> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.adelesulcas.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Sweet nothings - URL: https://www.adelesulcas.com/sweet-nothings/ - Published: 2023-06-05T13:37:17.000Z - Updated: 2023-06-05T13:37:17.000Z - Author: Adèle Sulcas - Tags: #Migrated-1793180770901, #sqs, #Import 2026-10-28 09:46 #### Less is not more - actually it is much, much less. Why non-sugar sweeteners mess up your health. June 5, 2023 - Remember Fresca? And Tab? And then the global domination of Diet Coke in the 1980s? For how many years have we without a second thought reached for a diet drink, safe in the knowledge that we’d get a hit of something sweet, a bit of a fizzy, tasty indulgence, a mid-procrastination-at-work mini-break - at no cost to our silhouette, or our guilt-prone psyche that used to obsess about calorie counts? It’s been longer than we think, or at least, than I thought - it was 1952 when the Kirsch Bottling Company of Brooklyn, New York, first produced a sugar-free ginger ale, and other sugar-free drinks were well-established by the 1970s. (My firsts were Fresca and Tab, thanks to my figure-conscious granny, Zelda.) It’s no exaggeration to say that since then, they’ve become a veritable fixture in popular foods and drinks everywhere - and not just “diet” products. Nowadays in South Africa, in fact, you can’t get away from them - non-sugar sweeteners (sucralose, acesulfame-K, aspartame, cyclamates, even saccharin sometimes - still!) are to be found in almost all sweetened and fizzy drinks. Try and buy your child an old-fashioned sugar-sweetened ginger ale or a tonic water that won’t make your G&T taste like a lead pipe, and you can’t find it, at least not among easily available mainstream brands. Which is a great shame, really, because on May 15, WHO officially advised the world not to use “non-sugar sweeteners”, in its first-ever guideline on the subject. Why now? Because countries had begun asking for guidance on the use of sweeteners since [WHO’s 2015 release of ever-stricter guidelines on the consumption of added sugars](chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/http:/apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/149782/1/9789241549028%5Feng.pdf?ua=1) gave quite a strict bit of advice: To limit our consumption of added or “free” sugars to a maximum 10% of our daily energy intake, and preferably 5%, which equates to 6 teaspoons of sugar, total. (See my note on “free” sugars at the end.) The ramping up of added ‘artificial’ sweeteners drinks, in particular, in South Africa started in 2018\. This was when South Africa introduced into law the “sugar tax” - unhelpfully called, by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) the [Health Promotion Levy](https://www.sars.gov.za/customs-and-excise/excise/health-promotion-levy-on-sugary-beverages/?ref=adelesulcas.com) (“unhelpfully” because the ZAR10-billion-plus in revenues so far from the so-called HPL have not gone to promote health - apart from, arguably, the health of some individuals’ bank accounts - despite the SARS’ description of it as a levy “in support of the Department of Health’s deliverables to decrease diabetes, obesity and other related diseases in South Africa”). The tax is levied “at source”, in other words on the manufacturer, once the sugar content of any drink with added sugar (ie. not fruit juices, controversially, given the “free sugar” problem) surpasses 4g per 100ml. So to keep below that threshold, some sugar is taken out, and a variety of non-sugar sweeteners - often two or three or four in the same product - are put in. So now we have a double whammy of potential damage, because soft drinks in South Africa now contain sugar *and* non-sugar sweeteners, both of which harm our health. The [World Health Organization is now clearly stating](https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-use-non-sugar-sweeteners-for-weight-control-in-newly-released-guideline?ref=adelesulcas.com) that what we thought was free (ie. calorie-free pleasurable beverage) is actually quite costly: While we might lose weight in the short term, in the long term we are 75% more likely to become obese, and between 23% and 34% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes (among other potentially life-threatening diseases). Most of us grew up with the notion that ‘diet’ products were somehow ‘free’ - no calories, no immediate prospect of weight gain, no impact at all on our bodies or brains, except perhaps a minor offence to our tastes from the slightly metallic or bitter aftertaste of artificial sweeteners, especially in the days when saccharin- and cyclamate-based ones prevailed. A certain dominant diet cola’s “just for the taste of it” tagline when it was launched in 1982 did its best to gloss over this - until