The International Sweeteners Association (ISA) is urging healthcare professionals to promote "˜simple swaps´ to adult consumers in order to encourage sustainable weight loss.
Simple swaps are small and manageable changes to daily eating and drinking habits where consumers replace a typical food or drink choice for a lower calorie version. For example, a regular 330ml can of soft drink contains around 139 calories, but by swapping to a diet or light version, the same quantity of soft drink contains less than 1. Similarly, a 100g serving of raspberry jelly is 80 calories when made with sugar, or just five calories when made with low calorie sweeteners.
Speaking at the International Sweeteners Association Symposium at ECO2012,
Dr Richard Mattes, Purdue University, Indiana, US said: "Reducing energy intake is essential to achieve weight loss. That is why encouraging people to make simple substitutions from products made with higher energy-yielding sweeteners, to ones made with low or no calorie sweeteners, can be an effective weight management approach. It allows consumers to moderate their energy intake without having to avoid certain foods completely."
Dr Julie Mennella, Monell Chemical Sciences Center, Philadelphia, PA, US added: "Research indicates that our preference for sweet tastes is something that we are born with and presumably evolved to attract us to our mother´s milk and sources of energy. So within hours of birth infants exhibit a strong preference for sweet taste."
In order to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, individuals need to pay close attention to how they manage a preference for sweetness and balance the number of calories consumed with the number of calories burned off. By substituting low calorie sweeteners for sugar it is possible to lower the energy density of foods and drinks. As such, low calorie sweeteners can eliminate or substantially reduce the calories in some foods and drinks, offering an easy method of reducing calories while maintaining the palatability of the diet.
Hans Heezen, Chairman of the ISA said: "Dieting is more popular than ever - on average one in five Europeans goes on a diet at least once in every two years[1]. But with global overweight and obesity levels continuing to rise, it is clear that many of these attempts to lose weight aren´t working. We believe that low calorie sweeteners enable consumers to make simple swaps in their diet that promote weight loss and which can be sustained because they aren´t prohibiting us from our natural desire for sweet things. We are urging healthcare professionals to help promote the idea of simple swaps to their patients in order to try and tackle obesity levels. Our presence at ECO2012 is part of our contribution to the scientific discussion around obesity.
Low calorie sweeteners are the only means of giving food and drinks a sweet taste without increasing their overall calorie content. A broad variety of high quality low calorie products are now available to people who do not wish to make any compromises on taste but who want to maintain a balanced diet low in calories.
ENDS
[1] "Diet, Cuisine and Cooking" a GfK study conducted for the Wall Street Journal Europe
About the ISA
The International Sweeteners Association (ISA) is a non-profit making organisation that represents European manufacturers and users of low calorie sweeteners.
It is recognised by the European Commission, national and international regulatory authorities, and the World Health Organisation.
For more information visit: www.sweeteners.org
About the Symposium
At this year´s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) Conference 2012, nutrition, food choice and behaviour experts Prof. Richard Mattes, Dr Julie Mennella and Dr Jean Michel Lecerf will explore how small changes in behaviour can help in weight management and what this means in the context of the global obesity debate. Speaking exclusively at the International Sweeteners Association (ISA) symposium, they will also explore the nature of sweet taste and our relationships with sweet tasting foods and drinks. The session will be moderated by Jason Halford Head of Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Liverpool and Chair of the UK Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO)
