If you’ve been consuming artificial sweeteners to try and lose weight, new evidence suggests that you may want to reconsider your choice of sweeteners.

Psychologists at Purdue University's Ingestive Behavior Research Center published a report showing that among two groups of rats, those who consumed yogurt sweetened with saccharin consumed more calories and gained more weight - and body fat - than their rodent counterparts who consumed yogurt sweetened with simple sugar.  Essentially, artificial sweeteners - whose widespread popularity rests solely upon their supposed ability to prevent people from gaining weight – may actually make you fat.

The study, while conducted on rats, lines up with emerging evidence that people who drink more diet drinks have a higher chance of becoming obese or suffering from a metabolic syndrome – a condition which can contribute to the onset of heart disease, diabetes, and insulin resistance. Incidentally, obesity among human populations has risen in conjunction with increases in artificial sweetener consumption.

The unsettling fact is that 59% of Americans now consume diet soft drinks under the impression, or perhaps misleading, that they are actually healthier than calorie-laden counterparts.   The idea that these alternatives may be causing people to gain weight seems a gross nutritional injustice. Unfortunately, the danger of artificial sweeteners doesn’t end with a few extra pounds: the reasons they cause weight gain and the affect they have on the body are more concerning.

Doctors and researchers Susan Swithers, PhD, and Terry Davidson, PhD, have theorized that artificial sweeteners devoid of calories compromise the bodies’ ability to regulate intake; that is, by separating the connection between a sweet sensation and a high-calorie intake, the use of saccharin changes the way the body responds after ingestion.  The rats eating yogurt with zero-calorie sweetener later consumed more calories, their ingestive and digestive reflexes perhaps confused by the sensory stimulus from the sweetened yogurt.

The study also monitored changes in core body temperature. Normally when eating the metabolism speeds up, but the rats consuming artificial sweeteners showed a smaller rise in core body temperature after eating a typical, sweet tasting, high-calorie meal. While the cause of the weight gain is still not completely understood, a decreased metabolism could certainly have an effect on body mass and adipose tissue development.

Since few have accused artificial sweeteners of tasting better than sugar,  with growing evidence that zero-calorie sweeteners actually make you fat, plus straggling cancer-causing reports, we may very well see a better educated population reaching for an alternative to the alternative.