Over the past five to six years, new sweeteners have been introduced into a variety of common foods. Its name is Neotame, commonly known as E961. In 2007, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced that aspartame, which is more than 8,000 times sweeter than sugar, is safe to use in foods and soft drinks as a substitute.
However, new research shows that neotame may not be as benign as originally thought. Last week, Dr. Habovy Chigga published his research in an academic journal. Frontiers of nutrition This suggests that it can damage cells in the intestinal lining. These cells play an important role in digesting food, absorbing nutrients, and protecting the body from microbial infections.
“Neotame was developed with the aim of being a more stable and sweeter version of traditional sweeteners,” says Dr Chigger, a researcher at Anglia Ruskin University who is studying neotame. “We were interested in neotame because it is very rare. Although neotame is chemically similar to traditional sweeteners, it is very intensely sweet when compared to sweeteners such as sucralose. It’s 100 times sweeter.”
EFSA recently announced that it is reviewing the safety of neotame, and this study adds to a growing body of research that suggests these five artificial sweeteners may be problematic for our health. It is increasing.
Let’s take a closer look at what we know so far.
Neotame
Neotame has been subtly introduced into a variety of products, ranging from canned fruit, jellies, some carbonated drinks, dairy products, and industrially manufactured cakes. It is popular among manufacturers because it does not have the aftertaste that some sweeteners have and is stable when exposed to manufacturing temperatures of up to 450°C.
However, Dr. Chigger’s research shows that if intestinal cells are exposed to neotame in a petri dish, 10mM of the sweetener may actually prove toxic to these cells, and that the dose showed that the doses were within acceptable daily limits as defined by food safety regulators.
Although it is still inconceivable that the average person ingests this much neotame in a day through food and drink, relatively low concentrations of sweeteners can disrupt the microbiome in a variety of ways. , which may make consumers more susceptible to intestinal diseases and enteric diseases. Even sepsis.
“At concentrations that are very easily ingested by humans on a daily basis, our research shows that the intestinal barrier is disrupted and bacteria shift to more harmful behaviors, including increased invasion of healthy intestinal cells leading to cell death. “This shows that,” Chigger said. .
aspartame
Perhaps the most widely used sweetener, it is found in a variety of products from Diet Coke to breakfast cereals, ice cream, low-sugar yogurt, and sugar-free chewing gum. The main drawback of aspartame, which is 180 to 200 times sweeter than sugar, is that it breaks down and loses its sweetness when heated, limiting its use in desserts.
But aspartame has been linked to health concerns ever since it was first approved by regulators in the 1970s. In the mid-2000s, studies in laboratory rats suggested that consuming high doses of sweeteners over long periods of time may be linked to lymphoma and leukemia. Although this finding was ultimately rejected, the results of various epidemiological studies continue to raise concerns.
In 2022, an analysis of more than 10 years of dietary records from 102,865 French adults found that increased intake of aspartame and another sweetener called acesulfame K was associated with various cancers. did. A follow-up study last year also found that high consumption of foods flavored with aspartame and other artificial sweeteners was associated with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
A small number of people may develop acute neurological symptoms after ingesting aspartame. Eric Millstone, professor of science policy at the University of Sussex, has spent decades researching aspartame and says it is thought to be a side effect of phenylalanine, an amino acid produced when aspartame is metabolized. There is. “Based on the evidence I’ve seen, I think he’s probably more than 3 percent of consumers, no less than 10 percent,” he says. “The problems that occur are very severe epilepsy-like things like headaches, blurred vision, and in a small number of cases, seizures. These people are probably suffering from a large influx of phenylalanine into their bodies. It must be difficult to deal with it.”
Acesulfame potassium (Ace-K)
Acesulfame potassium was first approved in the late 1980s and has been used in combination with aspartame in Diet Coke since the mid-2000s, but also in salad dressings and sauces, jams, jellies, marmalade, ice cream and other dairy products. Also included. Also toothpaste and mouthwash.
Like aspartame and other sweeteners, acesulfame potassium’s strong flavor disrupts the body’s natural hormonal processes that control blood sugar control, leading to excessive amounts of it being one of the causative factors in progression to type 2. It is speculated that it may cause the release of the hormone insulin. Diabetes mellitus. One study suggests that it may increase the amount of sugar absorbed by cells in the intestine, and this may be a mechanism that causes intestinal inflammation.
However, acesulfame potassium tends to be combined with other sweeteners to mask its bitter aftertaste, and at this time, it is not recommended for these health-related says some of its concerns are difficult to pinpoint to individuals. This is because many foods and drinks are blended with sweeteners.
“At this point, we can’t say that one sweetener is associated with more harm than another,” he says. “However, we cannot ignore the potential causal relationship between the consumption of foods and beverages containing these sweeteners and increased weight gain and disruption of glucose homeostasis, potentially leading to elevated blood sugar levels. There is evidence.”
Sucralose
Sucralose is also often used in combination with acesulfame potassium in a variety of foods, from seasonings to sugar-free jams, fruit spreads, salad dressings, diet sodas, and chewing gum.
Last year, a new study in which researchers at the University of North Carolina conducted experiments on human intestinal cells found that sucralose-6-acetate, a chemical found in sucralose, can damage DNA and increase levels of harmful oxidants. Concerns about sweeteners have been raised. Stress and inflammatory molecules in the gut.
However, while one of the purposes of sweeteners is said to be to alleviate the problem of overconsumption of sugar that leads to weight gain, sweeteners themselves can actually harm us, especially when combined with food ingredients. appears to have the potential to alter the metabolism of
Professor Dana Small, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Canada and one of the world’s leading experts on sucralose, conducted a pioneering experiment in 2020 showing that drinks that combine sucralose with carbohydrates are It changes your brain and metabolic response to it, making you more likely to gain weight.
“Our paper showed that combining sucralose with the carbohydrate maltodextrin changes the brain’s physiological response to sugar very rapidly,” says Professor Small.
saccharin
This is the original sweetener discovered in 1879. Like aspartame, saccharin has long faced controversy over accusations that it may be carcinogenic, ever since a Canadian study in the 1970s showed a link between the sweetener and bladder cancer in rats.
However, there is no clear evidence of a link between saccharin intake and bladder cancer in humans, and saccharin is currently found in many products branded as low-calorie, such as fruit juices, sweets, jams, jellies, and cookies. Contains processed foods.
However, concerns persist that saccharin, like other sweeteners, can disrupt the intestines in a variety of ways and have far-reaching effects on our health.
At the same time, Dr. Suez predicts that some people are more susceptible to the negative effects of sweeteners than others. With personalized nutrition technologies such as microbiome sequencing becoming increasingly popular among consumers around the world, in the future we will be able to analyze the gut microbiome to show how sweeteners affect a person. He feels this may include looking for signals within.
“As we try to think about next steps, who benefits from sweeteners because that person is not adversely affected by sweetener intake compared to someone who is adversely affected by sweetener intake?” “We could actually try to develop an algorithm that can predict whether we’re going to get it,” he says.
