5 expert-approved ways to eliminate artificial sweeteners in your diet

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Reaching for a diet soda or artificially sweetened snack to lose weight or to enjoy a few more treats? A growing number of scientists believe that’s not a good idea.

After studies found no long-term benefit, the World Health Organization announced in May 2023 that people should not rely on any sugar substitute — including stevia and monk fruit — to control their weight. Long-term use of low- or no-calorie sweeteners may lead to an increase in eating and greater amounts of body fat known as adipose tissue, additional research has shown.

Various nonnutritive sweeteners have also been linked to heart disease and early death, migraines, depression, dementia, disruptions in gut microbiomes, cancer and cognitive, behavioral and developmental issues. In July 2023, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified one synthetic sweetener, aspartame, as “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” although the US Food and Drug Administration disagreed.

Sugar substitutes may also be linked to heart disease. Recent studies have found xylitol and erythritol — sugar alcohols used to tame the intense sweetness of stevia, monk fruit and lab-made sweeteners — associated with an increase in blood clots.

“Every sugar alcohol we’ve looked at has the same property of fostering an increase in clotting,” said Dr. Stanley Hazen, chair of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute.

“In the case of like erythritol, it takes days to get out of your system, and during that time you’re going to be at higher risk for a clotting event like a heart attack or stroke,” said Hazen, lead author on the recent xylitol and erythritol studies.

The FDA, however, has approved six artificial sweeteners and considers them “generally recognized as safe” or GRAS. Those FDA-approved sugar substitutes include sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K, neotame and advantame.

The Calorie Control Council, an international association that represents the low- and reduced-calorie food and beverage industry, told CNN via email that leading health ‎agencies have validated the safety and role of alternative sweeteners in weight management.

“It is concerning that the WHO ‎recommends limiting these ingredients, which are crucial tools in the management of diabetes,” said Carla Saunders, the council’s president.

If you’re concerned about the possible harm of artificial sweeteners, here are some expert tips on how to cut or at least reduce them.

Tame your sweet ‘fang’

Americans are so accustomed to the super-sweetness of sugar substitutes that we have developed not just a sweet tooth but a sweet “fang,” said preventive and lifestyle medicine specialist Dr. David Katz.

“Evolutionary biology went out of its way to reward us for getting enough protein, enough salt, enough fat and enough sugar to stay alive. This reward pathway is where addiction comes from,” said Katz, a nutritionist who founded the True Health Initiative, a nonprofit global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine.

“For most of our history we got too little of these nutrients, and we crave them. Now we get too much, so we need to stop craving them, yet we don’t,” Katz said. “We have Stone Age impulses in the modern world.”

It is possible to rehab your taste buds to desire fewer sweets, just as many have reduced their dependence on salt when faced with heart disease, he said.

“You’ll be bathing your taste buds in less sugar all day. They will, little by little, come out of their sugar-induced coma,” Katz said. “You’ll be more sensitive to sugar.”

You’ll have to cut your sugar intake at the same time you’re weaning off artificial sweeteners to teach your tongue to taste again. Katz calls the process “taste bud rehab,” a term he coined more than a decade ago.

“If I asked you to boycott all the desserts in your life, you would probably rebel or fail,” Katz said. “But there is a massive amount of added sugar and sweeteners hiding in foods that are not sweet — in salad dressing, pasta sauce, bread, crackers, even salty chips.”

By choosing products without sweeteners, it’s possible to reduce a person’s daily intake of sugar or sweeteners “by a third, maybe even a half as many grams a day before we even lay a hand on anything that you actually expect to be sweet,” he said.

Research shows that taste buds will respond by finding sugary foods that used to be delicious now cloyingly sweet, or in the case of sodium, much too salty, Katz said.

“It’s been shown in clinical trials that people actually develop aversions to what they used to crave and cravings for foods they used to avoid, essentially because of taste bud rehab,” he said.

Learn to read labels

To find those hidden sweeteners, however, you’ll need to become a label detective, experts say. Look not only for the familiar terms of “diet” and “no” or “zero” calories but also scour nutrition labels of foods advertised as “low calorie,” “light” and “no sugar added.”

Learn to recognize all the FDA-approved sweeteners but also check for sugar alcohols, known as polyols, which are chemically like sugar but have fewer calories. Manufacturers often add one or more polyols for bulk in artificial sweeteners sold for baking and in small individual packets.

On the label, polyols may be listed by their individual names, which all end with an “tol” — such as sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, lactitol, maltitol and mannitol — or grouped under the generic term sugar alcohol.

And because artificial sweeteners are found in thousands of products, identifying all the many ways sugar substitutes have entered your life may be challenging — even nonfood products may contain sugar additives. Examples include toothpaste, lip gloss, mints, chewing gum, children and adult medications, dietary supplements and protein bars and powders.

Be wary of health and diet claims

Artificial sweeteners may also be in food and drink advertised as “healthy“ or as part of a popular diet such as paleo and keto-friendly, said Julia Zumpano, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition.

“If the label classifies carbs as low carb or zero grams of net carbs, that would probably indicate it has some artificial sweetener in it,” Zumpano said.

“A lot of companies also market their products as healthy or even as a health food, and people often just assume that means it doesn’t have any artificial things in it, including sweeteners,” she said.

There’s an easy way to test for sweeteners, Hazen said: “If it tastes sweet and yet it claims that it has very few calories, they’re using some kind of artificial sweetener to sweeten it. That’s the thing to try to stay away from, even if you can’t see it on the label.”

Ready the alternatives

A mistake people often make when trying to cut sugar or artificial sweeteners from their diet is not having an alternative for when the urge for a sweet becomes intense, Zumpano said.

“What am I going to have when this craving comes up? What am I going to do to adjust, to be able to minimize the craving?” she asked.

One tip is to include more protein and fiber-rich foods in your diet, which can help regulate blood sugars and provide a feeling of fullness, Zumpano said. Fresh fruit, which can be dressed up by adding spices and made even sweeter if baked or grilled, is another option.

Every now and then, it’s fine to have some sugar, especially in its natural form, such as by adding a teaspoon of honey to hot tea or oatmeal.

“The problem isn’t sugar. It’s the excessive amount of sugar we consume,” she said. “If we’re putting a half a cup of honey in a cup of tea or eating packets of sugar-sweetened oatmeal, that’s the problem.”

Focus on your sleep

What does sleep have to do with cutting back on sugar and artificial sweeteners? A lot, Zumpano said.

“People who crave sweets are very often not getting enough rest,” she said. “Think about what you’ll turn to for an afternoon pick-me-up — are you really craving a veggie tray? Or are you looking for a coffee and a doughnut?”

Biologically, a lack of sleep fuels instincts for rich, sweet, fatty foods, according to behavioral neuroscientist Erin Hanlon, who studies the connection between brain systems and behavior at the University of Chicago. According to Hanlon’s research, sleep deprivation causes an endocannabinoid receptor in the brain to malfunction — the same receptor that triggers the marijuana “munchies.”

Research also shows that when you’re sleep-deprived, levels of a hormone that regulates hunger called ghrelin tend to spike, sparking the urge to eat. At the same time levels of a hormone called leptin that tells the brain when the stomach is full plummet.

The good news is that there are scientifically proven ways to get your sleep back on track. Learn how to train your brain for better sleep here.

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