Are artificial sweeteners the enemy?

There is no question, the word in the street is - stay away from artificial sweeteners.  Kurt Harris, a leading paleo source writes: " Artificial sweeteners, I believe, condition you to crave sweets. I have only personal and anecdotal clinical experience to support this, but it seems reasonable."

Really? That sounded strange to me. This is one of the most studied topic of the last fifty years - it seems so unlikely we wouldn't be able to have a way to measure the sweeteners effect on hunger.  So I went looking.

And here you go:

1. "Aspartame has not been found to increase food intake; indeed, both short-term and long-term studies have shown that consumption of aspartame-sweetened foods or drinks is associated with either no change or a reduction in food intake." [here]
2. "The addition of NNS [non-nutritive sweetener] to diets poses no benefit for weight loss or reduced weight gain without energy restriction. There are long-standing and recent concerns that inclusion of NNS in the diet promotes energy intake and contributes to obesity. Most of the purported mechanisms by which this occurs are not supported by the available evidence, although some warrant further consideration." [here]

As I browsed through the variety of studies, I found out that, predictably, consuming  sugary beverages will temporarily make you feel full.  Non-calorie sweeteners will not do that. However, there is little difference between drinking non-sweetened water and artificially-sweetened water when it comes to hunger. In fact, part of the problem with high fructose corn syrup may be that it does not make you feel full like sugar does.

While the internet at-large is filled with vicious propaganda against artificial sweeteners, I failed to find a medical study that confirmed their truth. My thought is that it is reasonable to assume, based on the strong sentiment against artificial sweeteners, there is plenty of motivation to prove these claims. Lack of evidence suggests just that - lack of existing available evidence in reality.