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If one has a sweet craving during pregnancy, please avoid artificial sweeteners. (Photos.com)
Of all the foodstuffs that have limited nutritional value and the potential to cause harm, I put soft drinks near the top of the list.
The sugar contained in regular beverages has been linked with a range of adverse effects on health, including weight gain, metabolic syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
One review by a South African research team published in April 2008 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame also appear to have considerable potential to harm human health.
The hazardous effects of foodstuffs have particular relevance during pregnancy. Food and drink provides the basic building blocks of the growing fetus, but it can exert toxic effects that can affect the pregnancy and future health of the child.
A study published on June 30 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at the relationship between soft drink consumption and pregnancy outcome in almost 60,000 Danish women. The pregnancy outcome assessed in this study was preterm delivery, defined as delivery before 37 weeks of gestation (normal gestation is 40 weeks).
For sugar-sweetened beverages, there was no relationship between level of sugar consumption and risk of preterm delivery.
It was a different story for artificially sweetened drinks.
Compared to those drinking no artificially sweetened drinks, those having one or more servings of artificially sweetened drinks a day were found to have a 38 percent increased risk of preterm delivery. Consumption of four or more servings a day was associated with an increased risk of 78 percent.
Studies of this nature cannot be used to conclude that artificially sweetened drinks cause preterm delivery. However, as the authors of a study published in September 2004 in Neurotoxicology and Teratology point out, length of gestation may be affected by exposure to methanol.
Methanol is a known nerve toxin, which can be metabolized in the body to form formic acid (another nerve toxin), as well as formaldehyde (which is what is used to preserve dead bodies). It’s also a constituent of aspartame (the most ubiquitous artificial sweetener).
One study published in June 1998 in Life Sciences concluded that aspartame consumption might be a risk to health because it enables the formation of formaldehyde.
It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know if artificial sweeteners worsen pregnancy outcomes. However, given their ability for a myriad of toxic effects within the body, my advice would be to avoid them like the plague—pregnant or not.
Dr. John Briffa is a London-based physician and author with an interest in nutrition and natural medicine. His website is Drbriffa.com
