Research in rats has found that artificial sweeteners may contribute to weight gain by confusing the body’s ability to control appetite and recognise when it will soon be full.

Study author, Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the Ingestive Behaviour Research Institute at Purdue University, said, ‘We found that the rats that were getting artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight and ate more food. The take-home message is that consumption of artificially sweetened products may interfere with an automatic process. We often will stop eating before we’ve been able to absorb all of the calories that come from a meal. One of the reasons we might stop eating is that our experience has taught in the past that, ‘After I eat this food, I’ll feel this full for this long’.

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New research from Japan appears to indicate that not all fats are necessarily bad for the liver.

The Japanese researchers changed the fat composition in the livers of mutant mice and proceeded to feed them the same highly fatty diet as they did a group of regular mice.

Both groups of mice became obese, with the regular mice developing resistance to insulin and becoming prone to diabetes, while the mutant mice remained free from these conditions.

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