The sugar lobby has lost its war to keep a lid on the health risks posed by its product, leaving manufacturers under immense pressure to reduce added sugar content in food and beverages. That troublesome word ‘sugar’ has to be shooed off labels as fast as possible, but what to replace it with?

“We need to start accustoming our palates to less sugary tastes”

Artificial sweeteners have a bad reputation for their hi-tech chemistry, and high-fructose corn syrup is definitely persona non grata. All the action is around ‘non-nutritive’ zero or low-calorie sweeteners, such as stevia and monk fruit, because these can be presented as more natural, and less damaging to health. In particular, blends of different kinds of non-nutritive sweeteners are on the up, not least because stevia has a bitter taste that needs masking.

Does this new generation of ‘non-sugar sugars’ really represent progress? Clearly, there’s a world of difference between sweet green leaves chewed by native populations and purified chemical extracts derived from them. The ‘naturalness’ claims of some of the stevia blends on the market are weak in the extreme, but companies may see them as a way to buy time until some miracle non-harmful source of sweetness is discovered.

Is this possible? The theory that no-calorie sweeteners can cause weight gain is gaining currency. One possibility is that a sweet taste, unaccompanied by calories, signals to the body to pick up those missing calories elsewhere. Classic calorific sugar delivers ‘satiety’, but artificial and non-nutritive sweeteners don’t. Another theory is that a no-cal sweet taste wreaks havoc with the appetite-regulating hormones, disrupting the signals that stop us overeating. Last year, a major review of studies undertaken by behavioural neuroscientists appeared in the Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism journal. It linked artificial sweeteners with weight gain. Why should other non-nutritive sweeteners be any different?

Rather than pinning our hopes on discovering a miracle substance that does the job of sugar, minus the damage, we need to start gradually accustoming our palates to less sugary tastes. That means limiting our consumption of anything sweet, regardless of its composition.

Joanna Blythman is a journalist and author of What to Eat

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