Consensus or Controversy? Hot Topics in Nutrition 2024
Friday, June 21, at 3:45 p.m. ET
Room W314
Orange County Convention Center
The WHO Said WHAT? Use of Nonnutritive Sweeteners for Weight Management, Prediabetes, and Diabetes
Katherine Appleton, PhD, RNutr
Academic,
Bournemouth University
What is your presentation about?
The World Health Organization recently suggested that “non-sugar sweeteners should not be used as a means of achieving weight control or reducing the risk of non-communicable disease (conditional recommendation).” This recommendation was given despite several recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials that demonstrate benefits of non-sugar sweeteners for weight management. This presentation will consider the detail of these systematic reviews, the additional evidence used by the WHO to result in the recommendation given, and the relevance of the evidence considered to those with diabetes and prediabetes.
How do you hope your presentation will impact diabetes research or care?
I hope the presentation will increase understanding of the scientific evidence currently available in this area, and of the value and limitations of different types of evidence. This will hopefully allow researchers and practitioners to make more informed use of the evidence available and the recommendations based on this evidence.
How did you become involved with this area of diabetes research or care?
My research interests lie in human eating behavior, with the aims of understanding healthy, and less healthy, eating behavior, and then encouraging healthy eating behavior based on this understanding. I work largely with the general population, with a focus predominantly on encouraging fruit and vegetable consumption, and more recently, on reducing free sugar intakes. Considering the importance of sweet taste in the diet for most humans, work on reducing free sugar intakes also considers the use of low-calorie sweeteners, and the role of these within the diet.