Artificial sweeteners are toxic to digestive gut bacteria: study

Authored by cnbc.com and submitted by bunhque

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS commonly used in foods and drinks have a toxic effect on digestive gut microbes.

According to a study published in the journal Molecules, researchers found that six common artificial sweeteners approved by the Food and Drug Administration and 10 sport supplements that contained them were found to be toxic to the digestive gut microbes of mice.

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.

"This is further evidence that consumption of artificial sweeteners adversely affects gut microbial activity which can cause a wide range of health issues," Ariel Kushmaro, a professor in BGU's department of biotechnology engineering, said in a press release.

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. In addition to being found to be bad for health, some sweeteners have been identified as environmental pollutants. They can also be found in drinking water, researchers noted.

SolitaireX on October 3rd, 2018 at 21:48 UTC »

Poorly written, poorly explained, bad science all round. Equating in vitro to in vivo systems. That's why it's published in a small journal with a low impact factor.

turbo on October 3rd, 2018 at 21:08 UTC »

Ordinary table salt and most other essential non-organic mineral naturally found in healthy foods, are toxic in increasing doses to bacteria. As a biochemist I'd be willing to bet that those necessary minerals in the human diet would stress the hell out of these bacteria in increasing doses also. The bacteria in this paper do NOT show growth inhibition with these artificial sweeteners in the doses used. It's a pretty huge jump in scientific presumption - from a change in fluorescence in a contrived sub-inhibitory bacterial "stress" assay, to the authors statement of "we may speculate that the response observed in our study may be relevant to gut microbiome and thus may influence human health". (statements in italics not tested by authors) So doubt their basic premise has any validity.

Top comment on /r/science, just saying.

BunsMOO on October 3rd, 2018 at 21:01 UTC »

This was posted in another sub and ripped apart for basically using a single strain of mutated E. coli that we’re not even really representative of gut bacteria. That and the actual concentrations where effects were seen were higher hen the amounts on soda. Some by orders of magnitude.