Do we really need zero calorie sweeteners and are they safe The Leading Voices in Food

Artificial sweeteners, known more recently as non-nutritive or low-calorie sweeteners, have been a source of great hope. What could be better than enjoying sweetness in foods but without the calories? Sucralose, xylitol, stevia, saccharin, aspartame, there are a lot of them out there. You may add them to food yourself, you may consume them in beverages, and if not, there’s a good chance they’ll show up in foods that you buy. But, do they work and are they safe? Few know this area like Dr. Richard Mattes, distinguished Professor of Nutrition Science at Purdue University. 
Interview Summary So Rick, thanks so much for joining us. You’ve done pioneering work on this area and there are a few people better positioned to discuss this topic, so I appreciate you joining us today. So let’s start off with why do we need these sweeteners at all?
Well, I think the primary driver here is concern about the consumption of nutritive sweeteners – sugars. It is the case that often sugars are consumed in foods that provide limited other nutritional value. So they add calories without nutrients. And then given an environment where there’s concern about weight gain and obesity, there is a reasonable assumption that we can reduce sugar intake without compromising nutritional status. So, it’s a good target for interventions to manage body weight. Low-calorie sweeteners, as you pointed out, are one approach that can be taken to reduce sugar intake without compromising the sensory qualities of foods. I think it’s very well accepted that the sensory qualities of foods are really the primary driver of food choice. We as nutritionists would like to believe people make food choices based on nutrition. We recognize the importance of cost and convenience. But the reality is if a product does not have the right sensory properties, people just won’t consume it. We have to pay attention to the sensory properties of foods. Added sugars are presently contributing about 13% of daily energy intake – so that’s a very high percent without contributing a lot of nutrients. To give you a little more perspective, at the 75th percentile in the US population, that translates to about 400 kilocalories a day for males, about 300 kilocalories a day for females. If we use a 2,000 kilocalorie diet as sort of the standard, which is what’s used on food packaging labels, that represents 20% for males and 15% of energy on a daily basis. It’s very, very high. Now, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee from 2020 reviewed sweeteners and their relationship to body weight. In their modeling analyses they concluded that people can really only take in something on the order of 5 to 6% or so of energy from added sugars without going into positive energy balance. That is taking in more energy than we need and as a result, putting ourselves at risk for weight gain. That is based on what it would take to obtain all the necessary nutrients in the diet if we make smart food choices. There’s very little discretionary room for added sugars. As a result, low-calorie sweeteners are a way to reduce total sugar intake, again, without compromising sensory quality.
That makes good sense and those numbers are really quite striking. Can you give us a little bit of a sense of how much these low-calorie sweeteners are consumed and how they show up in the food supply?
Well, the primary source is through sweetened beverages, but there is increasing use in solid foods as well. They are ubiquitous in the food supply, I think that’s safe to say, but low calorie sweetened beverages are the primary source.
There’s been concern that these low-calorie sweeteners can disrupt carbohydrate metabolism and result in greater hunger and food intake. What do you think about that?
Yes, this has been very extensively studied and my interpretation of the literature is that they do not disrupt carbohydrate metabolism. We know that when people consume nutritive sweeteners sugars, t