More than 40% of Americans are opting to stay home—and only about one-third are planning trips to Europe this summer, signaling a shift toward closer-to-home travel and at-home entertaining. This travel pattern shift is leading consumers to embrace the art of entertaining at home and a new kind of luxury experience is taking shape—one rooted in intimacy, authenticity, and meaningful connection. This summer, as many opt for slower, more intentional gatherings with friends and family, Donnafugata is helping to spread the spirit of Sicily, where vibrant cuisine, expressive wines, and a deep sense of hospitality come together effortlessly. “Meaningful entertaining and connection are at the heart of Donnafugata. We are proud to share our expression of terroir through wines that embody our passion for winemaking and putting wine at the center of the table to foster conversation,” says José Rallo of Donnafugata. “The heart of hosting can easily be shared through Sicilian traditions – food, wine and time together and every bottle we create is an invitation to slow down and experience the richness of any moment.” That same idea of connection guides Donnafugata’s broader approach: bringing together family heritage, contemporary vision, and the many expressions of an island whose landscapes range from the sea to the hills and the volcano.” A Contemporary Vision of Sicilian Wine Founded in 1983 by Giacomo and Gabriella Rallo and now led by the next generation, Donnafugata is deeply rooted in a philosophy that blends innovation with heritage. Across its estates—from the rolling hills of Contessa Entellina to the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna and the windswept island of Pantelleria—the winery captures the essence of Sicily in every bottle. For the Rallo family, wine is a natural extension of the table—meant to enhance conversation, elevate food, and create lasting memories. The very essence of Donnafugata serves as inspiration for seasonal hosting and gatherings. “This summer, the art of hosting is all about the atmosphere. For those looking to channel the island’s effortless elegance and to impress guests, Donnafugata offers a compelling selection of wines for every course and an opportunity to bring to the table the spirit of Sicily—its conviviality, brightness, and culture of sharing, the same values guests discover when visiting our five estates across the island,” adds Gabriella Favara of Donnafugata and sixth generation of Donnafugata Family. Wines for Every Summer Moment The mood begins with the tradition of aperitivo. A table set with ceramics, linen, and sun-ripened ingredients—citrus-marinated seafood, burrata, and vibrant vegetable dishes—can be perfectly paired with Dolce & Gabbana and Donnafugata Rosa, a collaboration that captures the glamour and vibrancy of Sicily. With delicate notes of wild strawberry, rose petals, and citrus zest, the rosé is both elegant and playful—bringing lightness to the table and setting the tone for effortless moments, from the first toast to the golden light of the day. Lighea, Donnafugata’s aromatic white wine made from Zibibbo grapes, offers notes of orange blossom, citrus, and Mediterranean herbs, evoking Pantelleria’s sea breezes and relaxed, sunlit rhythm—ideal for seafood and vegetable-forward plates and for recreating that same Pantelleria atmosphere at home. For heartier fare, Sul Vulcano Etna Rosso delivers elegance and depth, with its signature minerality, red berry notes, and volcanic character—grounded yet refined, it brings a sense of warmth and quiet intensity, perfect for lingering conversations as the evening unfolds. Dessert, of course, is a moment unto itself. From cannoli and almond cookies to fresh fruit or a simple piece of dark chocolate, Ben Ryé, Donnafugata’s iconic Passito di Pantelleria, brings the evening to a memorable close. Lush and complex, with notes of dried apricot, honey, and candied citrus, it transforms dessert into a rich, enveloping ritual—best enjoyed slowly, as conversations linger. A Sicilian-Inspired Menu to Share To capture a true Sicilian experience at home, Donnafugata has created a menu pairing that is both approachable and memorable. Start with Antipasti and Primi Paired with Dolce & Gabbana and Donnafugata Rosa. Think citrus-marinated shrimp with lemon and olive oil, caponata with eggplant, tomatoes, capers, and a touch of agrodolce, burrata with grilled peaches and Sicilian pistachios and thinly sliced crudo drizzled with blood orange and sea salt. Move on to the main course and pair with Lighea and Sul Vulcano Etna Rosso. Prepare grilled branzino with fennel and orange, handmade busiate pasta with pesto Trapanese (almonds, tomatoes, basil), lamb skewers with rosemary and charred lemon and roasted vegetables with oregano and Sicilian olive oil. End with a delicious dessert paired with Ben Ryé. Ricotta-filled cannoli dusted with powdered sugar, almond granita with brioche, honey-roasted figs with mascarpone and dark chocolate with sea salt all work to bring the end of the meal to a sweet conclusion. For hosts looking to bring the Donnafugata spirit to the table, the winery also offers exclusive illustrated placemats to download—an easy way to add color, creativity, and a distinctively Sicilian touch to summer gatherings. To set the mood, Donnafugata Music & Wine playlists on Spotify add another layer to the experience, bringing the winery’s dialogue between wine, music, and storytelling into the home. To bring Donnafugata’s Sicilian table home this summer, U.S. consumers can explore Donnafugata’s wines through Millesima at this link. To visit Donnafugata in Sicily: visit.donnafugata.it By ML staff. Images courtesy of Donnafugata

The Marshall L. Davis, Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center has opened registration for its annual Summer Arts Conservatory. The nine-week program runs from June 8 through August 7, 2026, offering comprehensive arts instruction for children and teenagers ages 5 to 16. The curriculum spans multiple creative disciplines, including dance, theater, drama, visual arts, and music. The program is designed to develop foundational talents, technical artistic skills, and personal confidence within a structured environment. To support families, the center provides complimentary daily lunch and snacks for all registered participants. Tuition discounts are available for early enrollment. Families who complete registration and pay tuition in full by May 29, 2026, will receive a $50 discount on total tuition costs. Due to capacity limits, slots are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. An informational parent meeting is scheduled for Friday, June 5, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. at the center to review schedules, guidelines, and program expectations. The Marshall L. Davis, Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center is located at 6161 NW 22nd Avenue, Miami, FL 33142. For registration details or additional inquiries, individuals can contact the center by phone at 305-638-6771, via email at ahcac@miamidade.gov, or visit the official website at www.ahcacmiami.org. By ML Staff. Photo by Arthur Tseng, Unsplash

ONE Sotheby’s International Realty is expanding its footprint into the Northeast through the acquisition of New Jersey-based Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty. Led by Mayi and Daniel de la Vega, the Florida-based brokerage will now connect its East Coast network with the New Jersey luxury market. Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty has operated for more than 80 years. It ranks as the top real estate brokerage by dollar volume in Mercer County and holds the leading market share in Princeton, with additional operations across Somerset, Hunterdon, Bucks, and Middlesex counties. The firm’s 135 agents will continue operating from their primary offices in Princeton and Lambertville. "The Callaway and Henderson families have built an exceptional business that has defined excellence in Central New Jersey through decades of leadership, integrity, and trusted market expertise," said Daniel de la Vega, President and CEO of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. "Their approach reflects the same values that guide our firm, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth while strengthening the incredible synergies between the Northeast and East Coast markets." The New Jersey firm was previously led by Judson Henderson, Matt Henderson, and Jane Henderson Kenyon. The company originated from two separate family businesses: John T. Henderson Sr., who opened a Princeton office in 1953, and N.T. Callaway Real Estate, founded by Pete Callaway in 1974. The two entities merged in 2012. In 2025, Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty closed nearly $800 million in sales. The firm participated in 94% of all area transactions above $3 million and handled all top 10 sales in Mercer County, managing properties ranging from $70,000 to over $5 million. "This represents a defining evolution for our family business, and an incredible opportunity for our brand’s future," said Judson Henderson, Managing Member at Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty. "By working together with a like-minded, family-run company, we are creating a foundation that will serve our agents, employees, and clients for decades to come." Aileen M. Konzelmann Following the acquisition, Aileen Konzelmann has been named President of the New Jersey Brokerage for ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. Konzelmann has 30 years of leadership experience in hospitality and real estate, including over two decades with Marriott International and a recent role as Founder and Managing Broker for Weichert Premier’s Moorestown and Haddonfield offices. She will oversee the firm's strategic growth throughout the state. By ML Staff. Photos/ ONE Sotheby’s International Realty

