Zero-Calorie Saccharin Makes Rats Fat

Byron's Comments:

The sweet taste is the primary subconscious addicition in America today. It is driving the obesity epidemic. The FDA allows billions of dollars of chemical sweetners into our food supply - another betrayal of the public trust. More comments.

Study Title:

A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation

Study Abstract:

Animals may use sweet taste to predict the caloric contents of food. Eating sweet noncaloric substances may degrade this predictive relationship, leading to positive energy balance through increased food intake and/or diminished energy expenditure. These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that experiences that reduce the validity of sweet taste as a predictor of the caloric or nutritive consequences of eating may contribute to deficits in the regulation of energy by reducing the ability of sweet-tasting foods that contain calories to evoke physiological responses that underlie tight regulation. Adult male Sprague–Dawley rats were given differential experience with a sweet taste that either predicted increased caloric content (glucose) or did not predict increased calories (saccharin). We found that reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes.

Study Information:

Susan E. Swithers and Terry L. Davidson A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation Behavioral Neuroscience  2008 February  Vol. 122, No. 1, 161–173
Purdue University

Full Study:

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/bne-feb08-swithers.pdf

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