India, April 1 -- A new study from the University of Southern California (USC) revealed that sucralose, a widely used artificial sweetener, may deceive the brain by activating hunger-related pathways in the hypothalamus without providing the expected calories.
Kathleen Alanna Page, director of the USC Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, led the study to investigate how sugar substitutes affect the brain and body across different individuals.
Page and her team conducted a randomized study involving 75 participants of varying body weights (healthy weight, overweight, and obese). Each participant visited the lab three times and consumed one of the following: plain water, a sugar-sweetened drink, or a sucralose-sweetened drink.
The rese...