Are sweeteners bad for you? Let’s find out together with a scientific study and personal experience.
Generally, due to sporting activity, I use whey protein powder for a daily shake in my diet, and especially when I’m away from home for work, have the ingredients for a protein shake on hand or have a bar on hand. it allows me not to end up eating only carbohydrates. So everything is fine. But no. After the first few months of using protein powders, often sweetened, I realized that the sweetish aftertaste of sweeteners in my mouth was constant. I ended up getting used to it quickly, until it almost didn’t feel too sweet anymore. The problem was that the other foods suddenly seemed bland. Moral of the story? Now I only use neutral proteins, those without sweeteners.

But this experience, for me who no longer use sweeteners in a habitual way for years, made me understand a few things :
– the body easily gets used to excess sweetness, until it no longer considers it as sweet
– if you eat sweetened foods (or very sweet, so the same thing can be said for foods that are too sugary) you end up finding all other foods insipid, that is, not very tasty. 

Scientists in Australia have come to similar conclusions: the supply of sweets and confectionery is disproportionate, but so far it is not known for sure whether sweeteners are bad or can be used as a substitute for sugar without any consequences.

There have been many studies (I have talked about some of them here on Dcomedieta) but there is almost certainty about one thing, and for this reason I have told you about my particular case. While it cannot be established with certainty whether sweeteners are bad (without distinction between artificial and natural), it has been established that on non-human samples (fruit flies and mice) sweeteners push to eat more. Thirty percent more for fruit flies, fifty percent more for mice.

And it is no coincidence that, for example, now that the so-called “fitchefs” are in fashion, taking into account that in sports supplementation many products contain sweeteners, recipes that imitate junk food are somewhat the rule. Pancakes with various sucralose syrups, cream and chocolate ice creams with various fruit sauces on top, caramelized brownies. The munchies stuff that would make even Nigella pale. In short, the continuous taste of sweetness in your mouth that foods with sweeteners leave you pushes to a continuous and greater desire for sweet even when you are on a low-carbohydrate diet.
The problem is in fact in the brain the recognition of that flavor as sweet.And the consequences of this sweet taste, registered by our brain as such, which affects insulin even when we don’t eat real sugars. Result? You may end up eating more, or getting hungrier.
Of course, it’s too early to say that this happens automatically in humans, but paying attention to how much sweetened sodas, snacks and sweets with stevia can affect our sweet tooth can be helpful. Going for a week without using any sweetener foods, for example, and seeing if after a week our hunger for sweets has decreased, can be a great idea!