the approval of aspartame in 1985 made the slogan slightly more meaningful. Skipping over the rise and rise, in the intervening decades, of ‘diet’ drinks and ‘diet’ everything else - including in the past few years ‘diet’ chocolate whose most successful versions, taste-wise, use polyols, a category of sugar alcohols, for their sweetness - and we as consumers are not just accustomed to but often dependent on non-sugar and other non-nutritive sweeteners to keep the sweetness levels of much of what we eat extraordinarily high. (Arguably not in France and other places where people consume, on average, a lot less ultra-processed food than the 50%+ in the United States and around 60% in the United Kingdom - read read Pamela Druckerman’s [*French Children Don’t Throw Food*](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/20/french-children-food-pamela-druckerman?ref=adelesulcas.com) for further elucidation.) Renowned epidemiologist Tim Spector, who (as the [Zoe podcast](https://joinzoe.com/learn/category/podcasts?ref=adelesulcas.com) frequently tells us) is “one of the 100 most-frequently cited scientists worldwide,” and most recently the author of *Food for Life,* was happy to see the WHO’s new guideline on non-sugar sweeteners, and on May 17 tweeted, “Finally after many academic papers warning of the lack of benefit of artificially sweetened drinks & foods & plenty of evidence of harm - the WHO is the first official body to warn us! Hopefully this is the tipping point in the fight against fake food.” Spector’s reference to “fake food” crosses us over into the debate about ultra-processed foods (UPF) by referencing the fact that we consume non-sugar sweeteners mainly in highly-processed food products (in which sweeteners now routinely are added to a truckload of other added chemicals including flavourings, emulsifiers, thickeners, colourings and preservatives to improve mouthfeel, taste, texture, and shelf-life. Not least importantly - and this is a point WHO is determined to make - our massive consumption, globally, of sugar- and non-sugar-sweetened drinks, foods, and “food formulations” (as those agglomerations of chemicals and real-food extracts are best called) is occurring in a context where processed foods and drinks have become increasingly sweet over time and our taste preferences have been influenced, so that we expect - and seek - more sweetness in what we eat and drink. Sweeteners (including sugar) are often hidden in foods we would never suspect (or think we would want) to be sweet: Industrially produced bread (yes, bread), pre-prepared pasta sauces, soups, salad dressings, ostensibly savoury snacks like crisps and crackers - the list goes on. And why? Because manufacturers want us to eat more of them. There is [emerging research on the damages to the gut microbiome from non-sugar sweeteners](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092867422009199?ref=adelesulcas.com) and all those other chemicals and additives in ultra-processed foods that is heading fast in the same direction as WHO’s guidance on sweeteners - [they are harmful for our long-term health](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-01-25-growing-medical-evidence-shows-non-nutritive-sweeteners-widely-used-in-drinks-and-food-sabotage-health/?ref=adelesulcas.com). There is also research-in-progress on [“rare sugars”](https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-magazine/issues/2023/february/columns/7-ingredients-rare-sugars-sustainable-sweet?ref=adelesulcas.com) such as allulose and tagatose, which are very low-calorie, about as sweet as sugar, occur naturally in very small quantities in plant foods such as figs, raisins and wheat, and are thought to be better for our health. Watch this space. \*\*\* **Note on “free” sugars:** - “Free” sugars, include the sugars found in unsweetened fruit juice, so they are not, strictly speaking, equivalent to “added” sugars. WHO’s sugar guideline quotes the WHO’s unfortunately-named NUGAG - the Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group - Subgroup on Diet and Health which says: “Free sugars include monosaccharides and disaccharides added to foods and beverages by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, and sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates”. This means added sugars as well as sugars naturally present in…) - WHO’s 6-teaspoon equivalent per day does not refer to the sugar that you might add into your coffee or tea over the course of the day, but the total amount of sugars intrinsic to (eg. fruit juice) or processed in (eg. chips, biscuits, tomato sauce) your food. Of course, it’s not easy to know how much has been hidden in our food - but chances are, if you’re eating processed or ready-prepared foods of any kind, there’s added sugar in them.