Tag: artificial sweeteners

Categories : Diet and Nutrition Metabolic DisordersTags :

New WHO Guideline Advises Against Non-sugar Sweeteners for Weight Management

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a new guideline on non-sugar sweeteners (NSS), which recommends against using NSS to control body weight or reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

This comes as WHO conducts its first review of obesity management guideline in more than two decades. Last week, Francesco Branca, WHO director of nutrition and food safety, had also warned that weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy are “not a silver bullet” in tackling obesity.

The recommendation is based on the findings of a systematic review of the available evidence which suggests that use of NSS does not confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children. Results of the review also suggest that there may be potential undesirable effects from long-term use of NSS, such as an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults.

“Replacing free sugars with NSS does not help with weight control in the long term. People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages,” says Francesco Branca, WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety. “NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health.”

The recommendation applies to all people except individuals with pre-existing diabetes and includes all synthetic and naturally occurring or modified non-nutritive sweeteners that are not classified as sugars found in manufactured foods and beverages, or sold on their own to be added to foods and beverages by consumers. Common NSS include acesulfame K, aspartame, advantame, cyclamates, neotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia and stevia derivatives.

The recommendation does not apply to personal care and hygiene products containing NSS, such as toothpaste, skin cream, and medications, or to low-calorie sugars and sugar alcohols (polyols), which are sugars or sugar derivatives containing calories and are therefore not considered NSS.

Because the link observed in the evidence between NSS and disease outcomes might be confounded by baseline characteristics of study participants and complicated patterns of NSS use, the recommendation has been assessed as conditional, following WHO processes for developing guidelines. This signals that policy decisions based on this recommendation may require substantive discussion in specific country contexts, linked for example to the extent of consumption in different age groups.

The WHO guideline on NSS is part of a suite of existing and forthcoming guidelines on healthy diets that aim to establish lifelong healthy eating habits, improve dietary quality and decrease the risk of NCDs worldwide.

Source: WHO

Categories : Diet and Nutrition Mental HealthTags :

Artificial Sweetener Found to Cause Anxiety-like Behaviour in Mice

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Florida State University College of Medicine researchers have linked aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in nearly 5000 diet foods and drinks, to anxiety-like behaviour in mice.

Along with producing anxiety in the mice who consumed aspartame, the effects extended up to two generations from the males exposed to the sweetener. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“What this study is showing is we need to look back at the environmental factors, because what we see today is not only what’s happening today, but what happened two generations ago and maybe even longer,” said co-author Pradeep Bhide, the Jim and Betty Ann Rodgers Eminent Scholar Chair of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

The study came about, in part, because of previous research from the Bhide Lab on the transgenerational effects of nicotine on mice. The research showed temporary, or epigenetic, changes in mice sperm cells. Unlike genetic changes (mutations), epigenetic changes are reversible and don’t change the DNA sequence; however, they can change how the body reads a DNA sequence.

“We were working on the effects of nicotine on the same type of model,” Bhide said. “The father smokes. What happened to the children?”

Aspartame received FDA approval as a sweetener in 1981. Today, nearly 5000 tonnes are produced each year. When consumed, aspartame becomes aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol, all of which can have potent effects on the central nervous system.

Led by doctoral candidate Sara Jones, the study involved providing mice with drinking water containing aspartame at approximately 15% of the FDA-approved maximum daily human intake. The dosage, equivalent to six to eight cans of diet fizzy drink a day for humans, continued for 12 weeks in a study spanning four years.

Pronounced anxiety-like behaviour was observed in the mice through a variety of maze tests across multiple generations descending from the aspartame-exposed males.

“It was such a robust anxiety-like trait that I don’t think any of us were anticipating we would see,” Jones said. “It was completely unexpected. Usually you see subtle changes.”

When given diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, mice in all generations ceased to show anxiety-like behaviour.

