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No (calorie) free lunches

Sugar, at least in its highly refined form, is not good for you.

Loaded with calories and lacking any real nutritional benefit aside from the energy it provides, refined sugar has become a problematic part of our modern-day diets.

The obesity epidemic that has seen the average BMI shoot upwards across the developed world is down primarily to refined foods with high sugar contents.

However, there are often "diet" alternatives to things such as sugary soft-drinks, confectionary and other sweet treats. We're told that these sugar-free alternatives taste just as good but are better for our health because they won't swell our waistelines and make us insulin resistant by way of type 2 diabetes.

The safety of these artificial sweetners has long been touted as "proven" by the companies that make and use them.

I think that just changed.

A new study, involving almost 13,000 adults, just produced some worrying findings.

According to this Science Daily report, many artificial sweetners have been linked to faster brain aging.

The effect is most pronounced in under-60-year-olds and those who already have diabetes.

The journal of the American Academy of Neruology, a wide range of artificial sweetners were shown to promote more rapid declines in memory and cognitive ability over time -- although the report is quick to point out that there's insufficient evidence to prove that the sweetners directly cause this decline.

Correlation is not causation, or at least not directly in this case.

Reading between the lines, it's possible that it's the effect that these sweetners have on blood insulin levels and the body's reaction to that insulin that may be the critical mechansim that provides the linkage.

The effect is also somewhat subtle, amounting to around 1.6 years of additional aging on average in a group with an average age of 52.

Other research has indicated that insulin release is sometimes stimulated, not by sugars themselves but by their sweet taste. This could mean that the regular use of artificial sweetners could result in a periodic excessive insulin release when such substances are ingested, which then somehow damages the brain.

This also helps explain why all the artificial sweetners tested had the exact same effect, despite their significantly different chemistries.

So I guess we're left choosing the lesser of two evils. Do we use sugar and risk the effects of too many calories and diabetes (which itself is a risk factor in afflictions such as dementia) or do we use artificial sweetners in the almost certain knowledge that our brains will be taking a hit?

Fortunately, those of us over 60 seemingly don't have to worry too much about the ill-effects of those artificial sweetners because those effects seem to peter-out once you reach your seventh decade. However, I will stick to my "low sweetness" diet which consists of very little refined sugar or artificial sweetners.

Dodged that bullet!

Carpe Diem folks!

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