Some Sugar Substitutes Affect Blood Glucose and Gut Bacteria

The decades-long controversy around the safety of sugar substitute products continues as Diet Coke and its replacement, aspartame, come to an end in the US. Since diet drinks hit the stores in the 1950s, there have been rumors that they do more than satisfy a sweet tooth. It has been difficult to establish whether or not there is more.

Researchers found that the non-nutritive sweeteners don't just travel through the body undetected. The results of the study suggest that two of the sweeteners, Saccharin and sucralose, are linked to spikes in the level of sugar in the blood. If the findings translate into trouble, benefit or neither remains to be seen, diet drinkers shouldn't trash the diet soda can just yet.

Dylan Mackay is an assistant professor of nutrition and chronic disease at the University of Manitoba who was not involved in the study. They were able to pull it off in a really interesting way.

There is a link between changes in the gut and changes in the blood. The scientists wanted to see if the same links applied to humans in the new study, so they chose participants from a pool of more than 1,300 people. Some had done it unintentionally by eating low-sugar snacks or desserts.

The final 120 people were divided into six groups. Commercial packets of one of the four sweeteners were eaten in four of the groups. A fifth group only ate the sugar substitute used in the packets, which is added to bulk out the small amount of sugar substitute they contain. The sixth group didn't get any help.

During the two weeks that participants consumed their assigned sweeteners, they also took oralglucose tolerance tests, which are used to measure the body's response to sugar and can be used to diagnose some forms of diabetes. For these tests, they drank a solution every morning and used monitors at home to track their blood sugars. The researchers collected oral and stool samples from the people they were interviewing. Some products of metabolism were measured.

The participants who had eaten saccharin or sucralose had higher blood sugar levels. During the two weeks of taking any of the four sugar substitute, the participants' gutbacteria profile changed. The levels of the products changed as well. People with diabetes show similar patterns in the production of a type of amino acid.

Eran Elinav is the principal investigator of the Host- Microbiome Interaction Research Group at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovo.

The part of the paper that is cool is what this part of the work is about. The findings in mice are intriguing.

Elinav says that the effects of the sweeteners are likely to be very individualized. The results show these compounds don't just pass through the body.

The health of the person will be a part of the response. He says that the findings can't be applied to people who may be overweight or have impairedglucose tolerance.

Elinav says the findings don't answer the question of whether any effects will be meaningful for human health. The researchers don't know if the effects will last past two weeks in the current study

There is a subset of the population that consumes food and drink with these sugar substitute that is healthy without being overweight or obese. He says that almost everything he uses has aspartame. I won't stop that and switch back to regular sugars because of these results.