Which is best: Sugar or Sweetener?

All around the world we’re told we’re sleepwalking into a health crisis as we all pile on the pounds through the consumption of sweetened products. Almost 80 per cent of all packaged foods have sugars added which add considerably to our calorie intakes. Artificial sweeteners when the first arrived signalled a change in our approach because we believed that they offered a no calorie solution, all the sweetness and none of the calories. This is not exactly how it turned out.

Artificial sweeteners are typically 200 to 600 times sweeter than sugar and our bodies process them as if they were sugars by stimulating our taste buds to react to the sweetness and go on to affect our hormones and to slow your metabolism thus leading to us storing them as fats in our bodies and adding to our weight.

Sugars and sweeteners are both addictive, but the latter is more likely to make you feel hungrier, eat more and has been linked with the development of diabetes, as has sugar.

Added sugar, most nutritionists will tell you is not an essential part of any diet as eating a balanced diet of fruit, veg and protein will give you all the natural sugars you body requires to function properly. However, we all like treats, but the best advice is to make your own treats, that way you know exactly how much sugar you’ve put in. If you buy treats in store, it is hard to know how much sugars such products contain.