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Artificial Sweeteners Are Toxic To Digestive Gut Bacteria, Study Finds (cnbc.com)
According to a study published in the journal Molecules, researchers found that six common artificial sweeteners approved by the FDA and 10 sport supplements that contained them were found to be toxic to the digestive gut microbes of mice. CNBC reports: Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore tested the toxicity of aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame, and acesulfame potassium-k. They observed that when exposed to only 1 milligram per milliliter of the artificial sweeteners, the bacteria found in the digestive system became toxic. According to the study, the gut microbial system "plays a key role in human metabolism," and artificial sweeteners can "affect host health, such as inducing glucose intolerance." Additionally, some of the effects of the new FDA-approved sweeteners, such as neotame, are still unknown.
However, the study found that mice treated with the artificial sweetener neotame had different metabolic patterns than those not treated, and several important genes found in the human gut had decreased. Additionally, concentrations of several fatty acids, lipids and cholesterol were higher in mice treated with neotame than in those not. Because of the widespread use of artificial sweeteners in drinks and foods, many people consume them without knowing it.
However, the study found that mice treated with the artificial sweetener neotame had different metabolic patterns than those not treated, and several important genes found in the human gut had decreased. Additionally, concentrations of several fatty acids, lipids and cholesterol were higher in mice treated with neotame than in those not. Because of the widespread use of artificial sweeteners in drinks and foods, many people consume them without knowing it.
Makes me sick
One milligram of sweetener per milliliter of sweetener? What?
Please correct the text, the referenced study is about neotame only and does not investigate the other mentioned molecules or products. The CNBC article is probably to blame as it is misleading on which results were obtained in which study.
They just looked at the abstract and did not even quote that correctly. The article is only about neotame and the bacteria did not become toxic, they died.
There was no increased concentrations of several fatty acids, lipids and cholesterol in the mice, but in their feces. This is just an attempt to create panic.
To be clear here, because TFS is a mess, there are two separate papers by two separate research teams. The paper described in the first line of the summary is this one, looking at a mix of supplements and how they affected bioluminescent reporting in bacteria. The paper which is linked in the first sentence ( this one ) is the one which looked at Neotame exposed mice, referred to in the last paragraph of TFS.
How exactly was this NOT studied before??? Are we seriously this far gone from reality not even the FDA actually verified the claims of a corporation BEFORE signing off on it?
Swear to god I though this was in China again given the other thread talking about poisoned baby food. For once I'd agree with China, beheading a few executives is long over due.
but I have concluded a long time ago that consuming artificial sweeteners (aspartame) made me really gassy, and when working in a confined cubicle, is a separate problem on its own. Given this implication, I quickly came to the conclusion that aspartame is not as good as it's portrayed out to be. Coincidentally, my colleagues were quick to thank me for ditching that filthy habit.
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The summary is a mess. Still, there are quite many studies that indicate that non-nutritive sweeteners are associated with increased risk to develop obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... And their effects on gut bacteria is the main suspect for this.
"...when exposed to only 1 milligram per milliliter..."
So, about double the amount that's actually in beverages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_drink#Amount_of_artificial_sweeteners_in_diet_soft_drinks
Still, it adds to our understanding of interactions in a complicated system.
It's lucky I'm not a mouse!
If you look at the materials something is created from, you could also say that organic food is made from dirt, mud and manure.
For some reason a lot of artificial sweeteners have had a tendency to be formerly used as rat poison. It's almost like a bad joke already. Google it.
AC, this is not difficult.
The substances being tested are crystalline solids at room temperature. They are dissolved in a solvent.
In this case, at a concentration of 1mg : 1mL, as an aqueous solution.
Granted, that is pretty damn concentrated. But still.
Particularly for sucralose, which is 600x as sweet as sugar. 1mg/ml would be sickly sweet. I generally use 0.1mg/ml in making my own sugar-free cordials (I'm diabetic).
... I wonder why.
Oh, maybe because vivisection is a fraud, and different species of animals react differently to the same substance? Why aren't they using elephants for their 'vital research', since they are obviously just like humans! Why not narwhals, or tortoises, or pitbulls? Why not tigers, they're just like humans too.
