Sweet danger: are sugar substitutes harmful to health?

Naturally sweet people who think sugar is harmful, their tea or coffee with synthetic sweeteners. Supposedly health conscious, they drink sugar-free lemonade and chew on sugar-free chewing gum. "There are many myths surrounding sugar and its alternatives that are sometimes far from the facts," says Professor Jan Frank, a nutritionist at the University of Hohenheim and chair of the Society of Nutrition and Food Science. Hardly anyone disputes that sugar, when consumed in excess, is harmful to health, not even Frank. But he warns: "Even sweeteners are not without controversy in terms of health." His suggestion: Also avoid chemical sweeteners and "lower your own sweet preference, ie the threshold of perception of sweets".

Sugar is a calorie bomb
"In addition to its caries-promoting effects, the main problem with sugar consumption turns out to be calorie intake," says Professor emeritus Hannelore Daniel from the Chair of Nutritional Physiology at the Technical University of Munich. Sweetened beverages are particularly problematic, "because this means that calories are supplied quickly and in large quantities, but only with a low satiety signal." Sugar is not harmful if you take care not to consume more calories than you need.
Anne Christin Meyer-Gerspach from the St. Claraspital of Clara Forschung AG in Basel also shares this opinion. She dramatically describes the risks of excessive sugar consumption. It proves to be "directly harmful to various organ systems and is jointly responsible for tooth decay, obesity, metabolic syndrome with impaired glucose tolerance up to diabetes mellitus, blood lipid disorders, high blood pressure, fatty liver formation and cardiovascular diseases."

Eating less helps with cookies
If only sugar substitute then at least natural additives such as xylitol, sorbitol and erythritol, which is also problematic with certain finished products. Because the so-called sugar alcohols are used in tiny quantities, other ingredients have to be added, which in turn may be problematic to health.

Things are even more tricky with cookies. Real sugar cannot be replaced here because substitutes are incompatible with yeast. The baked goods did not brown so well and the microbiological shelf life changed, said Alfred Mar, lecturer at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. Only one thing helps: "Eat fewer cookies."