this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Artificial sweeteners. Everyone is so obsessed with whether or not they cause cancer that their other potential effects get much less attention. There's a major industry push to keep them on the shelves, and we still have only recently discovered the gut microbiome.
Come again? What is it doing to the gut biome? Disrupting the normal functioning? Artificial sweeteners are a very broad category so which ones are we talking about? Aspartame specifically or others? Is Stevia aka erythritol on the table here or what? I am genuinely curious because I am A. Interested in nutrition and the effects of processed foods on the human body, but also because I'm a biology major and want to know more about stuff like this for research purposes..
(I typed a long response and it got rekd by lemmy instability :C ) Short version: I intentionally stopped short of saying artificial sweeteners affect the gut microbiome. I have read studies that show that they do, but I've also read studies that show they don't. A lot of studies on sweeteners either study a few at once, and often seem to study them interchangeably, which is unfortunate and makes finding the truth difficult. It's hard to keep up with, and hard to draw conclusions from reading studies. I'm capable of reading studies and meta-studies critically, but when it comes to artificial sweeteners I feel like I'm in a vast sea of studies that contradict each other and have conflicts of interest, and I am not an expert by any means. I've read enough to feel cautious about them, especially with the recent potential linking of Erythritol and stroke (and many Stevia sweeteners being cut with Erythritol), and the recent linking of cancer with Aspartame. And before you think I'm crazy for mentioning the Aspartame, I know the study didn't prove anything. What was surprising about it to me was that after decades of heavy studies finding Aspartame isn't carcinogenic, suddenly out of the blue one comes up and says "Hey, maybe?" I've pretty much never thought fake sugars were carcinogenic, but given some can still influence blood sugar (that one seems definitive), some may affect our gut microbiome (less definitive), and we have taste receptors in our stomachs that bind with sweeteners the same way the ones on our tongue do, I avoid them. Plus some of them legit upset my stomach, which is also a thing for some people.
Anywho, I ended up retyping most of it in different words I guess. Tl;dr, in the spirit of this post I think artifical sweeteners could be the next thing that we find out is bad for us but didn't know. However, I don't actually think there's any hard evidence for it, just strong evidence that we don't know the whole story yet. Whether or not they end up being bad for us, there's definitely a lot left to learn
Aspartame was classified as a Group 2B carcinogen, which basically means that in high doses in animal studies there is some evidence that it causes cancer.
Its one of the most studied chemicals in human history, so its easy to find studies that say one thing or another. But we've been studying its effects for nearly 60 years and the conclusion from both the US and EU is that it does not affect metabolism and does not cause cancer under normal circumstances. Based on the current guidelines the safe average daily intake for an adult is between 15-20 12 oz cans of diet soda per day.
Things more cancerous(Group 1/2A) than Aspartame include:
Well said. It surprised me that we didn't already know this given the rigorous amount of prior studies
Sugar is worse.
Well yes, and cigarettes are worse than vaping. But I hope you wouldn't encourage children to vape just because it's better than cigarettes, given there's a good deal we don't know and many mixed regulations/enforcements.
If I had kids I'd avoid giving them artificial sweeteners and excessive sugar. I don't judge parents who don't though.