Non Nutritive Sweetener Research Paper

Introduction: The first artificial sweetener was discovered in 1879 when scientist Constantin Fahlberg at Johns Hopkins was preforming experiments on coal tar derivatives when he inadvertently discovered saccharin.1 A few years after its discovery, saccharin was mainly being marketed towards people with diabetes.1 Around the 1940’s, when there was a sugar shortage due to World War II and being thin was becoming a desired body type artificial sweeteners started to be consumed by the general public.1 This trend has continued into modern times, and has even increased. In 2003, 15% of Americans consumed Non-nutritive sweeteners compared to just 3% in 1965. 2 Artificial sweeteners, also called non-nutritive sweeteners, have a significantly reduced energy density in comparison to sugar.3 Another artificial sweetener that is common today is sucralose, which was discovered in 1979, and it has 600 times the sweetness of sucrose.1 Sucralose is formed by substituting …show more content…
In modern times, billions of people around the world consume these non-nutritive sweeteners, and in a study with 80,000 participants there was a significant correlation found between weight gain and non-nutritive sweetener.4 A key point in the thought process of switching from a sugar sweetened diet to one with non-nutritive sweeteners is that there is no compensation through the consumption of more food for the calorie reduction that came from the switch, which could result in an increased overall caloric intake.2 There have been multiple studies on the negative effects of non-nutritive sweeteners, with results ranging from an increase in metabolic syndrome in all age ranges, to an increased risk of developing diabetes even after the same people exhibited weight loss after starting a diet with non-nutritive sweeteners eight years prior.4 It has also been found that the exact diseases that artificial sweeteners are being used to prevent, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other disorders, can actually cause