Any Advantage in Advantame?
The EU have approved Advantame from Ajinomoto and given it E969 number. I must confess to have not studied it greatly but it seems that the approval could be called, “Son of Aspartame “; which brought to mind “Son of Frankenstein” where the son of the original monster creator revives the monster to prove his father was right! It is derived from aspartame and vanillin apparently and gives a product that is 7000 times sweetener than sugar.
I have not yet seen the costs but with so many alternatives now in the market is there room for another one? Ok it says it will help with calorie reduction and reduce sugar use in industry. Sugar is the bad guy at the moment in the fight against obesity. So far it does not seem to do any more than existing sweeteners. Am I missing something ?
As it is an Aspartame derivative there may be a lot of resistance to using it in health and sports products. despite being also derived from vanillin I don’t think we will see any advantages in creamy smooth flavour. Vanillin can be used to make a lot of other chemicals that don’t taste like vanilla.
There are also schools of thought that do not attribute weight loss to the use of low calorie sweeteners and in fact many claim that they increase weight. The main argument at the moment are Leptin and Ghrelin Hormone levels. Ghrelin is released when you are hungry and then Leptin is released to say that you have had enough. When they are in balance everything is OK. However in diets or diet products the hormones can be out of sync and many obese people are thought to be leptin resistant.
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found that dieting causes changes in leptin and ghrelin that lead to increased hunger, and that is most likely what ends up causing people to regain weight.[3] The study found that when we reduce calories, the response in the body is for leptin to decrease and ghrelin increases. This actually shouldn’t come as a big surprise, because that is the normal physiologic response to reduced food intake.
In other words reducung calories can imbalance these hormones and so intense sweeteners may not be as healthy and weight reducing as one thinks.
I wonder if Ajinomoto and Advantame have thought of this? Is weight loss just about reduction of calories ? We think not
We will be publishing an article soon on Leptin and Grhelin and the effects of sugar and fructose in our diets.