Autty Simone is a luxury fashion designer and creative visionary seeking to redefine women’s fashion through bold femininity, elegant craftsmanship, and show-stopping, innovative styling. Returning for her second year at Miami Swim Week, Autty Simone will close out the May 29th MSW Showcase with an immersive runway presentation inspired by the effortless glamour of some of the world’s most beautiful tropical destinations: St. Barths, Ibiza, and the South of France. This year’s collection embraces a luxe vacation couture aesthetic — blending intricate resortwear with jet-set ready sophistication to create an unforgettable fashion experience designed to transport audiences & customers to the very heart of the Autty Simone Universe. You can follow Autty Simone at: @auttysimone @shopauttysimone By ML Staff. Images courtesy of Autty Simone

Get ready to shake and sip this Memorial Day weekend as the ultimate cocktail showdown returns. Miami Margarita Masters Season 2 - Round 2 is taking over the W Miami in Brickell on Saturday, May 23, 2026, offering an unforgettable evening where margarita enthusiasts come together to taste, compare, and celebrate. The Cocktail Showdown Join the lively crowd as five of Miami’s most talented bartenders go head-to-head to battle it out for points and a coveted spot in the next round. Running from 7:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., the opening round of this premier cocktail competition promises an elevated rooftop-style experience complete with great music and a vibrant atmosphere. Whether you are a seasoned cocktail aficionado or simply love a good drink, this is your chance to experience each unique creation firsthand and enjoy the energy of the crowd. Ticket Options Attendees must be 21 or older to participate. Tickets are limited due to venue capacity, so securing your spot early is highly recommended. Master Pass: Includes one sample from each of the five competitors, giving guests the full experience to explore the complete margarita lineup as the competition kicks off. General Admission: For those seeking a more flexible option, admission-only tickets are available, with individual sample cards offered separately on-site. Event Details Date: Saturday, May 23, 2026 Time: 7:00 p.m. – 11:30 p.m. Location: W Miami, 485 Brickell Avenue, Miami, FL 33131 (Paid parking is available on-site) Secure your tickets for Round 2 via Eventbrite. To be the first to get dates, venue news, ticket drops, and competitor application updates for the rest of the season, be sure to sign up at the Miami Margarita Masters 2026 Subscription Page. By ML Staff.

Organised by Vogue, the Met Gala this year was based around the theme of “costume art”. An accompanying exhibition of the same name opens at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10, with a focus on the dressed body. The Met’s Costume Art shows a wide range of different body shapes in its mannequins, specially commissioned from sculptor Frank Benson. Anna-Marie Kellen / The Metropolitan Museum of Art Responses to the Met Gala – the US fashion event of the year – and its related Costume Art exhibition have been sharply divided. On the one hand, critics have applauded the exhibition’s use of an inclusive range of mannequins, representing a wide group of bodies that go far beyond the normal “model physique”. On the other, this apparent celebration of diversity has been contrasted with the overwhelming thinness of the red carpet at the Gala, as well as the involvement of its honorary chairs, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The couple were said to have sponsored the event to the tune of $10m (£7.4m), sparking calls for a boycott. As the influential fashion commentators Diet Prada noted, this year’s Met Gala was more poorly received than ever before, with speculation rife about why some celebrities were missing the event. An activist group called for a boycott of the Met Gala in a protest against billionaire Jeff Bezos, who sponsored the event for a reported $10m (£7.4m) dollars. Zuma Press / Alamy As artwashing is now an established media tactic, the positive elements of the exhibition could be viewed as a distraction from the negative capitalistic associations of its sponsors. However, in an age dominated by Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs, an exhibition celebrating bodies of all shapes and sizes does far more than pay politically expedient lip service to the idea of diversity. Diversity fights back The exhibition – masterminded by Andrew Bolton, the British-born curator of the Costume Institute at the Met – pairs garments and artworks “organised into a series of thematic body types that reflect their pervasiveness and endurance through time and cultures”. The choice of these thematic body types – which divide into sections including the Naked Body, the Classical Body, the Ageing Body and the Disabled Body – had been the subject of media coverage long before column inches were filled with the usual discussions of celebrity outfit choices. Over the past month, a series of articles and related social media posts have trailed that the show would feature a physically diverse array of mannequins. This would support the exhibition’s stated aim of exploring distinct bodies across time and space. On April 21, sculptor Frank Benson – most famous for his figurative works – posted on social media that it had been the “honour of a lifetime” to create a group of mannequins for the Met’s show. These newly commissioned mannequins allow the show to present its garments on an array of bodies – variously abled, fat and thin, and in different states of pregnancy and undress. These are not one-off pieces. As Benson confirmed, the mannequins will be transferred afterwards into the Costume Institute’s permanent collection and used in future exhibitions. Each of the figures wears a mirrored mask, encouraging viewers’ identification with these more “realistic bodies”. In so doing, the curators utilise a highly literal but effective means of reflecting the norm within clothing and spaces usually reserved for the thinnest of bodies. Variously abled bodies are strong represented in the Met exhibition. Anna-Marie Kellen / The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alongside the forms of the mannequins themselves, “the Corpulent Body” (the Met’s somewhat unfortunate wording) is also invoked through specially commissioned photography and fashion design, including work by designers Karoline Vitto and Michaela Stark. Stark has created some of her highly recognisable undergarments that truss the body in silk organza ties – resulting in pockets of fat and bulging extrusions that encourage speculation on what the beautiful erotic body might look like. Is there a future for body positivity? Despite this, recent data from industry insiders suggests a broader backward slide in representation that counters the narrative pushed by the exhibition. The model Felicity Hayward has done pioneering work season after season recording plus-size representation on the runways: the autumn/winter 26 lineup (shown in Europe and US in February) had the lowest numbers of size inclusive models for years. Of the 3,840 looks shown at New York Fashion Week, only 20 were shown on plus-sized bodies. This was a staggering 50% lower than it had been the previous year. Vogue Business interviewed a number of casting directors on this notable shift. One, Chloe Rosolek, described this “regression in inclusion” as the literal “erasure of women’s bodies”. The Costume Art exhibition seems to stand firm against this shift. The ageing body is also part of the inclusive display in the Costume Art exhibition. Anna-Marie Kellen / The Metropolitan Museum of Art But as many social media observers have noted, the exhibition’s attempts at representing equality and body positivity feel at odds with a red carpet that was populated by an ever-thinner group of celebrities. With weight-loss easier to achieve than ever thanks to the widespread use of GLP-1 drugs, many figures in the public eye have appeared to lose significant amounts of weight. The Gala guestlist did include a more diverse crowd, including the disabled transgender model Aariana Rose Philip, whose body one of the mannequins was based upon. But in event roundups dominated by influencers, singers and actors, this bodily diversity makes little impression. While Instagram feeds suggest the most important and fashionable of red-carpet appearances belong to the thinnest bodies, the exhibition itself does seem to achieve its goals in furthering representation of diverse bodies. And it does so on one of the most influential and public stages. British ‘curve’ model and body positivity campaigner Felicity Hayward. Fred Duval / Shutterstock Fat studies scholar Jeannine A. Gailey argues that people who are fat are simultaneously paid undue attention on account of their “taking up too much space”, and are also ignored due to the perception of fatness as both undesirable and morally questionable. Conversations around what kind of bodies are valued through forms of representation feel very relevant to the aims of Costume Art, thanks to its prominent portrayal of fat, ageing and disabled bodies. Despite its problematic associations with Bezos, Costume Art nevertheless provides a highly visible – and thereby meaningful – counter to the world of ever-shrinking thinness that Hollywood appears to cling to, perhaps offering the body positivity movement a much needed life raft. However, now that anyone can access these weight-loss shortcut drugs, one wonders how long body positivity can remain afloat. Words by Freya Gowrley, Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts, University of Bristol. Special thanks for The Conversation. Support and donate today.

