Although it has never been a certain science, the substitution of sugar for sweeteners such as saccharin and stevia is one of the great trends apparently healthy of today’s society, with more or less scientific evidence of it.
Proof of this unconditional support for sugar substitutes is the product proliferation zerowhich are sweetened with alternative sweeteners, such as stevia, saccharin, aspartame and sodium cyclamate, for example.
Well, the World Health Organization (WHO), pope of healthy nutrition wherever they exist, has just updated its recommendations around unsweetened sweeteners and these they don’t come out very well.
In his new guideline, he advises against these ingredients as a solution to control body weight. has decided after review scientific evidence available in this regard, and concludes that they have not been shown to confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children.
The recommendation applies to everyone (except those with pre-existing diabetes) and includes all sweeteners synthetic and natural or modified non-nutritive substances that are not classified as sugars and are found in manufactured foods and beverages.
Among the most common non-nutritive sweeteners are acesulfame-K, aspartame, advantame, cyclamatesneotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia and stevia derivatives.
In fact, this great organization of the health commandments has put on the table the undesirable effects of these products on human health, when used in the long term. These statements have been made by the WHO at the hands of the director of Nutrition and Food Safety of the organization, Francesco Branca.
They do not help control weight
The WHO puts white on black the myth that these ingredients help to lose weight, and states emphatically that they do not help to control weight in the long term. Therefore, he recommends considering other ways to reduce the intake of free sugars, such as eating natural sugars (present in fruits and in unsweetened foods and drinks).
More risk of diabetes
The WHO warns that consuming these sweeteners entails an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease in which the glucose or sugar levels in the blood are too high.
More cardiovascular diseases
The WHO is clear that the consumption of sweeteners is related to the greater possibility of suffering cardiovascular diseases, related, as its name indicates, to the heart and circulation sanguine. Some of these diseases in this group are hypertension, excess cholesterol, heart failure and myocardial infarction.
more mortality
These fine dusts are also related, for the WHO, with the highest mortality among adultsso that its intake is not recommended as a reason for weight control in prolonged diets.
They have no nutritional value
These products also do not have nutritional values and that “they are not essential dietary factors”, so they are not interesting at a nutritional level. Incidentally, in his view people should totally reduce the sweet taste in the diet, already from an early age, to improve their health.
Seasonal fruit box – selection of 7 kg
The WHO guideline on non-sugar sweeteners is part of a set of existing and future guidelines on healthy diets that aim to establish healthy eating habits for life, improve diet quality and decrease the risk of non-communicable diseases throughout the world.
Photos | Myriam Zilles/Unsplash, Myriam Zilles/Unsplash and Alexander Grey/Unsplash.
In DAP | A study in ‘Nature’ links consumption of the sweetener erythritol to heart problems, but scientists call for cal
In DAP | The soft drink industry confronts Nutriscore over a new change in its algorithm
