What Are Artificial Sweeteners?

Artificial sweeteners are found in a variety of food and beverages consumed by millions of people daily. They can be found in diet soda, chewing gum, and even protein shakes. You may be wondering: what exactly are artificial sweeteners? They are sugar substitutes created by chemical synthesis in a lab. These artificial sweeteners decrease added sugar content in foods and beverages while maintaining sweetness.

Common artificial sweetener names:

Artificial Sweeteners: Good or Bad? Debate

You may be thinking that less sugar means less calories to help with weight loss, but the safety of artificial sweeteners has been a subject of debate for decades. The artificial sweetener, saccharin, used to carry a warning label that consumption of it could be hazardous to your health. Studies have shown that artificial sweeteners can cause a variety of health problems, including weight gain, brain tumors, cancer and many other health hazards.

A new large scale study suggests artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk, which is in line with previous studies. The study participants who consumed large quantities of the artificial sweeteners aspartame and acesulfame potassium had a higher risk of overall cancer compared to those who did not consume it. The types of cancers most strongly linked to artificial sweeteners were breast cancer and those related to obesity.

The Big Takeaway

The researchers indicated that these findings provide a reason to re-evaluate the safety of these food additives by health agencies. In the meantime, health experts recommend that consumption of artificial sweeteners should be limited or avoided.

What Makes Us Different

While other protein shakes and powders contain artificial sweeteners, such as acelsufame potassium, OWYN never uses artificial sweeteners because we care about the health of our consumers. OWYN formulates every product with clean, plant based, allergy friendly ingredients. To make things easy, we have created a cheat sheet of five common ingredients to stay away from when selecting your protein shakes.