I’ve read a few things hinting that artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame (NutraSweet) and Saccharin cause an insulin response, leading to blood sugar drop and often overeating. While I don’t know enough to say how true it is, these three articles seem to support this:
Effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin release and cationic fluxes in rat pancreatic islets.
[…] Sodium saccharin (1.0-10.0 mM), sodium cyclamate (5.0-10.0 mM), stevioside (1.0 mM) and acesulfame-K (1.0-15.0 mM), all of which display a bitter taste, augmented insulin release from islets incubated in the presence of 7.0 mM D-glucose. In contrast, aspartame (1.0-10.0 mM), which is devoid of bitter taste, failed to affect insulin secretion. […]
A role for sweet taste: Calorie predictive relations in energy regulation by rats.
[…] We found that reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes. […]
[…] In these cells, artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, succharin, and acesulfame-K increased insulin secretion and augmented secretion induced by glucose. […]
When I was rather young, eating anything containing NutraSweet would give me a pretty bad headache. While this doesn’t happen any more, I do wonder if it was related.