Something magical happens when a person learns that they can indulge in an ice cream bar without also indulging in the guilt of 40g of sugar; they go nuts and this “magic” ingredient begins to pop up in everything from chocolate to instant oatmeal. Today’s splurge of sweet indulgences “without guilt” is brought to you exclusively by: artificial sweeteners.

Splenda has done excellent advertising to lead people to believe that their product is made from “real sugar.” Whether or not that is true is irrelevant: the final product is a chemically altered substance, ergo, it is not natural, period.

The real problem of artificial sweetening however, is evidenced in America’s burgeoning waistline. Seems ironic that “sugar free, guilt free” artificial sweeteners could be a culprit in the obesity epidemic in America, but the bottom line is that while manufacturers can temporarily trick your brain, their product can not trick your body.

Our bodies couple sweetness with energy; when we eat sweet food or drink, our bodies expect that the calories from the food will provide energy to perform its functions. When you drink a can of Coke, your body expects a certain amount of calories for energy. But studies reveal that “artificial sweeteners blunt the body’s energy expenditure mechanism.” This means that if you regularly consume a can of artificially sweetened Diet Coke, your body will realize that it is not going to be getting any calories and it will learn to “uncouple sweetness and energy, disrupting its ability to accurately assess caloric intake,” says research from the American Medical Association.  Because artificial sweeteners trigger this effect of caloric blunting, you do not feel the same satisfaction after eating products made with them as you do by eating real sugar. The result: you crave and eat more sugar, but burn fewer calories. Hello exercise/>lose-weight-exercise/>weight gain.

Don’t freak out if you are a die hard Diet Coke fan or a Splendaholic; just realize that you can only trick your body for so long before it discovers what you are up to and adjusts accordingly….

After all kids, it’s sugar and spice, and everything nice.