Carbohydrate Guide
Artificial sweeteners: what the evidence says
Sweeteners let you have the taste of sugar without the calories. Whether that translates into better health outcomes is a more complicated story.
What they are
Non-sugar sweeteners include aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, acesulfame-K, stevia, and monk fruit extract. They're intensely sweet — often hundreds of times sweeter than sucrose — so the quantity used contributes negligible calories and, in most cases, no meaningful effect on blood glucose. That makes them useful in principle for people managing blood sugar or total calories.
What the WHO concluded
In 2023 the World Health Organization issued a conditional recommendation against using non-sugar sweeteners as a means of achieving weight control or reducing the risk of noncommunicable diseases. The reasoning: while short-term trials show modest weight reduction, longer-term observational data did not show sustained benefit, and suggested possible associations with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.[1]
Read that carefully
The WHO explicitly labelled this a conditional recommendation based on low-certainty evidence, and noted the observational associations may reflect reverse causation — people already at higher risk are more likely to switch to sweeteners in the first place. It is not a finding that sweeteners are toxic, and it is not a safety warning about approved intake levels.[1]
The practical takeaway most researchers converge on: swapping sugary drinks for sweetened ones is likely an improvement over doing nothing, but neither is as good as shifting toward water and whole foods.
Keep reading: Added vs. natural sugar · Is sugar addiction real? · Net carbs vs. total carbs