Sugar or Artificial Sweeteners? Advice From a Health Coach

If I’ve learned anything in my years of being a health coach, it’s this: we all want the same thing. To become happier, healthier, more fulfilled people. But the path to accomplishing that goal can be so confusing! With all the dishonest marketing and misinformation, it’s hard to know what’s right for you and your body.

So what’s the truth, is sugar or artificial sweetener better for you?

Despite the hype around artificial sweeteners saving you calories, they are shown to increase the likelihood of obesity. Given this and other findings, sugar is the healthier all-around choice for your body.

But let’s take a deeper look at sugar vs non-nutritive, zero-calorie sweeteners so you can feel confident making the right choices for you.

What’s the difference between sugars and artificial sweeteners?

The two major differences between natural sugars and artificial sweeteners are that sugar is naturally occurring whereas artificial sweeteners are man-made, and the two are broken down differently inside our bodies.

Glucose, fructose, and lactose are the naturally occurring sugars that you’ll generally find in your wholefoods. Your body uses enzymes to break these sugars down into “monosaccharides,” meaning their simplest forms, and those molecules are then absorbed into your blood stream and used for energy.

Zero-Calorie artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose, among others, are not able to be broken down or used for energy in our bodies. Hence why they don’t have any calories. However, they still have to pass through our GI tracks and, it turns out, they wreak havoc as they do.

Artificial sweeteners are bad for your healthy gut bacteria and cause confused cell signaling which can lead to intolerances, cravings, diabetes and obesity.

Why do they make artificial sweeteners if they’re bad for you?

Zero-calorie sweeteners were made for people who can’t consume sugar for health reasons and people who are looking for a way to cut back on calories without giving up the sweet treats they love.

Admittedly, the invention of these zero-calorie sweeteners is a pretty cool feat of science! People had a problem they wanted solved, and scientists solved it by manipulating the chemistry of the sugar molecule. We have to applaud the effort and innovation.

Unfortunately, the adverse effects on overall health have turned out to outweigh (literally) the hypothetical win of consuming fewer calories.

How do artificial sweeteners work?

Artificial sweeteners are chemically altered molecules that remain similar enough to natural sugar for your brain to identify a sweet taste, but are too different from sugar for your body to respond the way it would to real sugar and process the molecule for energy (calories).

Artificial Sweeteners Side Effects

Whether or not artificial sweeteners have an immediate negative chemical impact on your body is widely debated.

However, one side effect is abundantly clear and considering the motivation behind consuming a calorie-free sweetener in the first place, seems like the most distressing possible consequence.

There is a proven link between obesity and artificial sweeteners.

The chemical makeup of artificial sweeteners is not a natural part of the human diet. Although the chemical manipulation of these molecules was good in theory, in practice, artificial sweeteners change your gut microbiome, and provide less satiety and more sugar-cravings.

These factors make it much more likely that by consuming artificial sweeteners, you’ll actually eat more over the course of the day than you otherwise would, and you’re more likely to end up consuming the carbs and sugar you were avoiding in the first place because the cravings can be so intense.

Then, just to put the sugar-free cherry on top, due to signaling confusion, the sugar and carbs you end up consuming after taking in an artificial sweetener is more likely to be stored as fat by your body than it is to be used as clean energy.

Unfortunately, the bottom line is this…

Non-nutritive, man-made artificial sweeteners are, at best, distressing to your body and mood, and at worst, contributors to detrimental diseases like diabetes and obesity.

(If you’d like to learn why losing weight has always been so hard and how you can actually lose that weight, check out this article.)

Is Stevia an Artificial Sweetener?

While Stevia is a non-nutritive and zero-calorie sweetener just like aspartame and others, it derives from a naturally-occurring source: the stevia plant. Stevia gained quick popularity in the western world because it’s 200-300 times sweeter than cane sugar and it’s calorie-free.

Although consuming a limited amount of Stevia per day is recognized as safe by the FDA, it’s also possible according to studies that Stevia can contribute to dehydration, GI discomfort, hormone disruption, low blood-sugar, and kidney damage.

It’s important to remember that everything you put in your body will have an effect on your internal chemistry. Even if stevia doesn’t have any calories, there are other important interactions that happen between your body and your food.

List of Artificial Sweeteners to Avoid

• Advantame
• Aspartame (Equal® or NutraSweet®)
• Acesulfame potassium (aka Acesulfame K)
• Neotame 
• Saccharin (Sweet ‘N Low®)
• Sucralose

Sugar Side Effects

This article is certainly not intended to make you drastically up your sugar consumption on the grounds that it’s better for you than artificial sweeteners. Although it is the safer and healthier choice, that doesn’t make sugar, especially in excessive amounts, a healthy addition to your diet.

In excess, sugar is responsible for causing inflammation, blood-sugar issues, weight gain and diabetes.

Sugar vs Artificial Sweeteners at a Glance

The bottom line here and the advice I give as a Health Coach is this.

When given the choice, opt for natural sugar over artificial sweeteners.

But don’t’ overdo it! Excessive sugar isn’t good for you. We know that, that’s why artificial sweeteners came to the table in the first place. Unfortunately, as of now, there is no magic answer that allows us to eat all our favorite sweet treats all the time with no consequences. The oldest advice in the book may be the best in this case: everything in moderation.

Happy eating! If you have any questions I’d love to hear from you. And please feel free to share this post anywhere and with anyone who might find it valuable.