Artificial sweeteners could set you back on your weight loss journey

Diet foods and drinks may actually be making you feel more hungry, a new study has found. An article in Nature showed that artificial sweeteners interfere with how the brain interprets sweet taste, especially in women and people who are overweight.

The researchers gave 75 young adults three drinks – one sweetened with the artificial sweetener ‘sucralose’ (Splenda®), the second sweetened with sugar, and the third plain water.

The young people reported they felt much hungrier after drinking sucralose than when they drank sugar or water.

The researchers think that’s because consuming something sweet that contains sugar increases glucose levels in the body. That signals to the hypothalamus in the brain to stop you feeling hungry.

But if you consume artificial sweetener, the body doesn’t get the calories it’s expecting from the sweet taste, and there’s no signal to your brain to suppress hunger.

Liver Foundation’s Professor Simone Strasser says these findings confirm what’s long been suspected – that diet drinks actually make it harder to lose weight.

‘This finding is really important as it shows how sugar free soft drinks may disrupt your weight loss goals,’ she says.

The study only looked at sucralose, not other commonly used sweeteners like aspartame and saccharin. But it adds to the growing evidence that all sweeteners could make it harder to control weight long term. In 2023, the World Health Organization issued a guideline not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control.

‘If you’re overweight, losing even a few kilos will help your liver,’ Dr Simone says.

‘But if you’re finding weight loss hard, then consider switching to plain water rather than drinks that contain artificial sweeteners.’