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In part 4 of this Exclusive Interview, Judith Wylie-Rosett talks with Diabetes in Control Publisher Steve Freed about the impact of artificial sweeteners on weight loss efforts as well as cardiometabolic health.
Judith Wylie-Rosett, EdD, RD is a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY.
Transcript of this video segment:
Freed: So, do we know if a person who’s overweight switches from the sweet drinks to the artificial sweeteners, can they actually lose weight or — obviously it depends on –?
Wylie-Rosett: The clinical trials say absolutely yes that that somebody can lose. The typical weight loss is probably five to ten pounds but that’s within the first three months. And that’s assuming they were consuming two cans of regular soda before they started the trial that showed that. So, if they were a low consumer of sugar sweetened beverages the switch would probably — but if you take somebody who’s consuming 250 calories of sugar sweetened beverages or 500 calories which is very commonly done, you just take that out of the diet and switch to a low calorie sweetened beverage then you’re cutting out 500 calories. They should be able to lose a pound a week. And the studies tend to be fairly consistent with that.
Freed: What’s the evidence regarding the effects of low calorie sweeteners on cardiometabolic health?
Wylie-Rosett: Interestingly, there had been a review that looks at 28 trials; 13 of the trials look at people with diabetes. But only — of the 13, only five looked at Glycated Hemoglobin A1C. And of the five Glycated Hemoglobin A1C, none showed improvement in the Hemoglobin A1C. So, that raises a question of what it does. And there had been very few studies that have looked cardiometabolic risk factors like the lipid profile, the triglycerides. So, that we really don’t know as much as we wish, we think we might know. We assume since sweeteners have been around for over a 100 — the low calorie sweeteners have been around for over a 100 years, we would think that research would have been done but it’s not there in the literature.
Freed: Well, you’re an expert in the low calorie sweeteners which one would you recommend or do you ever recommend?
Wylie-Rosett: Actually we’ve now had a proliferation of using fruit essence in water and the water infusers. And I personally don’t like the diet soda or any soda. I don’t like the sweetened carbonated beverages. So, I’m very happy with the fruit essence and I think it’s going to probably increase in popularity.
Freed: Yeah, but would you put that in your coffee?
Wylie-Rosett: I actually have never — I always thought if I would ever want sweet coffee it’s as iced coffee. I am not a sweetened coffee or sweetened tea [fan]. Somebody said that’s my Scottish background.