I wanted to give you just another reason to worry about your consumption of artificial sweeteners.
A recent study has demonstrated that the intense sweetness of artificial sweeteners (in this case saccharin) is preferred as a rewards over cocaine in rats. This even applies to rats that were already addicted to cocaine! The cocaine-addicted rats would not give up their saccharin even when escalating doses of cocaine were being offered.
The researchers believe that since we did not evolve in a food environment rich in sugars, the excessively sweet chemical signal our brains experience when we consume artificial sweeteners have the ability to override normal self-control and can actually lead to addiction.
The more I study about our food choices and the impact they have on our health, the more I believe we need to just dial back many of our eating habits and eat in a manner that was common before the obesity epidemic. Back then, people ate more protein from breakfast, ate less bread, pasta and potatoes, cooked more fresh foods at home, drank much less soda and consumed no artificial sweeteners at all.
Science supports that these are very healthy dietary patterns in not only preventing Diabetes and obesity but to reverse them once they’ve begun.