Researchers are planning an additional publication from this study focused on how aspartame affected memory. Future research will identify the molecular mechanisms that influence the transmission of aspartame’s effect across generations.

Source: Florida State University

Categories : Diet and Nutrition GastrointestinalTags :

Non-nutritive Sweeteners Impact Human Glycaemic Responses

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Since the late 1800s, non-nutritive sweeteners have been used to provide sweetness without sugar. Long been believed to have no effect on the human body, researchers reporting in the journal Cell now challenge this notion by finding that these sugar substitutes are not inert, and, in fact, some can alter human consumers’ microbiomes and thereby their glycaemic responses – albeit in a highly individualised fashion.

Previous research has already found found that non-nutritive sweeteners affected the microbiomes of mice in ways that could impact their glycaemic responses, something which the same researchers now investigated in humans.

To address this important question, the research team carefully screened over 1300 individuals for those who strictly avoid non-nutritive sweeteners in their day-to-day lives, and identified a cohort of 120 individuals. These participants were broken into six groups: two controls and four who ingested well below the FDA daily allowances of either aspartame, saccharin, stevia, or sucralose.

“In subjects consuming the non-nutritive sweeteners, we could identify very distinct changes in the composition and function of gut microbes, and the molecules they secret into peripheral blood. This seemed to suggest that gut microbes in the human body are rather responsive to each of these sweeteners,” said senior author Eran Elinav, an immunologist and microbiome researcher. “When we looked at consumers of non-nutritive sweeteners as groups, we found that two of the non-nutritive sweeteners, saccharin and sucralose, significantly impacted glucose tolerance in healthy adults. Interestingly, changes in the microbes were highly correlated with the alterations noted in people’s glycaemic responses.”

To prove the microbiomes were responsible, the researchers transferred microbial samples from the study subjects to mice that have been raised in completely sterile conditions, with no microbiome of their own.

“The results were quite striking,” explained Elinav. “In all of the non-nutritive sweetener groups, but in none of the controls, when we transferred into these sterile mice the microbiome of the top responder individuals collected at a time point in which they were consuming the respective non-nutritive sweeteners, the recipient mice developed glycaemic alterations that very significantly mirrored those of the donor individuals. In contrast, the bottom responders’ microbiomes were mostly unable to elicit such glycaemic responses,” he added. “These results suggest that the microbiome changes in response to human consumption of non-nutritive sweetener may, at times, induce glycaemic changes in consumers in a highly personalised manner.”

Elinav says that he expects the effects of the sweeteners will vary across individuals because of how unique our microbiomes are. “We need to raise awareness of the fact that non-nutritive sweeteners are not inert to the human body as we originally believed. With that said, the clinical health implications of the changes they may elicit in humans remain unknown and merit future long-term studies.”

“In the meantime, we need to continue searching for solutions to our sweet tooth craving, while avoiding sugar, which is clearly most harmful to our metabolic health,” says Elinav. “In my personal view, drinking only water seems to be the best solution.”

Source: Science Daily

Categories : Cancer Diet and NutritionTags :

Not so Sweet: Artificial Sweeteners’ Cancer Risk

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An observational study with over 100 000 participants suggests that some artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk. The findings, published in PLOS Medicine, reflect other results from experimental studies.

The safety of artificial sweeteners has long been a subject of debate. To evaluate the potential carcinogenicity of artificial sweeteners, researchers analysed data from 102 865 French adults participating in the NutriNet-Santé study. The NutriNet-Santé study is an ongoing web-based cohort initiated in 2009 by the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN). Participants enrolled voluntarily, and self-reported their medical history, sociodemographic, diet, lifestyle, and health data.

Researchers gathered data concerning artificial sweetener intake from 24-hour dietary records. After collecting cancer diagnosis information during follow-up, the researchers conducted statistical analyses to investigate the associations between artificial sweetener intakes and cancer risk. They also adjusted for a range of variables including age, sex, education, physical activity, medical history and dietary intake.