Miami Swim Week® – The Shows 2026 returns to the Mondrian South Beach Miami from May 25 to 31, 2026. Under the leadership of new CEO Sean Rashid and Fashion Event Director Elizabeth Claros, the festival features more than 50 global swim designers from countries including the U.S., UK, Colombia, Bulgaria, Italy, Brazil, and Australia. The 2026 edition features more than 20 events across 10 venues and a curated lineup of over 50 national and international designers, cementing the role of the city as the global swim capital. The schedule integrates runway presentations, wellness activations, retail showrooms, and industry panels. This year also marks the launch of Miami Swim Week FWD, an initiative focusing on fashion, sustainability, and social impact. Runway production for the week features advanced staging, including a large-scale LED screen and integrated audio-visual technology. Event Schedule and Highlights Monday, May 25 Neutrogena Sun Block Party and Model Casting (Goodtime Hotel | 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM): Presenting sponsor Neutrogena hosts an open model casting at Strawberry Moon to select talent for the upcoming runway shows. RSVP is required. Tuesday, May 26 Birds of Paradise Launch Party (Hutong Miami | 7:00 PM – 12:00 AM): In partnership with Influencer Insider, this kickoff event debuts the tech-integrated wine brand Birds of Paradise, featuring runway presentations by Jessica Bara and Cioccolato Couture. RSVP is required. Wednesday, May 27 Lincoln Road Fashion Show (Lincoln Road | 4:00 PM Cocktails, 5:00 PM Fashion Show): Hosted by Tallia Storm and DJ Johnnie on Drexel Avenue, this public block party celebrates the reopening of the Drexel Pedestrian Street. Cocktails begin at 4:00 PM, followed by runway shows at 5:00 PM, and the evening concludes with an afterparty at Twisted Tonic Rooftop at 10:00 PM. Featured designers include Liliana Montoya Swim (celebrating its 20th anniversary), Infamous Swim, Beachside Bikinis, Lumina, Angel de la Guarda, Kene Kaya by Alessandra Durand, HartiSwim, Jessica Rose, Cioccolato Couture, E.Kaye Collection, Sunburst Swimwear, and Chemo Club X Post Swim. Official Opening Runway Presentation (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM): The official runway schedule begins with Ema Savahl Couture, benefiting the Little Lighthouse Foundation. The evening includes presentations by sustainable luxury brand Leila Denise Handmade and Colombian-rooted Amarotto Swimwear, alongside a tribute film honoring late founder Moh Ducis. Both events are invitation-only. Thursday, May 28 Evening Runway Shows (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM): Presentations feature Oisri Swim, Mars The Label, Belletage Swimwear, Cocora Shop, Hannah Del Mar Swimwear, Chemo Club X Post Swim, Bay Swimwear, Sabana Swim by Virginia Sanhouse, and The Blue Body Brazil. Kristin Cavallari will also introduce jewelry from Uncommon James in collaboration with RESA. This lineup is invitation-only. Thursday, May 28 & Friday, May 29 SwimFit & MSW Wellness Club (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM): Hosted by Tara Lynn and sponsored by Auratherapy x Vida Boa, this wellness series includes skin and body treatments from Skin Sports Society and Concierge Aesthetics. RSVP is required. Neutrogena Glam Suite (Greenhouse at Mondrian South Beach | 10:30 AM – 1:30 PM): Offers guests skincare sessions and makeup touch-ups by professional artists. Friday, May 29 Pilates X Mondrian South Beach Miami (9:00AM–1:00PM) SwimFit classes continue with the official pilates partner Beau Monde Pilates, led by Daniela Magazine, preparing models for the runway. Influencer Volleyball Tournament (Eden Roc Miami Beach | 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM): An oceanfront tournament sponsored by ADG Swimwear. This event is invitation-only. The Fire & Ice Beauty Lounge at the Nobu Penthouse (Nobu Penthouse at Nobu Hotel | 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM): Hosted by Skin Sports Society in collaboration with Cellebration, this activation occurs at the Nobu Penthouse inside Nobu Hotel Miami Beach. Conceived by Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro, and Meir Teper, the venue joined the Eden Roc Miami Beach complex in 2016 following a multi-million-dollar renovation led by architect David Rockwell, incorporating a Japanese beach house design into the property originally drafted by Morris Lapidus. The experience features LED therapy, facial massage, red light treatments, cryo treatments, cooling masks, cold spoons, oxygen sprays, and aura readings by Auratherapy. The event is by appointment only with an RSVP required. RSVP is required for appointments. Miami Swim Week® – The Shows X Fashinnovation Talks Miami Edition (The Moore Building | 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM): Industry panels focusing on fashion, sustainability, and technological innovation. RSVP is required. Miami Swim Week® – The Show Runway Shows (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM): Featuring Autty Simone, Normal Culture, Atelier Martinez, Enez Swimwear, Beachside Bikinis, Blk Vanilla, Southern Saints VI, Bikini Flavors, ADG Swimwear, Spice Market, SPACECAMP STUDIOS, and CI Swimwear. White Fox presents its La Tropica resort collection at 10:00 PM by invitation only. Saturday, May 30 & Sunday, May 31 Biohack Miami (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM): Morning recovery and longevity treatments for talent and guests by invitation only. Casa Hammock Showroom & Gifting Lounge (Tower Lounge at Mondrian South Beach | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM): A dedicated incubator connecting designers directly with retail buyers and media by invitation only. Saturday, May 30 Evening Runway Shows (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 7:00 PM): Featuring a Brazil-inspired presentation by Lila Nikole, alongside Body by Apyx, Harti Swim, Smart Swimsuits, IA Vision, Luxe Living Fashion, ALUJ Swim, Clarisse Celeste, House of Barretti, Solmare Swimwear, Hera Sea, Unicas Boutique, and Nur Karaata. Sunday, May 31 Closing Runway Shows (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 7:00 PM): Final presentations include Jackie Vera Swimsuit, Star Mother Swimwear, Badi Swim, Element of Elodie, Relleciga, Sunburst Swimwear, Cioccolato Couture, Vilena Swim, and Infamous Swim. Italian Riviera Collective Show (Mondrian South Beach Miami | 8:00 PM): Hosted by the Italian Trade Agency (ITA), showcasing 25 Italian swim and accessory brands, featuring a performance of the track MILAN by recording artist August (AUGXST). Festival partners and sponsors for the 2026 season include presenting sponsor Neutrogena®, HOKA, Hari Mari, Eden Roc Miami Beach, Nobu Hotel Miami Beach, Bacardi, Grey Goose, Birds of Paradise, Liquid Youth, Smartwater, Vitaminwater, Topo Chico Sabores, Grubhub, Beau Monde Pilates, Body by Apyx, SKAURA, Bloom (Nutrabolt), Tarte Cosmetics, Seis Cosmetics, Solshine State of Hair, Power Beauty Collective, RawSkinCeuticals, and Axel Makeup Academy. Access and Registration Information For more information regarding the upcoming event, visit the Miami Swim Week The Shows website here and at MIAMI SWIM WEEK®-THE SHOWS. Follow the brand on Instagram @miamiswimweekshows. Tickets: To purchase tickets, visit Miami Swim Week - The Shows 2026 - Miami Swim Week®- The Shows. Credentials: To register for press credentials, visit HERE. Designer Schedule: To view the full designer schedule, visit HERE. Events & Activations: To browse events and activations, visit HERE. By ML Staff. Photo/ Miami Swim Week® – The Shows