This is just another example (there are hundreds of thousands of them) of fraudulent 'research' that is absolutely useless to humans - because you ONLY find out whether the same thing happens to humans after you experiment on humans!
BTW, I don't know whether these sweeteners do have this effect on gut bacteria in humans, and I'm not saying they don't, just that this 'research' doesn't tell us anything about humans. You could find totally different results if you used rats, guinea pigs, elephants, cows, you name it. The results therefore cannot be extrapolated to humans.
The gut biome is incredible complex, so obviously some artificial sweeteners will be detrimental to some gut bacteria, just like any other compound you ingest will be detrimental to some gut bacteria. This is almost a mathematical necessity. A blanket statement that "artificial sweeteners are toxic to gut bacteria" is simply hyperbolic and designed to cause panic. Artificial sweeteners are a wide array of different chemicals and gut bacteria are an even wider array of different microorganisms. Tasting sweet cannot possible make this entire group of very different chemicals toxic to all gut bacteria.
... always had the running's after drinking diet cola.
This toxicity actually improved my dieting!
Because whenever I had eaten the kind of food that makes me fat, which bred the kind of bacteria that made me keep eating bad crap, I always switched to artificially sweetener, and then it was easy to switch to healthy food, and easier to stay on healthy food.
So it killed off the bad bacteria, killing the urges caused by that flora (like the leptin resistance caused by the bacteria that digest short acellular carbs), and allowed good bacteria to take a hold once I switched to good food.
i always wished for some kind of localized selective antibiotic that isn't a traditional antibiotic, and that allows mo to fix bad food relapses. :)
Seems I had one, all along.
Then it'd be "one milligram of sweetener per milliliter of water." IOW they should've said that instead of "(whatever) per milliliter of sweetener". Yes of course we can assume all sorts of things when idiot writers fuck up like that, but that doesn't make it the correct solution. It's a work-around at best, and deserves getting called out.
What about Stevia?
J
It basically starts killing my gut bacteria.
And as anyone who has taken extensive antibiotic regimens can tell you.
Killing off your gut flora transforms you into ASS CANNON MAN!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Words to live by
It's like saying beer contains 8% beer by volume.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's a lot of sweetener. I doubt it will dissolve in whatever solvent. Well, going to the article, they talk about 0.75 mg per *kg of body weight*. That makes more sense.
Agreeing with the others here, the quoted blurb is bad, and the quoting is even worse.
This is slashdot, FFS! We're supposed to get the numbers right, or at least in the right ballpark!
Don't contribute to bad journalism, pretty please.
That would be true if beer was a crystalline solid at room temperature.
Which it is not.
Best not tell vegans where the nutrients from their plants come from.
They'll have an aneurysm.
Link to the original paper. Not paywalled, sweet. (see what I did there?)
The summaries, mindlessly cut and pasted several levels deep including in the /. summary, really suck. According to the summaries, the bacteria "became toxic". No they didn't, please get a clue.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Aside from that, you still need comprehension of an unexpected looming catastrophe for panic to kick in. Or mass-hysteria could produce an equivalent response.
And the problem being...?
If you look at the materials something is created from, you could also say that organic food is made from dirt, mud and manure.
The problem is that it's not something you would normally encounter in your natural environment; not something you would normally encounter. That means a) we don't have long experience of what effect it will have and b) your genes have not had a chance to evolve to cope with that substance. Compare, for example something which was extracted with little change from a plant that has been historically eaten by people.
There are currently two competing ideas of how to do food safety and product safety generally. The precautionary principle says that if you have something new you should provide evidence that it's safe. The alternative, basically learning from experience, basically says, go ahead and then we'll learn where there are problems. Plenty of artificial sweeteners have been released more or less on the "try it and we'll see" approach. Chicken chlorination, pesticides and a whole load of other things are also being put out in this way. If we find out that sweeteners have actually been killing people - which is what raised cholesterol strongly suggests - then it's a pretty strong argument for using the precautionary principle everywhere. This is a big deal.
Well you clearly don't do math. How is it possible for X% of Y to be Y unless X is 100?
