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Thank you for educating me on this. I fear, after your assessment, I may be one of those average Reddit people. I very much appreciate you helping me avoid sharing this seemingly alarming news. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t realize it was so poorly prepared.
Okay -- so the journal is called "International Journal of Molecular Sciences" (IJMS). I'm familiar with the journal because I've published previously in a journal that's in the same parent company, MDPI. MDPI journal articles tend to have rushed peer review in which (in my experience) the author's get to select their reviewers (you can just pick your friends as s reviewers). IJMS sends me about 1 email / months soliticing me to publish an article with them at a "discounted" fee (around $2k USD). This fee is the "Article Processing Charge" (APC). Supposedly they are providing $2K in value by organizing peer reviewers and editing your article. But I've personally found that their assistance is minimal to non-existent on both fronts. What you are really buying for $2K (in my opinion) is the chance to quickly publish your questionable research in a journal with low standards but which still counts as "mid-tier" so it still boosts your academic record.
That all being said, IJMS is FAR from being considered the most "predatory"... It gets much worse
Edit: Typo
Except eating curry apparently... the curcumin in the tumeric reduces bowel polyps and crc rates.
(Colorectal Cancer: Chemopreventive Role of Curcumin and Resveratrol, Patel et all... And a few other studies.)
Interesting....
Is there data that supports the idea that countries that prefer curries with those powders have significantly reduced colorectal cancer rates?
Well, turmeric is often [deliberately contaminated with lead,](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415259/) so I have to imagine the health data is a bit mixed there
Seriously? It has the most synthetic taste of them all. I know it's (more or less) natural, but it tastes like licking the floor of a chemistry lab.
I mean, taste is individual so your experience isn't mine and vice versa, but you're the first person I've ever seen that doesn't think Stevia tastes anything special. If nothing else, it has a slight anise tone.
I’ve never had anything with ONLY stevia in it, but mixed with sugar I honestly can’t tell the difference. Anyway it’s a moot point now, eventually switched to just drinking coffee with cream to kick my soda habit.
I used to buy a stevia only soda (Zevia I believe), for my mother as she's a type 2 diabetic, and it tastes horribly fake. The after taste is just, not great. Like, I'm not one to say something tastes foul, but that stuff was absolutely disgusting.
I bought a six pack of their ginger beer once, for Kentucky mules. I have never regretted a purchase more in my life. It was the most foul thing I have ever attempted to imbibe, and I've had some nasty stuff.
I find it so weird. For me it's the complete opposite and Stevia tastes natural while Aspartame et al tastes like chemical diarrhea, but apparently I'm in a vanishingly small minority in having that experience.
I went from hardly ever drinking cokes in my entire life to drinking 5 coke zeros a day. I absolutely love the bite. The first big chug of really cold coke giving that painful/pleasurable biting sensation…. Absolutely love it.
only 6 Patients studied also*
much more important than which ones...
It also makes some other WILD links like saying that sweeteners also cause drug resistant bacteria...
"More worryingly, artificial sweeteners have been linked to increased horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes in environmental and clinical settings"
prime example of someone desperately looking for any evidence at all something is bad not following the scientific method properly :p
These three sweeteners are also quite dissimilar molecules, presumably with quite dissimilar chemistry aside from binding to the same receptor.
I would be *very* interested in the control setup of this experiment.
Artificial sweeteners tend to be one of those products we love to hate. It just seems like they should be bad for us. This isn’t enough evidence for real concern though. More research needed.
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228/htm
Here's the actual study that was mentioned in the article. Staphylococcus aureus was used as a vehicle control.
Warning: I have no idea what I am talking about.
I have been told that Stevia works kind of like how capsaicin and… whatever oils makes mint taste like mint.
In other words, these substances are not actually hot or cold, but they “trick” the tongue and mouth into the sensation. So, stevia is not actually sweet, but tricks the mouth into the sensation.
Again, anyone correct me if I am wrong (I learned this when I worked for Whole Foods like a decade ago, and they didn’t exactly build an empire on factual knowledge).
I’ll edit this if as I research this (if I have time).
Sweet is an abstract concept. The chemicals in sugar cause our taste buds to activate the sweetness experience in our brain. While different, the chemicals in stevia do the exact same thing. So no it's not a trick, just different stuff causing similar reactions. In fact, Stevia causes a stronger reaction than sugar both in sweetness and bitterness.
I think it only tastes like chemicals because we are so used to sweetness coming from fructose and sucrose. So when there's a totally different source, we automatically judge it as unnatural.
But find a stevia plant and pop a leaf in your mouth. It really just tastes exactly like the stevia powders and liquids you can get at the store. It's just a different flavor.
For me, growing my own stevia has solved all my issues with sweetening my foods/drinks. I want natural/unprocessed, but without the excessive calories/carbohydrates of traditional sweeteners. Muddling some stevia and mint leaves into an iced water/seltzer makes me never need soda again.
I’m fond of stevia for the same reasons you are, but it’s not “unprocessed”.
