Objective: To investigate the influence of ingestion of beverages with sucrose or with intense sweeteners on food intake (FI) and on hunger ratings in before and after a month of daily consumption of beverages.
Design: Experimental study.
Setting: Department of Physiology, University Hospital, Dijon, France.
Subjects: In all, 12 men and 12 women, aged 20-25 y.
Intervention: Four beverages contained either sucrose (E+:100 g/l, 1672 kJ) or intense sweeteners (E-: null energy content) and were flavoured with either orange (O) or raspberry (R). FI was measured in the lab during two 2-consecutive-day periods, carried out on 2 successive weeks (session 1). The subjects drank 2 l of either E+ or E- beverages on the first day of both weekly periods, according to a balanced randomised design. E+ was paired with O for 50% of subjects and with R for the other 50%. Subjects were then habituated over a 4-week period to both beverages, consuming 1 l of E+ beverage on odd days and 1 l of E- drink on even days. After this period, the measurements of session 1 were repeated (session 2, weeks 7-8). Finally, FI was measured for two more 2-day periods (weeks 9-10) after the association between flavour and energy content was reversed (session 3).
Results: The E- drinks were less palatable than the E+ drinks. Besides, we observed that FI was not reduced in response to a liquid extra caloric load and there was no change in hunger ratings after the beverages in any of the sessions.
Conclusion: Ingestion of caloric beverages induced a positive energy balance and the continuous exposure phase to these beverages over 1 month did not improve FI adaptation in response to the extra energy provided by the beverages.