We don't encounter coal in our natural environment?!? I guess you are a life-long city dweller?
There are plenty of examples of plants that have been historically eaten by people known to contain toxins and other dangers (some plants accumulate heavy metals for instance). In fact some traditional plants are directly lethal if not handled correctly e.g. cassava. Natural doesn't mean anything and being traditionally used should mean little until proven reasonable safe.
It wouldn't be true in any case, because the solute is one thing and when you mix it with a solvent it becomes another thing. There's a word for that - a solution.
It's like using the same word in the same sentence to mean both salt and brine.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In this case, at a concentration of 1mg : 1mL, as an aqueous solution.
Granted, that is pretty damn concentrated. But still.
That scales to 1g/L, doesn't it? To me, that doesn't seem anywhere near as concentrated as the absurdly high dosages used in cancer tests.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
We don't encounter coal in our natural environment?!? I guess you are a life-long city dweller?
a) very few savanna living prehistoric people, as we evolved to be, encountered actual coal;
b) even your coal eating county dweller tends to encounter either raw coal or the combustion products of coal - specially made chemicals from coal a bit less so
Widespread encounters with coal really didn't happen until the start of the industrial era - and yes that does mean we are starting to evolve, but the way that happens is by some people dying which isn't always great.
There are plenty of examples of plants that have been historically eaten by people known to contain toxins and other dangers (some plants accumulate heavy metals for instance). In fact some traditional plants are directly lethal if not handled correctly e.g. cassava. Natural doesn't mean anything and being traditionally used should mean little until proven reasonable safe.
This is precisely the point known to contain toxins and other dangers. In other words, with these things we have mostly learned to live with them. Historical societies have had a pretty good idea not only of what immediately kills but also the things that had long term bad effects ("look at the Joneses - they keep eating those honey fungus and they all die of kidney problems"). With new chemicals and novel stuff we have none of this experience to fall back on.
BTW Slashdot mods, if you don't read at -1 and mod up the ACs then these conversations look weird. My comment may be wrong or right but it's a valid view plenty of more scientifically oriented people have. Even if it doesn't deserve +5 some kind of sensible moderation would put it up at a visible level. And no, you aren't going to persuade me to log in.
Another name for coal is carbon. So yeah, you better eat real sugar because that way you won't get any carbon in your body.
Oh, wait...
Equivalent to one gram per liter or about the concentration found in common Diet Coke, ie a very representative real-world dosage for human consumption. The "sweetener" was double and is now edited out.
Funnily enough traditional foods that contain toxins are usually prepared in a traditional way to remove or deactivate those toxins, so I fail to see the relevance at all.
As for coal, it's a bastard to mine compared to chopping down trees and surface deposits are rare. Plus it smells a lot worse than wood. For this reason it wasn't used much before the industrial revolution. This is a mere blink on evolutionary timescales.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seems the peopple guzzeling down diet coke and pepsi max by the bucketload are fat anyway...
So if its killing of the normal flora you will have problems with the rest of the stuff you eat to... -> fat!
Saccharin is cheap to make and very profitable. Lots of people try to get in on the game just to make a buck and you never know what they are trying to sell you
a) very few savanna living prehistoric people, as we evolved to be, encountered actual coal;
b) even your coal eating county dweller tends to encounter either raw coal or the combustion products of coal - specially made chemicals from coal a bit less so
Widespread encounters with coal really didn't happen until the start of the industrial era - and yes that does mean we are starting to evolve, but the way that happens is by some people dying which isn't always great.
If only humans could change and adapt to living conditions/diets outside of the savanna.
eg. Pale skin, lactose tolerance ... to name a couple of the most glaringly obvious examples.
No sig today...
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Neotame is 7000-13000 times as sweet as sugar.
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
... if you read the paper... they are administering 2.5 times the FDA recommended dose of Sweat and Low... the mice showed no signs of ill health or altered behavior... and the "toxic" is a little bit of a stretch... there were changes in gut bacteria populations but that happens whenever you change a diet to anything else.
