Artificial sweeteners are just as commonly found on the dinner table as salt and pepper. To some, they are a “miracle food” because they pass through the body undigested – with all the flavor and none of the calories. Too good to be true? The FDA tells us they are safe, but the “harmlessness” of these products has been questioned since day one.
A brief history, if you will:
Saccharin was the first artificial sweetener discovered by a chemistry professor at John Hopkins University in the 1870’s. He was working on various products derived from coal tar and accidentally spilled an experiment on his hands. When he sat down to eat lunch, his bread tasted unusually sweet and he discovered it was a result of what he was working on in the lab. By 1907 it was being added to processed foods, unbeknownst to the general public. A man named Harvard Wiley, who worked in the United States Department of Agriculture, recommended banning saccharin for potentially being toxic. It was briefly banned in 1912, but it the ban got reversed when sugar was being rationed during World War I.
The discovery of the other artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame were also lab accidents.
Are they harmful?
If coal tar doesn’t shake you up, let’s go a bit further.
Equal (also known as NutraSweet) is made from one of the most common artificial sweeteners, aspartame. After reviewing some of the largest studies linking aspartame to cancer in rats, the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) issued aspartame a rating of “avoid”. More recent studies have linked aspartame to changes in gut microbial composition and diversity (all health starts in the gut!). It is also linked to the production of excess free radicals in the body, which damage DNA and the structure of key proteins.
Sweet N’ Low isn’t much better. This sweetener contains saccharin, which has also been shown to mess up our gut. In a recent mouse study, saccharin was found to induce inflammation and alter the gut microbiota (Xiaoming, B., et al, 2017). Also rated “avoid” by the CSPI.
Splenda, sweetened with sucralose, was originally thought to pass through your GI tract undigested. However, a review published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B: Critical Reviews found that sucralose disrupts the gut microbiota, decreases the effectiveness of medications, and alters insulin and blood sugar response in the body.
In a study published in the Gut Microbes journal (Suez et al. 2015), researchers added high doses of saccharin, sucralose or aspartame to the drinking water of mice. After 11 weeks of exposure, the mice displayed notable glucose intolerance compared to the control groups which consumed plain water, glucose or sucrose. The same researchers also followed a large group of healthy, non-diabetic individuals and found that artificial sweetener consumption was associated with changes in BMI, blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and changes in the gut microbiome. The researchers note that everyone will have a personalized response to artificial sweeteners, so no definitive conclusions were drawn. As far as the gut microbiome is concerned, they hypothesize that some bacteria in the gut may be able to use artificial sweeteners as an energy source, therefore allowing them to grow and creating an imbalance.
What to use?
If you need something sweet in your morning beverage, go for the real stuff: sugar or honey. If you want a non-caloric alternative, stevia is a good option in moderation. Unlike the other sweeteners, stevia is plant-derived. The stevia rebaudianaplant grows in Paraguay and Brazil where people have used it’s leaves to sweeten foods for hundreds of years. For my morning coffee, I buy organic stevia from Thrive Market.
