After years of research and testing, scientists think they’ve found a natural sugar substitute that has zero calories, zero carbohydrates and won’t raise blood sugar levels Daily Mail reports. The ‘miracle’ ingredient, stevia, is between 250 and 300 times sweeter than sugar, and so by adding it to foods and drinks, manufacturers can drastically reduce the calorie content.

Look on the label of a can of Sprite and you’ll notice stevia in the ingredients — that’s why it’s now 30 per cent lower in sugar. Sugar substitutes are, of course, nothing new — artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin and sucralose, made from amino acids and chemicals — have been around for more than 40 years. Food and drink manufacturers are all too aware of this, and have invested millions of pounds into finding a natural alternative to sugar.

The hope is to have what’s known as a ‘clean label’ — an ingredients list free of E-numbers and artificial additives. With sugar widely agreed to be a major cause of our obesity and diabetes epidemic, the drive to find alternatives has added impetus. This month, the World Health Organisation called for people to halve the amount of added sugar in their diet. The concern is that excess sugar in the diet is stored as fat around the liver, leading to weight gain and the development of type 2 diabetes. Some scientists have also suggested sugar acts on the brain in the same way as cocaine.

The solution would see a simple switch to sugar alternatives. Sales of honey, maple syrup and agave syrup (made from the naturally sweet water in the agave plant) have soared. However, experts unanimously agree these natural sugars are no better for us than regular sugar. ‘They contain very slightly fewer calories, about three per gram compared with four per gram in sugar,’ says Bridget Benelam, a scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation.

‘People like them because they’re natural, but whether there’s any benefit is debatable. Sugar, after all, is a natural plant product.’ And more importantly, the body metabolises these ‘natural’ sugars in the same way. As Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow and a leading diabetes researcher, says: ‘Sugar is sugar and a calorie is a calorie — whether it comes in the form of honey, agave syrup or white sugar, the body will process it in exactly the same way.’ It’s been pointed out that while regular sugar, honey and maple syrup are made up equally of glucose and fructose, agave syrup is much higher in fructose — and when fructose is metabolised it doesn’t cause an increase in insulin levels. Instead, it’s taken into the liver, where it is metabolised. But while this may sound a good thing, says Bridget Benelam, ‘it is not a good idea to consume large amounts of fructose, as studies have found excessive amounts may increase the circulation of fatty acids in the blood, a risk factor for heart disease’.

So could stevia be the answer? Extracted from the leaves of the stevia plant, native to Paraguay, it has been used as a sweetener for 40 years in Japan and longer in South America, although it was approved for use in the EU only in 2011. Its drawback is that some extracts have been found to have a bitter, liquorice-like aftertaste.

Pepsi is said to be working on ‘taste potentiators’, chemicals which have no smell or taste, yet work on the taste buds to enhance the sweet flavour. And in the U.S., a zero-calorie sweetener from the melon-like Chinese monk fruit, 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar, is being used in products such as drinks and biscuits. Professor Winkler believes such developments could help to improve the sugary diet.

The benefits of switching to sweeteners is borne out in research. Dr Margaret Ashwell, a former government adviser on nutrition, carried out a systematic review of trials. She concluded that switching from sugar-sweetened foods and drinks to those made with artificial sweeteners does help with weight loss, at an average rate of about 0.2kg per week.

In 2012, a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that people who replaced calorific beverages with water or diet drinks over six months were more likely to lose weight than a control group. Diet sweeteners help people who are overweight quite simply because they are taking in fewer calories, says Professor Sattar. ‘For many people, a big proportion of their excess calorie intake is sugary drinks. If they can cut those out by having a diet drink, it will reduce their calorie intake.’