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FROM food and drink to toothpaste, vitamin pills and medicines, more products than ever have sweeteners added to make them palatable.

Now, with Public Health England challenging makers of goods including cakes, chocolate and breakfast cereals to cut sugar content 20% by 2020, their use in our diets is set to soar.

Yet many of us will remember sweeteners being linked to cancer scares in the 1990s – and they continue to confuse and divide opinion today.

So are they the guilt-free way to satisfy a sweet tooth or are we eating our way to an early grave?

Sweeteners like aspartame can cause cancer FALSE

Aspartame, which is around 200 times sweeter than sugar, has been accused of causing cancer since its approval for use in Europe in the 1980s.

Back then it was linked to brain tumours, lymphomas and leukaemia in test animals who were fed high levels.

While there have been no tests on humans, a US National Cancer Institute study of 500,000 people who either drank aspartame drinks or didn’t, concluded there were no observed increases in these cancers. This and other research has led Cancer Research UK to declare: “Large studies have provided strong evidence artificial sweeteners are safe.” Hardly any aspartame enters the bloodstream as it is quickly broken down in digestion.

‘Natural’ sweeteners like Stevia are better than ‘artificial’ ones such as sucralose FALSE

Stevia-based sweeteners are around 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar and are extracted from the leaves of a small shrub.

By comparison, sweeteners created in a laboratory, such as sucralose, certainly sound less natural. But while steviol glycosides start their life in a plant, they must be purified using methods involving chemicals like methanol – so they aren’t as “simple” as they sound. However, both types are deemed safe by experts.

Sweeteners in drink or food make you fat FALSE

Random controlled studies, the most reliable, show people using intense sweeteners in drinks have found no difference in their weight – and even some weight loss – compared to non-sweetener drinkers.

But weight can pile on if we think: “I’ve been ‘good’, so I can have a treat.” Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s OK to have a bar of chocolate just because you’ve opted for a Diet Coke.

They make naturally sweet foods, such as fruit, less tasty TRUE

If you regularly use sweeteners – adding them to tea and coffee for example – your

tsugar receptors may become overstimulated, says Dr David Ludwig, a nutrition professor at Harvard School of Public Health.

Your tolerance for more complex tastes could also be affected. So as naturally sweet foods, such as mangos, bananas and pineapple start to be bland, you may notice bitter-tasting veg such as kale and broccoli become “downright

unpalatable” says David.

They contain E numbers, so they must be bad FALSE

Like all other food additives – including preservatives, colours and antioxidants – sweeteners undergo a rigorous assessment by both the UK Government Food Standards Agency and European Food Safety Authority. Only if they pass safety criteria do they get an E number. So having this is a sign of safety, rather than an indication that a compound is “bad”.

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