Did someone else get a different read on this thing? I went through the "method" section which is where I always start whenever I read a paper. Straight to the method... aka what did you actually do?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Except that's not how plants work. The majority of a plant is made from water and CO2. So, one would be more correct in saying they're eating sunlight, air and water, with a tiny bit of dirt and manure mixed in.
I hate these studies. No relation to actually diets. Completely useless. Mice have a much less developed digestive system - moreover, we consumer compounds as part of a complex diet.
Absurdity is not defined by whether something is more or less absurd than something else that is absurd.
1 mg/ml is vastly higher than would actually be used. Furthermore, it was the minimum threshold for a positive response for only one of the tested sweeteners. All other required higher concentrations still, including neotame which is at least 10x stronger than Sucralose (the one with a response at 1mg/ml). With neotame, the concentrations required would be 100 - 1000 times stronger than what would be typically used. Sounds pretty absurd.
Citations please? Making sh*t up I see.
Also, Diet Coke uses aspartame which required a minimum of 4mg/ml in the test.
Step 1) Get the country hooked on sugar - Check and Profit
Step 2) Make a fortune of diabetes treatments - Check and Profit
Step 3) Develop and market tons of different artificial "no/low calorie" sweeteners and market to people now suffering from obesity - Check and Profit
Step 4) ???
Step 5) Profit Profit Profit!
1 milligram per milliliter is 1 gram per liter = 0.1% by weight. If I haven't misplaced a decimal, that looks to be roughly the equivalent to 7 or 8 packets of aspartame based artificial sweetener (35mg each) in a glass of water (about 250ml). Pretty sweet. I'm not sure that "only" is the right adverb.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Eating a "solution" of 1 milligram per 1 milliliter means eating solid matter merely soaked in whatever solvent is used.
E.g. 1 milligram of sugar per 1 milliliter of water scaled up to, say, kitchen measurements, equals to taking a cup of sugar and pouring an exact same cup of water over it.
Which is, technically, a solution. But it's more like a paste.
Stuffing mice with a paste made out of artificial sweeteners is NOT a proof of anything but their voracity.
And we already know that. Those little fuckers will eat plastic lawnmowers and electrical insulation.
This is just another one of those fraudulent studies aimed at reaching a foregone conclusion.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A few years back, there was a short and small study about common sweeteners of the time, including sugar, on actual humans, that found a notable loss of gut bacteria - One of many metrics being tested. The result was a surprise at that stage.
Except Siberia.
That scales to 1g/L, doesn't it?
Yes, that is the more familiar meaning of the concentration. Also, no, that is not "sickeningly sweet" like the artificial sweetener defenders protest. It is a sickening concentration of aspartame, but that is not because of the sweetness.
There is a chart in here. For those curious, there are nearly 34 fluid ounces in a liter. 180mg * 33.8 ~= 6g of aspartame in a liter of diet whatever. So, 1g/liter is LOW for aspartame, although it might be fitting for some of the others.
Burning wood was banned in London by Elizabeth I in the 1580's, which required the use of coal. It was the first example of air pollution regulation.
And, we eat rocks.
Actually only one rock: salt.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
They should call it NeoNotTameAtAll, then.
#DeleteFacebook
If I haven't tasted it before, it's Neo-ta-me!
Except your assertion is dumb. Please refrain from making further stupid comments. Just because coal contains carbon doesn't mean it is only carbon in the same way that sugar contains carbon as does almost everything out there. It comes in various forms and some of those forms are highly toxic.
When the whole concept of product safety first came up there was the idea that toxicity was dosage-dependent. You could eat small quantities of something and it would be ok. But larger amounts were not -- hence the idea of acceptable thresholds for contaminants. Ah, then it was discovered that certain materials that were otherwise tolerated were harmful in very tiny amounts if the exposure was at a certain point in the life cycle.. this is where the concern for bisphenol A and relatives came from. The whole idea of dosage-driven product safety needs a rethink. And by people who do not have a profit motive in the results.
The artificial sweeterner, Saccharin, is made from coal.
You're made up of mostly carbon. The shit that is killing the world! Don't even get me started on your radioactivity.
