With nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population now classified as obese, and increasing evidence pointing to sugar as the culprit, people are turning to foods that contain low-calorie sweeteners to give them the sweet taste they enjoy, without the risk of gaining weight. However, new research from George Washington University in the US suggests that artificial sweeteners may actually increase a person’s risk of becoming obese.

The obesity epidemic is caused by an increase in fat and sugar in people’s diets. Fat accumulation in obesity increases the chances of getting type 2 diabetes, heart conditions and cancer. 

So changing our diet to include low-calorie sweeteners, such as sucralose and aspartame, should be a good way to get all the sweet taste without any of the guilt. Instead, the new study suggests that eating these sweeteners could do the opposite and increase the chance of us accumulating fat in our bodies, in a “dose-dependent” fashion. In other words, the more artificial sweetener you consume, the more fat your body creates and stores.

For many years, we have known that sweet substances (sugars or artificial sweeteners) bind to sensors in our mouth called “sweet-taste receptors”. These receptors send a message to our brain to tell us that we are eating something sweet.

In the last decade, these sensors have been found in other parts of our body, such as the bladder, the lungs and even in bones. This has raised questions about what effect sweeteners, and these sweet taste receptors, could be having inside our bodies.