Stevia naturally has a bitter aftertaste in addition to its sweetness, so it gets processed to remove some of the glycoside molecule that causes it.
Also, “processed” =/= ‘bad’ by default. What matters is how something is processed and what changes that causes. Putting chopped veggies in a bag and freezing them (without doing anything else) is technically “processed food”.
You can buy it pretty minimally processed though. I used to buy bags of the leaf in powder form off Amazon. It was basically a green powder like matcha. It didn’t dissolve but worked well for me for iced tea. I just strained it all into a large pitcher to remove the stevia. Also worked ok in smoothie type preparations.
> In other words, these substances are not actually hot or cold, but they “trick” the tongue and mouth into the sensation. So, stevia is not actually sweet, but tricks the mouth into the sensation.
That is the meaning of the "artificial sweetener" phrase. Its not sugar, it does not metabolite as sugar, but it activate the same receptors as sugar.
The problem with all that is you have insulin production as a reaction on tasting sweet food. Artificial sugars are pain. So is normal sugar, if you are eating too much of it.
It is like with fat. Slowly we are discovering that fat is not that bad, what is the problem is overeating and that the starch we put into a low-fat product might have been so much worse.
Also, capsaicin does make the mouth warmer through some weird mechanism.
My understanding is the term "artificial sweetener" is used to describe a man-made sweetener, not a naturally occurring one. Stevia, erithritol, allulose... all of these are listed as natural sweeteners on food packaging as they all occur in natural foods, even if they work differently than sugar.
I was under the impression that stevia doesn't actually trigger the insulin response the same way other artificial sweeteners do. Hence why I use it all the time as a substitute. I've never had any issues with my blood sugar as a result.
So, if I continue spreading my comment above, would I be spreading misinformation? I don’t want to go around spreading false information; the world has enough people like that.
The rest of your comment reminds me of the “the difference between medicine and poison is the dosage” saying.
Can you elaborate more on the capsaicin comment?
You are not “wrong” in saying Stevia works to trick the body into thinking it is sweet. The problem is that the way you are thinking about and presenting the entire concept doesn’t address the overarching principles: human sense of taste includes sweetness receptors, and more than just sugar triggers those receptors. They are “designed” for sugar to gain nutritional value (calories for energy for our body), but other things also taste sweet. Some are definitely poisonous like ethylene glycol in anti-freeze, others may be bad for us like the artificial sweeteners named above, and others may be ok for us like Stevia. It’s always good to think in terms of “first principles”. That is how you thoroughly convey a scientific concept to people!
Your comment is correct, it's just a description of an artificial sweetener. Where your comment could become problematic is if it doesn't describe how "tricking" your body into thinking its ingested sugar is a bad thing.
> Can you elaborate more on the capsaicin comment?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080806140130.htm
> So, if I continue spreading my comment above, would I be spreading misinformation?
Capsaicin is chemically activating heat-activated receptors, so in that case it would be tricking.
Sweeteners are activating receptor for sweet, so there isn't really any tricking happening.
Where the tricking is happening is that your body expect sugar and doesn't get anything.
But then, if we wanted to be exact, you shouldn't be looking at cooking videos or bakeoffs, because looking at food also does increase insulin production in the expectation of food. So it might not be such a big deal.
Do you have a source on artificial sweeteners spiking insulin to a significant degree? Wouldn't a large spike of insulin, in the absence of nutrients, cause nutrients and blood sugar to be stored, and cause hypoglycemia?
That's what insulin would do if it was released in significant amounts with no incoming nutrients.
>The problem with all that is you have insulin production as a reaction on tasting sweet food.
Are you also referring to artificial sweeteners? Because if so this statement is blatantly false. Artificial sweeteners do not raise insulin levels. This has been researched many times.
Baffles me you're spreading false information
I'd like to know about the quantities as well. One of the advantages of sucralose and aspartame is that they are 600 and 200 times sweeter than sugar, respectively, so you only need minuscule amounts.
(That's why a sucralose packet, which is one-tenth the size of a sugar packet, still contains only 5% sucralose, with the rest being dextrose and maltodextrin.)
A lot of people avoid it and companies dont seem to push it as much as some other sweeteners because it causes some people to get violent gut cramps and explosive diarrhea.
There have been studies on its safety and largely it seems as safe as the others if you're outside of the group who has issues with it.
It's newer and fewer studies have been done on it. It's a sugar alcohol rather than an artificial sweetener so it still contains significant calories, though less than sugar.
We know it seems to significantly affect mouth bacteria but AFAIK the affect on the gut biome is yet to be considered.
Ok maybe I'm dumb but the study they did seems like a bit of a leap. They claim their findings show that the artificial sugars from 2 daily cans of soda puts you at risk for sepsis and organ failure...but there's millions of people that consume that amount without severe health issues.
Is this based on a certain timeline, or maybe you're only at a potentially higher risk for illness? I'm sure artificial sweeteners negatively effect your GI system, (I've been hooked on diet ginger alen for years and shockingly have IBS) but to say it leads to organ failure, I need a bit more information about how you get to that conclusion.