The researchers found that participants who consumed larger quantities of artificial sweeteners, particularly aspartame and acesulfame-K, had higher risk of overall cancer compared to non-consumers (hazard ratio 1.13). Higher risks were observed for breast cancer and obesity-related cancers.

In addition to being an observational study, there were a number of limitations; dietary intakes are self-reported. Selection bias may also have been a factor, as participants were more likely to be women, to have higher educational levels, and be more health-conscious. Additional research will be required to confirm the findings and clarify the underlying mechanisms.

According to the authors, “Our findings do not support the use of artificial sweeteners as safe alternatives for sugar in foods or beverages and provide important and novel information to address the controversies about their potential adverse health effects. While these results need to be replicated in other large-scale cohorts and underlying mechanisms clarified by experimental studies, they provide important and novel insights for the ongoing re-evaluation of food additive sweeteners by the European Food Safety Authority and other health agencies globally”.

First author Charlotte Debras added: “Results from the NutriNet-Santé cohort (n = 102 865) suggest that artificial sweeteners found in many food and beverage brands worldwide may be associated with increased cancer risk, in line with several experimental in vivo / in vitro studies. These findings provide novel information for the re-evaluation of these food additives by health agencies.”

Source: EurekAlert!

Categories : Diet and NutritionTags :

A Sweet Protein Makes A Novel Sugar Substitute

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The European Union’s EIT Food organisation’s “Innovation Impact Award” was won by a project that developed a novel sugar substitute based on the smart enhancement of sweet proteins found in tropical fruits.

One of the project collaborators, Amai Protein, produces designer proteins using computational protein design and production through precise fermentation. Since these proteins are 4000 to 11 000 times sweeter than sugar, they can be used in tiny amounts, thereby being cheaper than sugar per sweetness unit. Furthermore, they have glycaemic value of 0 and do not adversely affect the population of intestinal bacteria (the microbiome).

The winning technology is based on adding natural food ingredient agents – termed MicroPatching agents – or other food ingredients to produce a protein flavour as close to sugar’s as possible. This should result in significantly reduced sugar consumption, and in turn its health and environmental impacts.

The researchers tackled several challenges including improving the taste and eliminating an aftertaste; protein stability; competitive pricing and adverse health effects. According to the research leader, Professor Yoav D. Livney at the Israel Institute of Technology, “winning the Impact Award will help us advance towards commercialization of the technology and consequently reduce sugar consumption in Israel and around the world.”

Source: Technion Israel Institute of Technology

Categories : Medical Research & TechnologyTags :

Artificial Sweetener Delivers a Protective Carbon Monoxide Dose

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Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

An oral prodrug has been developed which uses artificial sweeteners to deliver a protective carbon monoxide dose which protects against acute kidney injury.

Although carbon monoxide (CO) gas is toxic in large doses, with some 50 000 people suffering CO poisoning each year in the US, scientists have discovered it can reduce inflammation and protect cells against injury. The  protective effects of CO against injury in the kidneys, lungs, gastrointestinal tract and liver, among other organs has been shown in previous research. For the past five years, Wang and his collaborators have worked to design a safe way to deliver CO to human patients via prodrugs, which are inactive compounds that must undergo a chemical process in the body to release the active pharmacological agent. Their paper was published in Chemical Science.

Using two common artificial sweeteners, saccharine and acesulfame, as ‘carrier’ molecules for a prodrug, Prof Wang’s team were able to create an oral administration route for CO. They designed the molecules to release CO as they decomposed from water exposure. These are the first examples of orally active, organic CO prodrugs using a benign carrier that is approved by the Food & Drug Administration with a demonstrated safety profile.

“It’s difficult to deliver a gas, much less a poisonous gas, as a therapeutic to patients, and this work represents a pivotal step forward in developing alternative delivery forms,” said Prof Wang, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. “We wanted to work with a carrier that has a very well characterized safety profile, which confers a higher degree of certainty that it will be safe to use in a pill for human consumption.”