The question sounds simple. The answer, once you examine the actual measurement science behind it, is more interesting than either “yes” or “no”. GoodStudio/Shutterstock The houseplant-as-air-purifier idea can be traced to a 1989 US study, conducted for Nasa as part of research into closed-loop life support systems for space stations. In sealed, controlled chambers, certain plant species reduced concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These are chemicals that easily evaporate into the air at room temperature, including some toxic ones like benzene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde. The science was sound. The problem is the leap from a sealed Nasa chamber to a living room. This distinction matters enormously, and it underpins almost every piece of inflated coverage about houseplants’ purifying abilities that has followed. Most studies showing that houseplants remove pollutants share a fundamental design feature: small, sealed chambers with artificially high concentrations of pollutants introduced as a single high dose. A plant is placed inside the chamber, concentrations of pollutants are measured over time and a removal rate is calculated. This design works well for comparing plants to each other. It works poorly for predicting what happens in your home. The critical missing variable is what building scientists call the air exchange rate. This is how quickly outdoor air naturally replaces indoor air through gaps, walls and ventilation systems. In a real building, this constant dilution is already doing the heavy lifting on pollutant concentration. When a 2019 study modelled plant performance against real-world air exchange rates, it found you would need between ten and 1,000 plants per square metre to match what a building’s passive ventilation already achieves. So the scientifically defensible answer is: houseplants can remove some pollutants, but they are not an effective standalone air-cleaning solution for homes. That does not mean the earlier studies were “wrong”. It means their results were often overextended into everyday settings where the physics of indoor air are very different. Can houseplants really purify the air? Vera Prokhorova/Shutterstock More recent reviews distinguish between potted plants and more engineered plant-based systems. Some botanical biofilters, which force air through plant-root substrates with fans, may have useful air-cleaning potential, but that is a different technology from keeping a few decorative plants on a windowsill. Another reason the claim is often overstated is that real indoor environments are not static. Pollutants are not usually released once and then left to decline in a sealed space, as happens in many chamber experiments. In homes, emissions may be continuous or intermittent, from cooking, cleaning, furnishings, consumer products, heating and traffic pollution wafting in from outside. Temperature, humidity, the number of people at home and ventilation also change throughout the day. All of these factors affect how pollutants are emitted, diluted or deposited indoors. This makes real exposure conditions far more complex than the controlled conditions under which many plant studies are carried out. For these reasons, the most credible public health advice remains straightforward. First, reduce or remove the pollution source. This may involve stopping the use of products that emit fumes, such as aerosol sprays or strong chemical cleaners, and repairing building defects such as damp or leaks that promote mould growth. Then, improve ventilation and use effective filtration. Ventilation can be improved by, for example, opening windows and doors and using kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans that vent outdoors. You can also increase the supply of outdoor air through combined heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, which can be great for filtering air. Portable air cleaners with high-efficiency particulate air (Hepa) filtration can help reduce airborne particles, while ventilation, such as opening windows or using exhaust fans, helps dilute indoor pollutants when outdoor air quality is acceptable. Air cleaners vary in quality, though. For everyday use, look for a model that is the right size for the room and clearly states that it uses a True Hepa filter, which means it is designed to capture at least 99.97% of very small particles. It is also helpful if the unit has an AHAM Verifide label, which means its clean air delivery rate (CADR) has been independently tested. As a simple guide, the higher the CADR, the faster the cleaner can remove particles from the air, and the packaging will usually say what room size the unit is suitable for. Most air cleaners are designed mainly for particles such as dust, pollen, pet dander and smoke. If you also want help with gases or odours, such as VOCs, look for a model that includes an activated carbon filter, because Hepa filters alone are mainly for particles. Packaging will usually indicate whether a unit is intended for particles, gases or both, but no air cleaner removes all pollutants. It is also worth remembering that plants themselves require care. Overwatering and poorly maintained pots can contribute to moisture problems or microbial growth indoors. In that sense, even the benefits of indoor greenery depend on how they are managed. Houseplants are great for making your home a relaxing place to be. DimaBerlin/Shutterstock Does that mean houseplants are useless indoors? Not at all. Even if their direct air-cleaning effect is modest in real homes, plants may still offer benefits. Scientific studies suggest they can improve perceived comfort and psychological wellbeing, and in some cases slightly influence humidity or the indoor microenvironment. Keep houseplants because you enjoy them, because they make indoor spaces more attractive and calming. They can make homes feel more pleasant, and that is a value in itself. But they should not be presented as a practical solution to serious indoor air problems. Words by Pedram Vousoughi, Post Doctoral Researcher in Biological Sciences, University of Limerick. Special thanks for The Conversation. Support and donate today.

