The Scam Behind Zero And Low-Calorie Products
Diet soda and low-calorie foods are popular among people who are trying to lose weight or people who are conscious of their calorie consumption. Eating a low-calorie snack or drinking a zero calorie soft drink makes you feel relieved that you are taking in fewer calories and this will help you stay slim.
But do you know that you may be gaining weight because of these so-called ‘Healthy substitutes’ rather than losing it?
Think about it what do you see apart from the price when you buy a product. The label giving you the details of the nutritional content of that product. Right?? Making the labeling mandatory was a step taken to make us more aware of the quality of food we are eating but the Marketing and Food Industry has very smartly exploited our concern for our health. Now, when you see a product that is labeled 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g carbs, and 0 g proteins, you will automatically assume that it won’t have any effect on your weight.
Trust me the only thing with 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g carbs, and 0 g proteins that will not affect your health is air.
Understanding Food Labels
The problem with most of us is we know how to read the labels what we do not know is what to interpret from them. For example, when you see a diet soda labeled zero calories you assume it will literally have zero calories. However, according to the FDA ( Food and Drug Administration), anything less than 5 calories can be labeled as zero calories.
Similarly, anything labeled fat-free need not be fat-free. Anything which has less than .5 gm of fat per serving can be labeled as fat-free. (1)
As far as low-calorie or reduced calorie products are concerned, anything containing 25% fewer calories than it’s actual full calorie version can be labeled as reduced calorie and if it contains 50% less calorie than the actual one it is termed as low-calorie.
Now, if you are eating a low-calorie version of an ice-cream which naturally contains 200 calories, you are still taking in 100 calories.
Someone may say that 100 calories are still better than eating 200 calories. But we are more conscious about the quantity we are eating when we know that it is high in calorie but when you have the low-calorie thing at the back of your mind you will end up eating more.
Moreover, these low-calorie foods are full of sugary corn syrup and artificial sweeteners to give them a better taste and texture.
How Zero Calorie Confuses Our Body
Weight loss or weight gain is not just limited to calories, our brain plays a major role. It’s not your stomach but your brain which decides when to eat and when not to.
Even though, Diet sodas and other such products contain zero or low-calories they are loaded with artificial sweeteners. The thing with sweets, dessert or anything that contains sugar is that it activates our brain’s reward centre.
So, what is this reward system?
Sweets, drugs etc are all rewards which activates our brain’s pleasure centres. So, our reward centre once activated first finds a target for which to crave and then it starts releasing Dopamine. Dopamine the evil blocks out the prefrontal cortex which is the angel and has the ability to consider the long term impacts of giving in to our cravings. Either you will surrender in front of the evil and eat something sweet or you will try to fight it. Even if you have the will power to fight your cravings, your brain won’t give up and will start releasing stress hormones. You will start experiencing discomfort and will be tricked to believe that you will feel better only after you eat that piece of cake.
So, whether the soft drink contains calories or not once you start drinking it the sweeteners will activate the reward centre and make your brain think that calories will come in. But when it doesn't find calories it gets confused and will start demanding calories. (2) (3)
It will make you crave other sweet and high on calorie products. That is why soft drinks and pizza go along so well. So, at the cost of reducing your calories from one source, you end up consuming much more calories from some other food.
Frankly, drinking or eating these low-calorie alternatives once in a while will not harm you but prolonged and continued use will certainly screw your health and metabolism.
Also Read: Tabata Training- The 4 Minute Workout To A Leaner Body
Artificial Sweeteners And Calorie Mismatch
Dana Small, a neuroscientist at Yale University, discovered something shocking during her research. She created five beverages all with the same amount of an artificial sweetener ( Sucralose). All the five drinks tasted as sweet as a 75 calorie drink with sugar. She then varied the calories by adding a tasteless carbohydrate maltodextrin. The five drinks then prepared were equally sweet but had different calories- 37.5, 75, 112.5, 150.
The participants consumed each drink six times over a period of weeks — twice in the lab and four times at home. Small then used MRI brain scanning to see how each drink affected the brain reward system.
The 75 calorie drink had a much greater effect on the reward centre than the other drinks even the 150 calorie drink. Similarly, when she examined the metabolic response she saw that the 75 calorie drink was metabolised much more effectively than other drinks.
These results are completely unexpected and baffling. It took her two years to understand why this was happening?
When the participants drank the 75 calorie drink the body was expecting a certain amount of sweetness related to that number of calories. Since that was matched by sugar content in the drink it was more pleasurable for the brain and also our body could effectively metabolise it. But when we take a drink that is too high or too low in the number of calories compared to the sweetness related to it our system is not able to understand this mismatch and is thrown off-board.
So, the 150 calorie drink was high in calories but low on sugar ( because of sucralose). Hence our body can metabolise only the matching calories effectively and the remaining calories will be be stored as fat. For the low or zero calorie drinks, there would still be a mismatch as the calories are too low for the amount of sugar content in these drinks. This will again confuse our system and end up making us crave for matching calories to metabolise.
Side-Effects Of Zero/ Low-Calorie Products
As I already told you these products have a lot of artificial sweeteners in them. Earlier the side-effects of these sweeteners were debated. A 2018 study shows that not just sugar but artificial sweeteners are equally harmful and increase the risk of obesity and Type-2 diabetes.
The research team led by researcher Brian Hoffmann, Ph.D. ( assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marquette University) fed different groups of rats diets high in glucose or fructose (kinds of sugar), or aspartame or acesulfame potassium (common zero-calorie artificial sweeteners).
After three weeks, the results indicated that artificial sweeteners change the way our body processes fat and get energy.
The results also show that acesulfame potassium accumulates in the body over prolonged use and harms the cells that line blood vessels.
Also Read: Losing Weight Fast Or Slow: Which Is The Better Way?
The Verdict
My only advice would be to ditch anything that is labeled low-fat, low-calorie or zero calories. With growing awareness among people many food companies in order to reduce added sugars, have started designing all sorts of products that contain a mix of sweeteners and carbohydrates that could disrupt the body’s metabolic response.
The only way to avoid falling in this ugly trap is to stop believing everything you see and start living a normal life. Eating normal healthy food and doing regular exercise is the only way to stay healthy.
