proper interesting stuff
if craving = appetite* then its currently unclear according to this systematic review
*I guess if you crave sigar your apetite increases?
Short-term outcomes
Appetite and short term food intake
Eating behavior and metabolic effects due to the exposure to NNSs were investigated in five systematic reviews among other outcomes [20–24]. One review reported evidence for an appetite lowering effect of aspartame, whereas the other reviews reported conflicting evidence for the effects of Stevia and ASs in general on eating behavior.
The primary studies on short-term food intake focused on whether exposure to NNSs enhances the desire for sweet foods and drinks, leading to an increased food intake. From the included 60 primary studies, 32 were small, cross-over RCTs [25–56] with a similar design: the subjects first consumed a “preload”, a food or drink sweetened with either NNSs or with sugar (a nutritive sweetener) or a food or drink which did not contain any sweetener (e.g. water). After a time delay subjects were offered an ad libitum meal and total energy intake was measured.
No effects of NNSs on short-term food intake or subjective awareness of hunger were described in 39 studies (9 parallel RCTs [53, 57–64], 22 cross-over RCTs [25–29, 31, 33–39, 41, 43, 46, 50, 51, 53–56], 7 non-RCTs [45, 65–70] and 1 case-control study [71]); 10 studies described an increased [32, 40, 45, 47, 49, 52, 72–75], while 11 studies described a decreased food intake or appetite [30, 42, 48, 76–83] in the NNSs intervention group as compared to the sugar-receiving or placebo group.
This said, almost every paper and review I’ve read has come to the conclusion that if you’re trying to lose weight, then a switch from full sugar to diet drinks will help (although water would be better…)