Pregnancy is often regarded as a time to prepare the nursery, but it is also a useful moment to get the kitchen ready. Rocketclips, Inc./Shutterstock For many expectant parents, the months before a baby arrives are filled with practical jobs: buying clothes, assembling a cot, choosing a pram, packing a hospital bag. Yet one of the most important forms of preparation happens somewhere less photogenic: in the cupboards, the fridge and the daily routines of the home. Research Peles and colleagues conducted suggests that pregnancy can be a powerful moment for change. During pregnancy, food becomes about more than personal preference. It is bound up with the health of the developing baby, the wellbeing of the mother, and the kind of family life parents hope to create. The idea of nutritional nesting is useful here. It describes how first-time parents begin shaping the home food environment during pregnancy. It means the food world a baby will eventually be born into: what is bought, what is visible, what is easy to reach, what gets cooked, what is eaten together, and what becomes normal. Healthy habits begin before a baby first tastes puree or sits in a high chair. They begin in the rhythms and environment parents establish before birth. Vegetables in the fridge may technically be available, but they are unlikely to be chosen by exhausted parents looking for something quick. Fruit on the counter, chopped vegetables ready to use, batch-cooked meals in the freezer and simple ingredients within reach make healthier eating easier when energy is low. The distinction between availability and accessibility matters. Availability means the food is present in the home. Accessibility means it is easy to see, easy to reach and easy to eat. Research on the home food environment suggests that what is available at home, what parents eat themselves, and family eating routines all play a role in the overall healthiness and variety of children’s diets. Shloim describes this as healthy mealtime interactions, accounting for what and how the family eats. Kitchens are shaped by more than mothers alone. Pregnancy can be an especially useful time to think about food because many parents, including fathers and partners, are already imagining the family they want to become. Peles’ work with first-time expectant fathers suggests that men often see pregnancy as a turning point: a chance to take more responsibility, support their partner, and help create a healthier home. Good intentions, though, do not chop vegetables, plan meals or fill a freezer. Fathers and partners may need practical support to turn motivation into everyday action. Nutrition support during pregnancy should involve the household, not only the pregnant mother. The home food environment is usually shaped by more than one person. Partners influence shopping, cooking, budgeting, snacking and the emotional tone around food. Treating food preparation as a shared parental responsibility, rather than another task added to the mother’s mental load, makes it more realistic and fair. The point is to make nutrition advice more useful, rather than more judgmental. Lists of foods to eat or avoid have their place, but they rarely solve the daily problem of what tired people can afford, cook and face eating. Families also need help with the basics: planning meals, preparing quick options, shopping on a budget and making nutritious food convenient before the sleep deprivation of early parenthood begins. For many parents, the second trimester may be a useful period for this kind of preparation. For some women, though not all, the nausea and exhaustion of early pregnancy may have eased, while the physical demands of late pregnancy have not yet fully arrived. That can make it a more realistic time to ask: what will make daily eating easier when life gets harder? The answer does not have to be complicated. Parents might reorganise the fridge so healthier foods are visible, learn a few reliable recipes that can be cooked quickly, prepare snacks that do not depend on willpower at 3pm, or decide together how meals will work when the baby arrives. These small changes are not glamorous, but they reduce the number of decisions tired parents have to make. Pregnancy may be a good time to reorganise the fridge so healthier foods are visible. nelic/Shutterstock Early family food culture is about nutrients, but it is also about relationships. Children learn from what is served and from how meals feel. Shloim suggests that a calm, responsive feeding relationship means paying attention to a child’s hunger and fullness cues, offering food without pressure, and making mealtimes feel safe rather than stressful. Evidence suggests that these early interactions can support children’s ability to regulate their own eating. They also support overall positive interactions. Early-life conditions, including the period before birth, can influence health later in life. A child’s future is not fixed before birth, but early environments matter, and supporting families before and during pregnancy can be a practical way to improve long-term health. Expectant parents do not need a perfect diet or a perfect kitchen. Nutritional nesting is about making ordinary healthy choices more visible, more convenient and more shared. Its value is practical: reducing friction before the exhausting early months begin. The nursery matters. But the kitchen may be where some of the most important family interactions begins. Words by Netalie Shloim, Lecturer in Counselling & Psychotherapy, School of Healthcare, University of Leeds and Chagit Peles, PhD Candidate, Population Health, Bar-Ilan University. Special thanks for The Conversation. Support and donate today.

Designing a series of sweetener trials seemed straightforward enough to us as behavioural scientists who specialise in human appetite and obesity. The plan was simple: replace the added sugar in a range of foods with different classes of alternative sweeteners, holding everything else constant. Sweets for my sweets …Fuss Sergey We would start with a simple biscuit with a fruit filling and work from there. In each case we would measure the effects on participants’ eating choices, metabolism and health outcomes. We put this to our collaborator, Alain Le Bail, a professor and senior food scientist in France with more than 30 years’ experience. He looked as if we’d asked him to build a bridge using marshmallows. Sugar, he said, isn’t just sweet. It provides structure, texture, browning, moisture and mouthfeel. Removing it doesn’t just alter the biscuit; it breaks the rules that make it a biscuit in the first place. If even we researchers need to be educated on these complexities, what hope does the average consumer have? Sweeteners, as we’ll call the broad category of sugar alternatives and sweetness enhancers, were once fairly niche. They were used to lighten a soft drink or sweeten a low-calorie yoghurt, but not much more besides. Now, they are on almost every shelf of the supermarket. They go to the heart of global debates on obesity, diabetes, child nutrition and ultra-processed foods. Whether it’s politicians deciding on sugar taxes, doctors helping diabetic patients manage their diets, or parents wrestling with product labels, sweeteners are unavoidable. They attract endlessly conflicting headlines. While we try to reconcile our very human desire for a healthy win-win with our deep cultural unease over “artificial” additives, sweeteners are alternately framed as helpful diet liberators or harmful hormone disruptors. Far more rarely are they seen as ingredients with a specific, measurable function. It doesn’t help that the science in this area is still surprisingly thin on the ground. Understanding what sweeteners can (and can’t) do for us requires looking beyond the binary of “good” or “bad” to more grounded questions. What are they replacing? In what context? For whom? According to what desired outcomes? And beyond all this is the question of where sweeteners are heading. Will new technologies like artificial intelligence be transformational? Will we ever make the perfect sugar alternative? Look down the decades and you realise we’ve been trying for a very long time. A brief history of sweeteners For over a century, sweeteners have promised the same taste as sugar without the calories or health risks – guilt-free pleasure, in other words. But every breakthrough has been followed by a backlash, leaving a trail of safety scares and shifting public attitudes. The modern story of sweeteners begins in the late 19th century with the accidental discovery of saccharin at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Derived from coal tar, saccharin is 300-500 times sweeter than sugar. Saccharin ad from 1893. Wikimedia It quickly found favour among diabetic patients and later, calorie-conscious consumers. Critics questioned its taste, safety and “unnatural” origins, yet its presence grew – particularly amid sugar shortages during the world wars. In the decades that followed, saccharin became widely used in diet drinks and tabletop products, before safety scares and the arrival of newer sweeteners