Fitness Gear: Some Sweet Science And Weight Loss- Fitness Training For Life

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Sunday, April 6, 2008

Are you on a weight loss plan that includes cutting out sugar and adding artificial sugars? Changing your diet, eating habits or workout routines? Then keep reading...

While stories have been appearing regularly in the news over the last year, one of the most interesting tidbits of information is a hot-off-the-press study that showed that rats on diets containing saccharin gained more weight than rats given sugary food. The study was published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience and found that the calorie-free artificial sweetener appeared to break the physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, driving the rats to overeat. This information could be damaging to the entire industry because the link may have more to do with the calorie-free stimulus of artificial sweetener, which means it could be an effect associated with any of the artificial sweeteners on the market. Furthermore, it enhances the credibility of a large-scale study that linked diet soda drinking with obesity. We'll get to that in a minute, but let's take a brief look at the rat study.

In the experiment, funded by the National Institutes of Health and Purdue University, nine rats received yogurt sweetened with saccharin and eight rats received yogurt sweetened with glucose (sugar). After receiving their yogurt snack, the animals were given their usual food. At the end of five weeks, rats that had been fed sugar-free yogurt gained an average of 88 grams, compared with 72 grams for rats that ate glucose-sweetened yogurt, a difference of about 20 percent. Rats fed sugar-free yogurt were consuming more calories and had 5 percent more body fat.

Since this required further explanation, more research was done. In another experiment, two groups of rats were fed sugary and artificially sweetened drinks to measure changes in their body temperatures. Body temperatures typically rise after a meal because it takes energy to digest food. This effect, known as thermogenesis, is the desired effect of most "fat burning" supplements.

The rats in the saccharin group experienced a smaller average temperature increase, a sign that regular consumption of artificial sweeteners had blunted their bodies' responses to sweet foods, making it harder for the animals to burn off extra calories. Normally, sweet tastes signal the body that it is about to receive a lot of calories and the digestive system prepares to react. When sweet tastes aren't followed by lots of calories, as in the case of artificial sweeteners, the body becomes conditioned against a strong response. The most interesting irony here is that the study suggests that most "diet" foods will likely counteract the beneficial effects of most "diet" supplements.

This becomes more provocative when we look at the next study, which featured real people. In this one, scientists gathered dietary information on more than 9,500 men and women ages 45 to 64 and tracked their health for nine years to record general health trends as they related to lifestyle.

Overall, a Western dietary pattern, which includes high intakes of refined grains, fried foods, and red meat, was associated with an 18 percent increased risk for metabolic syndrome, while a "prudent" diet dominated by fruits, vegetables, fish, and poultry correlated with neither an increased nor a decreased risk. Metabolic syndrome doubles a person's risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, or stroke, according to Dr. Ramachandran Vasan of Boston University School of Medicine.

While this was nothing to be surprised about, the researchers then stumbled on a more puzzling statistic—that the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota and a coauthor of the study, which was posted online in Circulation on January 22, 2008, stated that they weren't sure if the increased risk was due to some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior of diet soda drinkers. Then, in reference to the Purdue study, she was reported by the Los Angeles Times last week as saying that it offered a possible explanation.

Another study published last year cited the effects of soda drinkers versus non-soda drinkers. In this one, approximately 6,000 middle-aged men and women were observed over four years. The results showed that those who drank one or more soft drinks a day had a 31 percent greater risk of becoming obese, a 30 percent increased risk of developing increased waist circumference, a 25 percent increased risk of developing high blood triglycerides as well as high blood sugar, and a 32 percent higher risk of having low high-density lipoprotein or "good" cholesterol levels.

Again, the news was not exactly shocking. Then the researchers analyzed a smaller sample of participants on whom data on regular and diet soft drink consumption was available. Those who drank one or more diet or regular sodas per day had a 50 to 60 percent increased risk for developing metabolic syndrome. Clearly, something is rotten in the state of Denmark or, you know, something like that.

The American Heart Association, which publishes Circulation, made a statement that people should understand that the study in their publication did not prove that diet sodas cause heart disease, and it may still be better to have a diet drink than a full-calorie soda. Regardless of this backpedal, it's not difficult to see that some bad things are happening to people who drink diet soda regularly.

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by: UltimateFitnessGear