Consuming less amount of sugar has become a trend nowadays. This has resulted in the emergence of various natural as well as artificial sweeteners and all of them help in controlling calorie intake while ensuring a healthy body. But if you look thoroughly, then not many of them provides 100% benefits as they promise. Most of them have a bad after taste or they are not really 100% calorie-free.

So what’s the next alternative available for calorie-conscious people?

Natural sweeteners are nutritive and chemical free sweeteners. One of the major examples of natural sweetener is Stevia, a sugar substitute that comes from the stevia plant and contains zero calories. However, artificial sweeteners are non-nutritive and include low-calories or non-calories. Some of the examples of artificial sweetener include sucralose (Splenda), aspartame (NutraSweet and Equal), acesulfame potassium, saccharin (Sweet’N Low) and neotame. Apart from this, there are many major differences between stevia natural sweeteners and other artificial sweeteners. Let’s explore them.

Natural v/s Artificial sweeteners

An all-natural sweetener is Stevia, extracted from the leaves of the Stevia plant. These leaves are naturally sweet and can be used in liquid and powdered form. Stevia can be used by everyone including diabetic people, without worrying about blood sugar level and excessive calories.

When it comes to artificial sweeteners like refined white sugar, sucralose, and aspartame; they all leave a negative effect on our bodies after consumption. For instance, consuming refined sugar can lead to obesity and insulin resistance. Similarly, aspartame creates formaldehyde in the body and can be dangerous to the brain cells when combined with food colours. Furthermore, sucralose is a highly processed sweetener for which chlorine is also used amongst other chemicals for processing.

Health effects of natural v/s artificial sweeteners

Natural sweeteners like Stevia comes from the Stevia plant which is totally natural. These sweeteners are produced by using very minimal processing techniques and that makes them the best sugar substitutes available in the market today. Furthermore, sweeteners based on Stevia contain zero calories and ensure a healthy blood sugar level in an individual’s body.

Wherein, artificial sweeteners claims to contain zero calories but many of them have been proven to be unsafe and react negatively with the human body. Scientists and nutritionists have been conducting research on artificial sweeteners to find the impact of them on the human body. That being said, artificial sweeteners are processed by using a whole lot of chemical substances such as low-molecular-weight carbohydrates, aminoacyl sugars, peptides, terpenoids, chlorinated hydrocarbons, N-sulfonyl amides, and sulfamates etc. And that makes their claim questionable.

Study on Natural and Artificial Sweetener

As per a study published by Zevia (zero calorie soda brand), two groups of people were given a three-day meals that included six meals in total. One bunch was kept on natural sweetener that was extracted from the Stevia plant, while the other had to take artificial sweeteners like sucrose (sugar), and aspartame (artificial sweetener). Both of these people were given a pre-meal snack sweetened with the mentioned sweeteners.

At the end of the study, researchers observed that people given stevia snack consumed lesser amount of calories throughout the day as compared to the people who consumed artificial sweetener snack. The study says, “In other words, stevia and aspartame didn’t cause people to compensate for the calorie deficit. They still ate less.”

Additionally, people consuming stevia had significantly lower post-meal blood sugar when compared to the bunch who consumed artificial sweeteners.

This brings us to the conclusion that stevia-based sweeteners are more beneficial for human bodies since it doesn’t cause metabolic disorders like obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes that are directly linked to the high blood sugar level in the body. For this reason, Stevia is preferred by many companies over artificial sweeteners. Therefore, Swee10 too has decided to avoid usage of any harmful artificial sweetener and instead chosen stevia as the primary ingredient of our products.