reduced its popularity. In the early 20th century, other synthetic compounds such as dulcin and P-4000 also emerged, but safety concerns led to their withdrawal a few years later. More prominent was cyclamate, discovered in 1937, which gained popularity in the post-war years, especially in the US. Marketed as a diet aid and used widely in soft drinks, cyclamate was abruptly banned in 1969 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) following concerns about bladder cancer. Though the evidence was contested – rats in one pivotal study were consuming the equivalent of 550 cans of diet soft drink each day – the US ban was never lifted, leaving a lasting scar on public trust in sweeteners. Coca-Cola Tab was one of numerous soft drinks made using cyclamate in the 1960s. Retro AdArchives The next turning point came with FDA approval of aspartame in soft drinks in 1983, ushering in what might be called the Diet Coke era. It was also approved as a general purpose sweetener in 1996. Compared to saccharin, aspartame tasted more sugar-like: in an early comparative study of soft drinks, those sweetened with aspartame were found to be statistically equivalent to sugar (sucrose) on every descriptive scale. Drinks sweetened by saccharin, with its bitter/metallic aftertaste, were among the most different from sucrose. Aspartame does still taste somewhat different to sugar, but duly became the sweetener of choice for weight-conscious consumers and the food industry, especially in the US and UK. It has drawn negative comparisons to the alternatives, however. In one Canadian study from 2021, 52% of respondents rated aspartame as less healthy than table sugar, while more favourably judging other sweeteners they saw as more “natural”. Aspartame’s chemical origins admittedly lead to relatively minor drawbacks. It contains the amino acid phenylalanine, which harms individuals with the rare metabolic disorder phenylketonuria. Products containing aspartame must therefore warn about this risk in many jurisdictions, including the US and UK. Journalists have also amplified speculative risks around aspartame, such as brain cancer, albeit without robust evidence. Regulators including the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) continue to regard aspartame as safe at current permitted intake levels. Yet consumer scepticism has persisted – and with commercial consequences. In 2015 PepsiCo reformulated Diet Pepsi in the US as “aspartame-free”. Yet the ingredient was not displaced more broadly, and Pepsi later reintroduced aspartame after the reformulated product performed poorly. The next wave of sweeteners focused on improved sensory profile and functionality. Acesulfame-K (ace-K) and sucralose were adopted in the 1990s and 2000s because they generally tolerate heat and storage better. For example you can’t use aspartame for baking or making sauces because it breaks down at high temperatures. It’s also not useful for items with long shelf lives including certain condiments, dried mixes and confectionery because it can lose sweetness over time. However, ace-K and sucralose tend only to work in combinations. Ace-K, for example, boosts upfront sweetness, but has a bitter aftertaste that other sweeteners can help “round out”. In general, uptake of “artificial” sweeteners has varied. They appear more accepted in the UK and Germany, and less, for example, in Portugal and Romania. Influencing factors include regulatory approvals, cultural preferences and health attitudes. In the 2010s, consumers came to favour natural sweeteners with more botanical origins. The first to become a big deal was stevia, a sweetener extracted from the leaves of Latin America’s Stevia rebaudiana plant (below). It was followed by monk fruit, from the Siraitia grosvenorii vine of southern China. Stevia wonder? Photoongraphy These too come with trade-offs, however. For instance, stevia has unpalatable bitter or liquorice notes. And with various natural sweeteners, there are again challenges when sugar’s structural properties matter, including mouthfeel, browning and moisture retention. This is one reason bulk sweeteners called polyols have become an important, parallel additive. Also known as sugar alcohols, polyols include erythritol, isomalt, maltitol and sorbitol. They are usually synthesised industrially using corn and wheat syrups. Polyols can be added to products in much larger amounts, since they are not as sweet as the likes of aspartame and stevia. Used to replace sugar’s volume and texture, they can lower the calorie content of foods and also reduce the risk of tooth decay. However, excessive consumption can give people gastrointestinal discomfort and make them go to the toilet. So when polyols make up more than 10% of the weight of most food products in the UK and EU, for instance, they require a laxative warning on the label. Overall, the UK permits around 20 different sweeteners. But such are the pros and cons of each that there is still no simple sugar replacement. Instead, manufacturers mix, match and blend ingredients to approximate the sweetness and structure that sugar provides. The resulting products generate huge annual sales around the world, but each advance is up against a public whose view of sweeteners is continually shifting. And sure enough, the same cycle has been repeating yet again in the 2020s. How sweeteners became controversial (again) To understand why sweeteners keep cycling back into controversy, it helps to look at the machinery that translates scientific evidence into public health messages and government policy. The World Health Organization (WHO) sets international norms, standards and evidence-based policy options in this area. It has traditionally focused on free sugars, meaning any sugars added to products as well as those in everything from honeys to fruit-juice concentrates. The WHO has consistently recommended that adults and children keep free sugars below 10% of their total calorie intake to lower the risk of tooth decay and excess body weight, and below 5% to ensure life-long protection against tooth decay. Most guidance on sweeteners has instead come from food safety authorities, and focused on safety and exposure rather than potential health benefits. In the UK, whose guidance has been broadly positive, the government launched a sugar reduction programme in 2016. This was ahead of a wider obesity strategy, under guidance from both the WHO and the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition. The sugar programme actively pushed industry and consumers towards replacing sugar with sweeteners. This included introducing a soft drinks industry levy (“sugar tax”) in 2018, on manufacturers for drinks with excessive sugar content. This led to higher quantities of sweeteners in consumer products, but then in 2023, to the surprise of many in this space, the WHO got directly involved in the sweetener debate. It recommended against using sweeteners as a strategy for weight control or reducing the risk of diseases. The advice was based on a 2022 systematic review – meaning a summary of various studies – by the WHO. The review found that while rigorous short-term trials (up to one year) suggested minor weight-loss benefits from substituting sugar with sweeteners, long-term observational studies pointed to increased risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In observational studies, researchers observe how people consume sweeteners of their own volition and track their health outcomes. As we’ll see, there are various drawbacks with these studies that make the results less reliable. The strongest designs for reaching conclusions about the causes of particular health conditions are randomised controlled trials. In this context, that means studies where participants are randomly given foods made with different types of sweeteners to compare outcomes. We’ll get into the details shortly, but when sweeteners are used in place of sugars in these studies, they typically see modest reductions in body weight and energy intake. In randomised trials comparing sweeteners with water, nothing or a placebo, there are generally no adverse effects on participants’ body weight or energy intake, and no other reported adverse events either. UK sweetener policy has been complicated by a recent intervention by the WHO. Richard Juilliart The drawbacks with observational studies help explain why the WHO framed its recommendation as conditional – in other words, countries can still promote sweeteners if there’s evidence demonstrating their safety and benefits. This conditionality is standard when the WHO is less certain about the balance between benefits and harms, and may think a case-by-case approach is appropriate. In the UK, that uncertainty didn’t calm the waters. Instead, it arguably legitimised the sense that sweeteners are “controversial”. In 2025, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition published a detailed response noting that the WHO placed more weight on observational studies than randomised controlled trials, and that the underlying evidence for the recommendation was mixed. Nevertheless, the committee