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Dr. Martínez-González is very clear about the dilemma.
” Products sell more when sugar is added. Consumers put more calories in their bodies when the calories are well sweetened. An alternative is saccharin and other sweeteners that lack calories. But are non-caloric sweeteners useful as an alternative? healthy for sugar? “
Drinking ‘zero’ Soft Drinks is a More Expensive Way to Drink Tap Water.
The author of the book “Health with Certain Science” lists all the substances that do not add calories to the diet and that serve to give that sweet taste, such as acesulfame-potassium (E-950), aspartame (E-951), monosodium cyclamate (E-952) or saccharin (E-954). He takes as a reference the United States Food and Drug Administration, which has given its approval and classified as ” generally safe ” five of them: acesulfame-potassium, aspartame, saccharin, sucralose and neotame. He has also approved advantame (E-969), a combination of aspartame and vanillin that is 37,000 times sweeter than sugar and 100 times sweeter than aspartame.
This great expert on the Mediterranean diet, who is a professor at the prestigious Harvard University and who founded the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra, makes a comparison that is very interesting when it comes to putting into perspective what What these alternative substances to sugar represent. ” Both these sweeteners and the “zero” soft drinks that contain them can be considered mere transition products -comparable to nicotine patches for smokers-, which will serve for a period of getting used to before definitively switching to water .”
What Does Other Experts Say?
For Miguel Ángel Martínez-González ” in nutritional terms, these sweetened products do not contribute anything .” The expert recognizes that they are healthier products than their sugar-free alternatives and that they do not have “adverse effects” although he does find a but: drinking drinks with this type of sweetener helps maintain the social custom that one should drink sweet soft drinks, instead of water, and a taste for artificially sweet things also develops , especially in children.
Dr. Martínez-González’s conclusion is emphatic: ” Drinking “zero” soft drinks is a more expensive way to drink tap water. They are only a good intermediate step to abandoning sugary soft drinks. But the ultimate goal, I insist, must always be drinking water “.