The scientists tested one of the prodrugs, CO-306, for pharmacological efficacy against acute kidney damage. CO-306, which uses saccharine as a carrier molecule, was administered to mice and it was found that it reduced biomarkers for kidney injury, indicating it could be developed working therapy. The type of kidney injury modelled mimicked those in humans that occur with extensive muscle damage, sickle cell disease, a common type of malaria, cardiopulmonary bypass surgery and severe sepsis.

Further animal model studies and safety assessments on CO-306 are planned by Wang and colleagues before they progress to human clinical studies. They also plan to test CO-306 for efficacy against other types of organ injuries.

Additionally, CO-based therapies hold promise as a method of reducing the likelihood of organ damage during transplantation and improving outcomes for transplant patients, according to Prof Wang.

“Science shows that exposing organs to CO gas can help preserve organs and prevent them from deteriorating during the process of transplantation,” he said. “Now we need to demonstrate that these prodrugs can have a similar effect.”

Source: Georgia State University

Journal information: De La Cruz, L. K., et al. (2021) Adapting decarbonylation chemistry for the development of prodrugs capable of in vivo delivery of carbon monoxide utilizing sweeteners as carrier molecules. Chemical Science. doi.org/10.1039/D1SC02711E.

Categories : Diet and Nutrition GastrointestinalTags :

Artificial Sweeteners Can Turn Gut Bacteria Bad

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Scientists have found that common artificial sweeteners can turn previously healthy gut bacteria pathogenic, invading the gut wall and potentially leading to serious health issues.

This study is the first to show the pathogenic effects of some of the most widely used artificial sweeteners (saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame) on two types of gut bacteria, Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis. E. faecalis is capable of crossing the intestinal wall to enter the bloodstream and congregate in the lymph nodes, liver, and spleen, causing a number of infections including septicaemia. To top it off, this commensal bacteria has emerged as a multi-drug resistant pathogen.

Previous studies have shown that artificial sweeteners can affect the composition of gut bacteria, but this new molecular research, led by academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), has shown that sweeteners can also induce pathogenic features in certain bacteria. It found that these pathogenic bacteria can latch onto, invade and kill epithelial Caco-2 cells lining the intestinal wall.

This new study discovered that at a concentration equivalent to two cans of diet soft drink, all three artificial sweeteners significantly increased the adhesion of both E. coli and E. faecalis to intestinal Caco-2 cells, and differentially increased biofilm formation. Bacteria growing in biofilms are less sensitive to antimicrobial resistance treatment and are more likely to secrete toxins and express disease-causing virulence factors.

Additionally, all three sweeteners caused the pathogenic gut bacteria to invade Caco-2 cells found in the wall of the intestine, save for saccharin, which had no significant effect on E. coli invasion.

Senior author Dr Havovi Chichger, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Science at ARU, said: “There is a lot of concern about the consumption of artificial sweeteners, with some studies showing that sweeteners can affect the layer of bacteria which support the gut, known as the gut microbiota.

“Our study is the first to show that some of the sweeteners most commonly found in food and drink—saccharin, sucralose and aspartame—can make normal and ‘healthy’ gut bacteria become pathogenic. These pathogenic changes include greater formation of biofilms and increased adhesion and invasion of bacteria into human gut cells.

“These changes could lead to our own gut bacteria invading and causing damage to our intestine, which can be linked to infection, sepsis and multiple-organ failure.

“We know that overconsumption of sugar is a major factor in the development of conditions such as obesity and diabetes. Therefore, it is important that we increase our knowledge of sweeteners versus sugars in the diet to better understand the impact on our health.”
Source: EurekAlert!

Journal reference: Shil, A & Chichger, H (2021) Artificial Sweeteners Negatively Regulate Pathogenic Characteristics of Two Model Gut Bacteria, E. coli and E. faecalis. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. doi.org/10.3390/ijms22105228.