I suppose that I am lucky in that I do not really like most sweet foods. (Honey and thick cut marmalade excepted) For example, I can't understand people who are addicted to Coke....and diet coke is just more of the same for me.
I should be glad of that really because I just spotted a piece of news that suggested that artificial sweeteners could sabotage a diet - especially a low carb diet. Incidentally I think this is a very important finding that has some serious implications.
Your gut has taste receptors
Researchers in the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified taste receptors in the human intestines. The taste receptor T1R3 and the taste G protein gustducin are critical to sweet taste in the tongue. Research now shows these two sweet-sensing proteins are also expressed in specialized taste cells of the gut where they sense glucose within the intestine.
“We now know that the receptors that sense sugar and artificial sweeteners are not limited to the tongue. Our work is an important advance for the new field of gastrointestinal chemosensation - how the cells of the gut detect and respond to sugars and other nutrients,” said lead author, Robert F. Margolskee, MD, PhD Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “Cells of the gut taste glucose through the same mechanisms used by taste cells of the tongue. The gut taste cells regulate secretion of insulin and hormones that regulate appetite. Our work sheds new light on how we regulate sugar uptake from our diets and regulate blood sugar levels.”
The same story is expanded on here
Carbohydrate ingested from meals & beverages breaks down into glucose, which stimulates the sweet-sensing proteins in these gut taste cells. Activating the sweet–sensing proteins of the gut taste cells promotes secretion of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), an intestinal hormone that plays a key role in promoting insulin secretion and regulating appetite.
So what it is saying is that your gut has taste sensors. It doesn't matter that you are eating something no real glucose in it, your gut can't tell...it still tastes sweet. What happens then? Your gut secretes a hormone that promotes insulin secretion. So it seems that insulin is produced because the gut senses sugar even it it is only nutrasweet....Then the insulin will do its work.... insulin is a storage hormone, affecting nutrient storage in tissues including fat cells. So, artificial sweeteners could be getting you to shift excess more calories into fat.....that is what your body does with sweet things!
There are so many people out there ingesting lots of artificial sweeteners thinking that they are calorie free and therefore ok....but they may be promoting the same hormonal responses which are the real problem.