said people should minimise their overall intake of sweeteners, and that younger children should avoid drinks sweetened with either sugar or sweeteners. At the international level, there are also more recent cases of policy outpacing evidence. Products containing sweeteners qualify as “ultra-processed foods” under the Nova classification criteria, a controversial system developed by Brazilian researchers around 15 years ago. Nova’s definitions are argued to be value-laden, ambiguous, and to blur the distinction between processing, formulation and nutritional quality. This Nova classification has probably contributed to a major shift in US sweetener policy. New US dietary guidelines state that no amount of added sugars or sweeteners should be “considered part of a healthy or nutritious diet”. Generally, the international conversation has shifted from “swap sugar for sweeteners” to “reduce overall sweetness in the diet”. Possible in principle, but poorly evidenced, and politically difficult to engineer. Why sweetener research can be confusing Broadly, the science of sweeteners and health consists of: Mechanistic experiments designed to show how sweeteners affect the body at a biological level; Observational studies designed to show what outcomes are associated with consuming them; Randomised controlled trials designed to show what, if any, health conditions they cause under controlled conditions. Mechanistically, sweeteners have measurable biological effects on the body. They activate taste receptors in the mouth, for instance. They can affect blood sugar responses after eating and drinking, alter hormone release, change how parts of the brain respond to sweetness, switch certain genes on or off, and shift the abundance of some microbes in the gut. These findings show that sweeteners do have effects on the body. But that is not proof of real-world harm or benefit. A change in hormones, brain activity or gut microbes does not automatically mean that people will eat more, gain weight or face higher disease risk. Mechanistic findings are therefore best treated as clues about what might matter in everyday life. The gut microbiome is a good example of this gap. Sweeteners potentially alter gut microbial profiles in ways that affect human metabolism. But microbiome findings may differ depending on which sweetener is studied, how much is consumed, who is consuming it, and what else is in the diet. A microbiome finding can therefore be scientifically interesting while still saying little about whether sweeteners, consumed in everyday diets, do net harm or net good. One swallow does not a microbiome make. AlphaTauri 3D Graphics Observational studies follow large groups of people over time and relate reported sweetener use to outcomes such as weight gain, diabetes, heart disease and death. These studies are indispensable for studying questions that randomised trials usually cannot answer well, especially rare outcomes and diseases that may take many years to develop. They are also useful for tracking patterns of consumption and for generating hypotheses. Yet they are also especially easy to misread. One issue is the precision of measurements. Researchers typically infer people’s sweetener intake from self-reported diet questionnaires that use broad food categories, such as “diet soft drinks”. These rarely capture the type or dose of sweeteners, not to mention that manufacturers regularly change the ingredients in their products. Researchers can easily link certain sweeteners to health outcomes through misclassifying data. A bigger issue is known as reverse causality. Sweeteners are disproportionately used by people already trying to manage weight, control their blood sugar, or improve their diet. This is often because their risk of diet-related health problems is already high or rising. In such situations, sweetener intake is likely a sign of underlying health vulnerabilities and attempts to change behaviour, not a cause of later disease. Researchers can adjust their statistics to account for such people, but this cannot fully untangle people’s motivations and lifestyles. Finally, sweeteners sit inside what we call an additive vs substitutive problem. The comparison in research is rarely sweeteners versus nothing (additive), but sweeteners instead of sugar (substitutive). Rarer still are studies comparing unique sweetener types or blends. When you change the comparisons you often reach different conclusions, yet debates around the safety of sweeteners often conflate research findings that compare different things. It’s only once you account for all these complexities that the best human evidence becomes easier to interpret. To be clear, we’re not saying all the blame lies with policymakers misinterpreting science. The way studies are designed, analysed and communicated can also make the evidence seem more contradictory. The risks of misunderstanding are especially high when a tentative mechanistic signal is discussed as if it were proof of harm in everyday life, or if an observational link is presented as if it carries the same weight as a randomised trial. What the best human evidence shows The most important point about sweeteners is what happens when they replace sugar, not when they are consumed on top of an otherwise unchanged diet. That distinction matters because if someone consumes less sugar, you would expect lower calorie intake and smaller peaks in their blood sugar and insulin after meals. This leads to two key scientific questions. One, do sweeteners change people’s eating behaviour by increasing how much food they eat or altering their food preferences? Two, do any short-term changes translate into meaningful long-term differences in body weight and health? Some of the clearest evidence comes from a string of recent randomised controlled trials testing sweeteners in realistic dietary settings. Each has involved teams of researchers at different institutions and sometimes different countries, and are known by their short names: Sweet Tooth, Switch and Sweet. In one trial within the Sweet project, adults with overweight or obesity consumed different drinks. These were sweetened with one of three different blends of sweeteners, alongside a fourth alternative that was sweetened purely with sugar. Two of the three sweetener blends were new plant-based combinations containing stevia – one with monk fruit and one with katemfe fruit (thaumatin). The third was a common artificial combination of sucralose and ace-K. All participants were given either one of these or the sugar-sweetener drink, then ate a carbohydrate-rich breakfast. The experiments were carried out by multiple teams of researchers at different universities. These were crossover trials, meaning they were repeated multiple times with the same participants consuming a different drink on each occasion. All three blends of sweeteners led to people producing less insulin after their meal than those who had the sugar drink. The blends containing sucralose/ace-K and stevia/katemfe fruit also saw lower increases in blood sugar. There were some small differences between blends in how they affected participants’ appetites, but these did not translate into higher calorie intake over the following 24 hours. In other words, the benefits to blood sugar and insulin didn’t induce participants to eat more to make up for it. Gastrointestinal symptoms were also mostly mild. It’s harder to swap out sugar for sweeteners in solid foods because of the previously mentioned additional structural benefits that sugar brings. We had to overcome these issues to test the effects of sweeteners in biscuits in our study – mentioned at the beginning of the article – which was also part of the Sweet project. We tested biscuits with fruit fillings made in three ways: with sugar, stevia or an artificial sweetener similar to aspartame called neotame. We examined how participants were affected in the hours after eating them, then after two weeks of daily consumption. Again, this was a crossover trial. I think therefore I jam. Oksana2010 Participants who ate the biscuits containing the sweeteners again saw lower blood-sugar and insulin spikes after a meal – both after one serving and after the two-week test. Participants’ hunger levels and appetite-related hormones did not differ meaningfully either. This is one of the more direct tests of the claim that sweeteners in solid foods increase people’s hunger or disrupt their appetite hormones in a way that makes them eat more. These results are reassuring, but the real policy question is what happens over months. Sweet has covered this too, in a 12-month randomised controlled trial of adults with overweight or obesity. Involving multiple research teams, the trial was designed to more closely reflect how people use sweeteners in daily life. Participants first had to complete a two-month low-calorie diet to lose at least 5% of their weight (on average they each lost about 10kg or 22lb). They then had to eat a healthy diet for ten months in which no more than 10% of their calories could come from sugars. One group had to meet the 10% requirement by replacing sugar-rich