Could the no-calorie sweetener you rely on to replace sugar in your diet actually cause weight gain instead of the weight loss you were expecting?The answer may be yes, according to a new study."Artificial sweeteners are not risk-free," said Brian Hoffmann, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marquette University, and a lead author of the study. "They are a very controversial topic when it comes to health and nutrition ... but they're so prevalent in society that I think we owe it to ourselves to try and figure out what's actually going on."Hoffmann presented his new research Sunday at the annual Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego. Relying on rats and human cell cultures, his team identified a number of pathways linking artificial sweeteners with metabolic changes at the genetic level that could lead to diabetes and obesity. Specifically, the researchers found that three weeks of exposure to … [Read more...] about Artificial sweeteners: Where do we stand?