects compared to mice.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007492.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/17/artificial-sweetener-diabetes/15777225/

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/15/this-artificial-sweetener-shown-to-produce-cancer-in-rats.aspx