Are Zero Added Sugar Drinks Bad For You? How do Sweeteners Work?

Zero added sugar drinks seem identical to regular ones but the first ones do not contain sugar, even if they taste sweet, how is this possible? How can I taste this sweet drink if there is no sugar? It's all thanks to the sweeteners that interact with the taste receptors on the tongue, tricking our brain: in practice they make it perceive a sweet taste even in the absence of sugar. This activation of the receptors creates a sensation of sweetness without providing calories. In practice, sweeteners are like "keys" that fit into the "locks" of our receptors, activating them and creating the perception of sweetness, but without providing the calories associated with sugars. So can we drink as many as we want? No, that's not exactly the case: today we will explain why it's good to moderate.

What Does Zero Added Sugar Drinks Mean?

Let's try to understand what "zero sugar drinks" really means. There are various sweetened molecules but some have a sweetening power that is hundreds of times greater than sugar, such as aspartame, one of the most famous molecules used in zero sugar drinks and that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization (WHO), classified aspartame as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2B). Possible carcinogen means that there is no certain proof that it is carcinogenic for humans and there is unclear research on animals: practically nothing is known, what is certain is that to have possible side effects we would have to drink from 9 to 16 cans a day. A decidedly exaggerated figure.

So what are the real reasons why you should limit these drinks? Simple, they don't cure your cravings for something sweet: it has been shown that people who drink zero drinks are then more tempted to "cheat" by eating something else that is sweet.  You should fight the desire for sweets by reducing not only the amount of sugar in your diet, but also by reducing everything that is sweet. In addition, researchers are investigating whether these sweeteners can have negative effects on the intestinal microbiota but they have not yet reached a certain answer.

In conclusion, if you find yourself out for dinner and want to drink a drink that is zero or classic with sugars, go ahead, obviously the zero ones have the advantage of having 0 calories so we can better manage the calories we consume, as long as we do not overdo it with the dessert at the end of dinner. For daily use, however, you need to pay more attention, not for the possible damage to health but for a question of habit.