Those early 80s women of fitness drank so much damn Tab and Diet Coke when it first came out. And there has been no great Tab plague even nearly 40 years later. The propaganda on 'fat free' bull shit caused far more harm to western culture health (high calorie, low fat confusion).
Obviously water is better than heavy sugar drinks or simulated sugar drinks - but freakouts about artificial sweeteners are always more fear than substance. And the real world proves it every day.
I wonder if this is part of why people who drink diet soda are just as likely to be obese as people who drink non-diet soda. Aspartame and sucralose are the worst. They give me a screaming headache within minutes. I can tolerate saccharine, though.
And coal is made from plants. So what!
Coal tar is also a treatment for dandruff.
Saccharin is one of the few artificial sweeteners that I don't have a reaction to, with Aspartame triggering the most severe reaction. But saccharin does taste rather bitter so I tend to avoid it just on flavor alone.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
From a variety of sources:
"Sucralose; "a chlorinated derivative of sucrose""
"Acesulfame K "is not broken down when digested, nor is it stored in the body. After being consumed, it's quickly absorbed by the body and then rapidly excreted, unchanged"
"After digestion, aspartame is broken down into two amino acids, and methanol."
"Neotame is recommended to be used in organic food, but it could be causing neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage. These are the same concerns that have been found in aspartame."
"Laboratory rat testing in the 1970’s linked saccharin to the development of bladder cancer"
"Advantame is derived from aspartame, and has a similar chemical structure. "
Seeing the different side effects and mechanisms of these sweeteners, and the very different chemical compositions, I'm suspicious that these can all have the same or similar effect on gut bacteria. In fact, the argument starts with Acesulfame K, which is described as not being metabolized. Which is it, is A-K metabolized within the body or not?
Count me as cynical. This is not a definitive study, I bet.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
We use another one to clean our teeth: Fluorspar (also known as Fluorite or Calcium fluoride. And yes, one is written with a T, the other one with a D).
I think it was partly pollution, but also partly the realization that if she hadn't, 99% of the trees within 50 miles of London would have been gone within a century. Wood just doesn't have the energy-density necessary to provide winter heat to big cities with hundreds of thousands of residents... not only does it require lots of time and land to grow, but the logistics of delivering it (in sufficient quantities, with sufficient frequency) become insurmountable as well.
I'm pretty sure that's at least part of the reason why in 1400, cities like Rome, Athens, and Constantinople/Istanbul had been large, sprawling cities for centuries, but cities like London & Paris were still overgrown forts & trading posts. At least in cities like Rome, heating a dwelling was more of a luxury and matter of personal comfort than a matter of literal life and death. It's one thing to be unable to heat your apartment when it's 40 degrees outside at night for a few days per year... it's another matter ENTIRELY when it's 20 BELOW ZERO outside at night, and below freezing during the day, for weeks at a time (eg, London). Cities like London didn't have the luxury of being able to treat heating like... well, a luxury. So it became a factor limiting the city's ability to grow.
Sugar is bad for you, so avoid it.
Sugar substitutes are also bad for you. Stop liking what isn't good for you!
Fuck that. Accept that life is a terminal disease. Look at the various risks and make your own decisions. I choose sugar in moderation.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
So I guess i should avoid food with 5 times the legal limit of saccharin?
Oh, I see ACs when I mod. But if you explicitly whine about ACs being ignored, when they can't even post on other sites with registration, you're not earning any sympathy with me.
Obviously I didn't mod you either way, because I'm replying.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
that I am not a mouse.
We have FAR too many people with PhDs, or who are candidates, who need to publish papers. We clearly have vastly more people with advanced degrees than society needs for all the actual jobs. Somehow, I strongly suspect, there is a government research grant involved (a transfer of tax dollars from a productive working person to an egghead with a make-work job).
Junk science and junkier reporting. But its good to know that if i get an E.coli infection i can just add an entire bottle of sweetener to a diet coke to treat it.
eg. Pale skin, lactose tolerance ... to name a couple of the most glaringly obvious examples.
I think you are being obtuse and can see clearly that the widespread use of coal is evolutionarily recent whilst e.g. lactose tolerance is estimated to have evolved 10,000 years ago and has still not reached something like 65% of the world population.