What Synthetic Sweeteners Do In Your Brain

Here’s the bottom line: You may taste it (subjectively) as sweet, but your brain doesn’t take it (objectively) the same way.

If you taste sugar, certain areas of your brain light up. However, your brain does NOT respond the same way when you taste the synthetics. Subjects taste sugary sweetness, but your body doesn’t respond to it in the same way.

Perhaps this explains why scientists are so confused by the effect of zero-calorie sweeteners on something like weight control. The Nurses Health Study showed that consumption of these synthetics results in INCREASED weight, even when compared to drinking regular sugary soft drinks!!

Doesn’t this just reiterate what we have said over and over. The “calories-in, calories-out” dogma of our current nutrition scientists is not the whole story. There is more to weight control, more to living a healthy life, more to optimal health, than this notion.

By contrast, if our approach were to simply eat food, there would be no confusion in any of these data — of course the brain acts differently to synthetics versus the real thing … of course the body responds differently to artificial sweeteners, and of course the consumption of synthetic ingredients of any type can interfere with your body’s natural working ability to regulate anything … including its weight!