foods and drinks with products containing sweeteners, while the other group had to achieve it by avoiding both sugars and sweeteners. At the end of the year, both groups had kept off most of the weight they had lost. But the group eating sweeteners had regained less weight – about 1.6kg on average – whereas the other group regained about 3.5kg. In other words, within a healthier low-sugar diet, sweeteners may help people to keep weight off. The trial did detect differences in the two groups’ gut microbiomes, with the sweetener group showing relatively more microbes linked to short-chain fatty acid production and methane production. These could potentially lead to bloating or constipation. But there were no signs that sweetener use worsened measures linked to diabetes or heart disease risk (also known as cardiometabolic markers). What could explain the difference in weight maintenance with sweeteners? One possible explanation is that the group avoiding both sugar and sweeteners found the diet harder to sustain. Reducing sugar and sweetened foods may have increased the appeal of sweet-tasting foods, making it more difficult to maintain a low-sugar, lower-calorie eating pattern over time. This interpretation was supported by the psychological data collected in the study, which showed lower diet satisfaction and more cravings for sweet food in the no-sweetener group, but no comparable change in the sweetener group. Evidence from weight-management programmes points in the same general direction. A year-long randomised trial from the Switch study at the University of Liverpool compared beverages with added sweeteners to just drinking water. This was during a structured programme that helps people change habits related to eating, exercise and lifestyle to lose weight and keep it off. Both groups lost weight and maintained clinically meaningful reductions. The group having drinks with sweeteners lost slightly more weight than the water group, though the difference was small. The key take-home was that diet soft drinks are not associated with poorer weight control than plain water in a structured programme. This all runs counter to common claims that these drinks drive sweet cravings, reinvigorate people’s appetites and induce them to put weight back on. Finally, the Sweet Tooth project recently carried out a randomised trial that helps address another popular narrative, namely that exposure to a sweet taste increases a person’s preference for sweetness and drives overeating. For six months, participants were either given low, moderate or high exposure to sweet-tasting foods and drinks. In all cases, the sweetness came from sugars, sweeteners, fruit and dairy. By the end of the study, groups did not differ in their liking for sweet tastes or to what extent they chose sweet foods. It also made no difference to their calorie intake, body weight or cardiometabolic markers. In subsequent months, participants drifted back towards the preferences for sweetness they had had before the study. This weakens the idea that simply “training the palate” by stripping sweet tastes from the diet is a reliable route to lowering calorie intake or improving weight control in the long term. These trials provide some of the strongest human evidence available and show the science is more coherent than the public debate suggests. In controlled settings, replacing sugar with approved sweeteners tends to lower post-meal spikes in blood sugar and insulin, does not increase appetite or energy intake, and can support weight management when used as part of a healthier, sugar-reduced diet. The effects are not dramatic, and sweeteners are not a standalone solution to obesity. Overall dietary patterns, food choices and calorie density still dominate. But high-quality human trials do not support the claim that sweeteners, when used as substitutes for sugar, drive weight gain or cause metabolic harm. One caveat readers may have in mind is aspartame, which was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. However, it was based on limited evidence, mainly concerning liver cancer, and was a hazard classification, referring to the potential of a substance to cause harm in principle. It wasn’t a finding that normal consumption has been shown to cause cancer in everyday life. The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives has concluded that the evidence in humans is not convincing and kept the acceptable daily intake unchanged. The FDA said the classification did not mean aspartame was actually linked to cancer at current permitted levels of use. The future The next phase is to deepen what we know already. When people use sweeteners over years, does it help sustain lower sugar intake, or do people simply shift preferences and purchasing patterns? And when studies detect changes in the gut microbiome, does this matter for metabolic health in any meaningful way? We need better evidence in some of the groups that those who shape policy care most about: children, people with diabetes, and those at highest risk of heart problems and diabetes. Not because current trials suggest clear harm, but because public health guidance should rest on data that reflects real life. Children are one of several groups where the research evidence remains more limited. Gorodenkoff The science also needs to answer some practical consumer-facing questions. For instance, we still don’t know enough about which sweeteners, or blends of sweeteners, work best in which products; how much sugar can be removed without making foods and drinks less acceptable; and whether the answers differ for children, adults, people with diabetes or people who already consume sweeteners regularly. Another frontier is the attempt to get closer to sugar itself. Sweet proteins such as brazzein and monellin, first identified in tropical fruits, are attracting attention because they deliver intense sweetness in tiny amounts. The FDA has recently issued “no questions” letters for both as food ingredients, meaning they can legally be used in commercial foods. Rare sugars such as tagatose and allulose are also interesting. They are not as intensely sweet, but come closer to sugar in taste and functionality. But none of this means the perfect substitute has arrived. Sweet proteins can provide sweetness, but not sugar’s bulk, browning or moisture retention. Rare sugars may behave more like sugar, but their performance is still product-specific and manufacturing remains a challenge – they are not naturally abundant so must be produced through complex processes. All these are better seen as promising advances than a single, definitive replacement. Artificial intelligence may help, though not as a magic wand either. Researchers are now using machine-learning tools to predict sweetness, bitterness, safety and other properties before candidate molecules are ever tested in foods. That could speed up the search for better sweeteners and, perhaps more importantly, better blends for specific products. The future may lie less in one miraculous ingredient than in smarter combinations: sweet proteins for intensity, rare sugars for bulk and mouthfeel, and improved formulation to bring them closer to the real thing. Will we ever be able to have our cake and eat it? Probably not in the literal sense of recreating sugar’s chemistry with a single substitute. Sugar is sweetness plus structure, and no one ingredient does both. But the evidence increasingly suggests that we can keep sweetness (and the pleasure it brings) in our diets while reducing sugar intake. In other words, we may not get the same cake, but we can still enjoy a version that costs the body less. Words by Graham Finlayson, Professor of Biological Psychology, University of Leeds, Catherine Gibbons, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, University of Leeds and Jason Halford, Professor of Biological Psychology and Health Behaviours, University of Leeds. Special thanks for The Conversation. Support and donate today.

Hermès has opened a sale on a curated selection of its creations, offering discounts both online and in its boutiques. The offer covers a range of women’s and men’s items and is available through the Hermès website, where customers can view selected pieces or visit participating boutiques. Hermès notes that the promotion applies only to selected products, with availability varying by channel and location. By ML. Photo(s)/Hermès

Aman has started accepting reservations for Amanvari, a new beachfront resort on Baja California’s eastern cape in Mexico, ahead of its planned opening on 1 August 2026. Set where the desert meets the Sea of Cortés and backed by the Sierra de la Laguna mountains, Amanvari will feature 18 casitas and a collection of private homes. The property is designed to emphasize privacy and a low-rise architectural profile within a coastal landscape of sand, estuary and ocean. Amanvari further expands Aman’s portfolio in the Americas, which includes city and coastal properties such as Aman New York and Amanyara in the Caribbean. For more information about the resort and bookings, visit Aman’s website. By ML. Photo(s)/Aman