If the invention of calorie-free sweeteners wasn’t thrilling enough, the debate concerning how healthy they are may make everything even more interesting. Food companies, researchers and consumers all have stakes in the acceptance of these products in the market.

Even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved some artificial sweeteners, some people are reluctant to join the camp of chemical sweeteners.

“Some people are just uncomfortable with the idea,” said Jennifer Bruning, a nutrition professor at Columbia.

When Rich Feuerstein sweetens his coffee, five or six packets of Splenda do the trick. The Columbia fiction writing senior said he started drinking coffee about a year ago when he was also exercising often and a friend told him that Splenda was the healthiest calorie-free sweetener.

Bruning said she feels there has been sufficient research on artificial sweeteners and it is a personal choice whether someone would like to use them or not.

Bruning also explained how these sweetners taste like sugar, but have no calories.

“In order to be able to use certain molecules as calories, they have to have a certain composition,” Bruning said. “In the case of artificial sweeteners, in one way or another, the molecules have been changed so that we can no longer use it as calories in our body.”

The yellow-packeted Splenda is a brand of the artificial sweetening chemical sucralose. The two other well-known sweetening chemicals are saccharin (best known as Sweet ‘N Low) and aspartame (best known as Equal.)

“You hear things like, ‘Oh they cause cancer in rats,’” Bruning said of the most commonly heard concern over artificial sweeteners.

Bruning said that those studies usually subject small animals to such high levels of artificial sweeteners that the results don’t reflect a situation that could affect humans.

“There is no way that we could ever take in this amount of artificial sweetener,” she said.

According to Bruning, the most common side effects associated with artificial sweeteners are problems with the digestive tract, not cancer.

Feuerstein said that he likes to use Splenda in his coffee because, “I feel like with coffee, you have a choice,” whereas you have no choice but to accept all of the sugar when it comes to desserts and prepared food.

Bruning said choosing an artificial sweetener doesn’t benefit or diminish your health.

Though a lack of calories is the main draw to using artificial sweeteners, one researcher said consumers may not see the weight loss they hope for. In fact, artificial sweeteners may contribute to weight gain.

Sharon Fowler, who holds a master’s degree in Public Health, led a study with her University of Texas colleagues in 2005 to see if there was any correlation between drinking diet soda, artificially sweetened coffee or tea, and weight gain.

“The odds of somebody who is normal weight becoming either overweight or obese almost doubled among people who were drinking an average of more than three artificially sweetened beverages a day,” Fowler said.

She said that aspartame was the most prominent artificial sweetener at the time of the study, but her research takes all artificial sweeteners into account.

“We saw a classic dose-response effect for both incidence of overweight or obesity according to how many artificial sweetened beverages people were drinking,” Fowler said, which means that as a person’s consumption of diet drinks increases, so does their chance of gaining weight.

Fowler said this is an important indicator that the correlations found in the study are not simply meaningless statistics.

However, Fowler said that she is less concerned about the weight gain from artificial sweeteners  than other possible health effects.

Fowler shared the story of a pregnant woman who quit drinking diet sodas because they were giving her aches in her head and legs.

“And my question was what was happening to that 7-month-old baby,” if the mother was experiencing such strong side effects, Fowler said.

According to Fowler, there are more than 6,000 products on the market which contain aspartame, so everybody has many chances to be exposed to it.

However, because many people continue consuming artificial sweeteners without any problems, and there is a lot of industry pressure to keep them on the market, Fowler said it’s not likely that the FDA will remove them from the list of approved products.

Feuerstein said he has been advised by friends not to use too much Splenda, but the amount is relative. He said that he has never experienced any negative side effects but he has heard of some people getting headaches from Splenda.

Feuerstein said he would reconsider his Splenda use, if he heard it was dangerous or “wasn’t working out the way it was intended to.”

When Bruning teaches her students about artificial sweeteners, she said they are normally familiar with aspartame (typically in blue packets) and saccharin (typically in pink packets) but they know little of the chemical sucralose, branded under the name Splenda.

However, because many people continue consuming artificial sweeteners without any problems, and there is industry pressure to keep them on the market, Fowler said it’s not likely that the FDA will remove them from the list of approved products.

Feuerstein said that he has never experienced negative side effects but has heard of people getting headaches from Splenda.

Feuerstein said he would reconsider his Splenda use if he heard it was dangerous or “wasn’t working out the way it was intended to.”

Fowler’s theory is that the body craves more food after drinking a diet soda because soda tastes like it contains a lot of calories but doesn’t. So, drinking diet soda may cause people to overeat in search of those

missing calories.

When Bruning teaches her students about artificial sweeteners, she said they are normally familiar with aspartame and saccharin.

But, Bruning said, they know little of the chemical sucralose, branded under the name Splenda.

What they do think about Splenda, though, is that it’s a natural product, which she attributes mostly to the marketing of the chemical as “derived from sugar.”

tgleason@chroniclemail.com