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An Israeli scientist says artificial sweeteners should no longer be considered safe after his lab published peer-reviewed research suggesting they may actually increase the body’s sugar levels.
Immunologist Prof Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science told the Times of Israel that “we shouldn’t assume they’re safe unless it’s proven that his team’s concerns are unfounded.”
According to the study published in the journal Cell, saccharin and sucralose consumption impairs healthy adults’ ability to dispose of glucose in their bodies.
It’s long-awaited human research by the Israeli team that rang alarm bells about artificial sweeteners eight years ago based on a study in rodents.
The scientists argued at the time that sugar substitutes were introduced to satisfy the sweet tooth with less damage to glucose levels, but they “may have directly helped fuel the very epidemic they were meant to be fighting themselves.”
Now they’ve largely validated their rodent study by monitoring dozens of adults who normally assiduously avoid artificial sweeteners when consuming them.
“Our study showed that non-nutritive sweeteners can impair glucose responses by altering our microbiome,” Elinav said.
Illustrative image: Gut bacteria that help control gut digestion (iStock via Getty Images)
This challenges the common assumption that sweeteners provide a harmless hint of sweetness without the health costs, Elinav added.
The research was carried out by Dr. Jotham Suez, a former Elinav graduate student and now principal investigator at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, along with Yotam Cohen, a graduate student in Elinav’s lab, and Prof. Eran Segal von Weizmann.
The scientists conducted their experiment using the four most common sweeteners: saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and stevia. The first two seemed to affect the glucose response significantly, but all four caused changes in the gut bacteria, the microbiome.
An illustration showing glucose levels in study participants who took different sweeteners and in those who were part of control groups. The control groups are labeled “Control” and “Vehicle”. (Courtesy of the Weizmann Institute of Science)
Elinav explained, “We found that the composition and function of gut microbes change in response to consumption of all four sweeteners, meaning they are not inert to the human body.”
These changes were not seen in other volunteers who were in control groups and therefore did not consume sweeteners.
Eran Elinav (courtesy of Eran Elinav)
The scientists transplanted feces from some of the subjects into rodents that were bred not to have their own gut bacteria. They found that mice with feces from people whose glucose tolerance was most affected by sweeteners also had a reduced ability to dispose of glucose.
They say this reinforces their theory that sweeteners affect the microbiome and that the altered microbiome can affect glucose tolerance – so significantly that it has this effect even when transplanted in a different way.
“Our current results strongly suggest that artificial sweetness is not inert to the human body or gut microbiome, as previously thought, and may potentially elicit changes in humans, potentially in a highly personalized way driven by different people’s unique gut microbial populations said Elinav.
“In my opinion as a physician, once non-nutritive sweeteners have been established as non-inert to the human body, to prove or disprove their potential human health effects, the onus lies on those who advocate their use. and we should not assume they are safe until proven otherwise. Until then, caution is advised,” he said.
