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A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has found a possible mechanism explaining why use of the sugar substitute aspartame might not promote weight loss. In their report published online in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, the researchers show how the aspartame breakdown product phenylalanine interferes with the action of an enzyme previously shown to prevent metabolic syndrome -- a group of symptoms associated with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They also showed that mice receiving aspartame in their drinking water gained more weight and developed other symptoms of metabolic syndrome than animals fed similar diets lacking aspartame.
"Sugar substitutes like aspartame are designed to promote weight loss and decrease the incidence of metabolic syndrome, but a number of clinical and epidemiologic studies have suggested that these products don't work very well and may actually make things worse," says Richard Hodin, MD, of the MGH Department of Surgery, the study's senior author. "We found that aspartame blocks a gut enzyme called intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP) that we previously showed can prevent obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome; so we think that aspartame might not work because, even as it is substituting for sugar, it blocks the beneficial aspects of IAP."
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Sunday November 27 2016, @03:18PM
Do you have evidence that the tongue is linked, in any way, to the hormones that control hunger? Specifically, Insulin and Leptin?
Fructose (as in sugar and HFCS), however, interferes with both of these. Leptin is what tells your brain you've had enough [youtu.be].
That same video also goes into how your body processes various chemicals, but nowhere does it mention taste being involved.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 27 2016, @07:02PM
I think you are using an oversimplified model. I don't have any such evidence, but I also don't expect any such evidence. (It wouldn't surprise me if such appeared, but I see no reason to expect it.) A lot of human behavior is based around learned habits, and those habits may be created in many different ways. I'd also expect non-human mammals to have lots of "habitual" behaviors that aren't directly linked to the physiological signals that are purported to cause them, but this may be quite difficult to prove as a laboratory is far from a normal environment. It also wouldn't surprise me to find that the same is true of some avian behaviors. The making of tools by crows is evidence that this kind of indirect causation must be present, even if it isn't as common in birds as in mammals. (Birds have a lot of evolutionary history where they stripped out any weight that was non-essential, to the point where many migrating birds strip out much of their sexual machinery when time to migrate approaches.) And it is my non-expert supposition that reptiles and amphibians don't have anywhere nearly as many indirect pathways.
But humans, and to a lesser extent other mammals, have lots and lots of complex indirect control pathways. Leptin is one such effector, but it's not the only reason people do/don't feel hungry, and people can avoid feeling hungry even when the level of leptin says they should. Confine someone to a bed or a cage and it becomes more significant...partially due to the lower level of other stimuli.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Tuesday November 29 2016, @03:11AM
A fair point - I fully believe that psychology is a major factor in weight gain/loss. But I still do not think it's related to whether the taste actually has calories.
There are a lot of people on keto (low-carb, high fat) that report intense carb cravings after eating certain 0-calorie sweeteners, especially Splenda. Other sweeteners like stevia do not seem to have the same trigger.
Also, I remember reading somewhere that most diets fail when people find their substitutions, and go back to the same bad habits. The low-carb, low-fat, or whatever version of what they were eating when they got fat.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 29 2016, @06:55PM
Interesting. I just essentially cut out carbs (well, not fiber, and not completely...just WAY down) and this caused by carb craving to almost go away. I even cut down on oat bran, because it was high in non-fiber carbs, where wheat bran wasn't...but I sure didn't cut it out. One result of this is that while I find the information on stevia interesting, I've no real interest in trying it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.