Commentary: The WHO says we shouldn’t bother with artificial sweeteners for weight loss or health. Is sugar better?

ADELAIDE, Australia: This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised that “non-sugar sweeteners should not be used as a means of achieving weight control or reducing the risk of noncommunicable diseases” such as diabetes and heart disease.

Artificial sweeteners are either natural compounds or synthesised compounds that taste sweet like sugar – and are up to 400 times sweeter by weight – but provide no or negligible energy. As a comparison, sugar has 17 kilojoules (or four calories) per gram, so one teaspoon of sugar would have 85 kilojoules.

Several types of artificial sweeteners are used in Australia. Some are synthetic, others are extracted from foods such as monk fruit and the stevia plant.

So, what do the new WHO guidelines mean for people who have switched to artificial sweeteners for health reasons? Should they just go back to sugar?

PROMOTED FOR WEIGHT LOSS

As a practising clinical dietitian in the 1990s, I remember when artificial sweeteners began to appear in processed foods. They were promoted as a way of substituting sugar into food products that may lead to weight loss.

A can of sugar-sweetened soft drink contains on average about 500 kilojoules. Theoretically, the substitution of one sugar-sweetened can of soft drink with an artificially sweetened can of soft drink every day would reduce your weight by about 1kg per month.

But research over the past few decades shows this doesn’t hold up.