Saccharin Leads to Weight Gain - Study

A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation by Rats


Authors: Susan E. Swithers and Terry L. Davidson
Purdue University

Abstract:

Animals may use sweet taste to predict the caloric contents of food. Eating sweet noncaloric substances
may degrade this predictive relationship, leading to positive energy balance through increased food intake
and/or diminished energy expenditure. These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that
experiences that reduce the validity of sweet taste as a predictor of the caloric or nutritive consequences
of eating may contribute to deficits in the regulation of energy by reducing the ability of sweet-tasting
foods that contain calories to evoke physiological responses that underlie tight regulation. Adult male
Sprague–Dawley rats were given differential experience with a sweet taste that either predicted increased
caloric content (glucose) or did not predict increased calories (saccharin). We found that reducing the
correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted
in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric
compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by
interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes.

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