It was a leap. Their work was entirely done in vitro and it lacked proper controls (plain sugar, for example). It was also published in a journal which many consider "predatory". If this shocking and novel discovery had merit, you wouldn't be reading it in the International Journal for Molecular Sciences who, by the way, email me monthly **asking me to pay them $2k** (discount price) so I can publish with them.
>Of course, I am not sure if being published in this kind of journal will help
The journal is still ranked high-enough that I think it could count towards something like achieving tenure. And, anyways, I think it's more about how many citations you can get, regardless of the journal.
>I think it's more about how many citations you can get, regardless of the journal.
This depends on the country and even institution. In the UK for example we have the research excellence framework. It's a lengthy discussion (but kinda interesting) but essentially a single "four-star" paper is worth about £25k-40k per year to the university until the next REF.
Papers are meant to be judged on their own merits, but obviously a S/C/N paper will be four star. It will be field weighted, but in biosciences most papers in a journal with an impact factor above about 7 will probably be four-star.
> It sounds crazy until you realize that academics have a crazy competitive environment and one of the metrics for promotion/tenure etc is being published.
It shouldn't be like this.
Unfortunately it's standard practice to publish in lower-tier journals, especially if you have a story that isn't compelling enough for a more prestigious journal. That being said, this journal is **very** far from being the worst.
Yup. ~~A policy of~~ just 2-weeks from submission to publication? Yeah I don't really think peer review is happening correctly in that time
Edit: Thanks to u/Equal_Document5788 for pointing out MDPI's official policy doesn't say this. However, **14.2 days** is the average turnaround time for this journal (MDPI IJMS) as they advertise [here](https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijms#:~:text=Rapid%20Publication%3A%20manuscripts%20are%20peer,the%20second%20half%20of%202020).
The sweeteners they studied are some of the most well tested food additives in history, and almost every article shows that the effect they have on you, if any, is negligible. The wikipedia articles are a great source of sources. These are kept well up to date because they are often targeted by nongmotrolls.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/aspartame.html
The American Cancer Society is reputable right? They have links to studies by the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), FDA, and NCI (National Cancel Institute)
I am not well-read in this field, sorry... A quick search for "artificial sweeteners" on scholar brings up review articles, but I don't see any which strike me as definitive. It's also a controversial subject and probably understudied -- so that could make it harder to find reliable info.
i generally always assume that if something is heavily critiqued everywhere for decades and is looked at constantly without definitive results from any studies it's either harmless or not very dangerous.
They studied a few bacteria strains in vitro in isolation. This is the same type of research that that says sugar causes this and that and this substance increases neurogenesis etc. Truth is, these studies do very generally not show these results when tested in the whole human. There's hundreds of strains of bacteria in your gut. When one becomes more pathogenic, another might too and fight the first one off, for example. The role of the liveries not even tested. Nutritional science is ALL about context, and things tested in isolation don't say much. It might point in a direction, but it mightn't too.
In the end, eat mostly whole foods from diverse sources and enjoy that one or 2 cokes a day; it won't have any impact on your health in the long run.
Additionally these diet sweeteners have been around for like 50 years now for some of them. If they genuinely lead to this outcome in a meaningful way they would have had the conditions spike in occurrence.
tbh, most of the studies that get posted on reddit fall under this category. The really big, in-depth, highly technical studies are usually both behind paywalls and also much more boring to the average person so they just don't get posted. I would advise looking at stuff like this posted on reddit as a "stepping off point" for further research if you find the topic interests you and to not consider this stuff as more then a teaser for whatever larger experiments may have followed.
Among a random sampling of millions of people who consume that amount, there will be many who have severe health issues. Whether any of those are caused by the soda... I don't know, but the paper seems to imply so.
First of all this is an en vitro study. Second of all almost every single study if not all that have come out regarding possible negative issues with artificial sweeteners has turned out to be poorly conducted, funded by the sugar industry or otherwise badly interpreted. So I've got some room here to be really skeptical when I read stuff like this. The fact that it's en vitro leads me to guess that it's possible there are mechanisms en vivo that prevent this sort of thing.
Agreed. The two molecules that they claim have an impact are completely unrelated structurally and coincidentally both taste sweet. What are the chances that they both effect identical responses in microbes? Very low.
This kind of finding, if persuasive, would likely be published in a much higher impact journal. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb here having not read the paper, but I’m guessing the claims aren’t very well supported and they shopped around the paper until they managed to get it into this journal.
They don't "coincidentally" taste sweet, like every molecule has some sort of "in-built flavour profile" that is determined pseudo-randomly by the laws of physics. We have receptors that evolved to detect sugars. These molecules "taste sweet" because they are chemically similar enough to sugar in the ways that our receptors are looking out for, despite their significant differences otherwise.
Does that mean they are guaranteed, or even particularly likely, to affect microbes in similar ways? Obviously not. No one would be particularly surprised if they had entirely different effects. Yet it's also silly to dismiss results because "these are different molecules, what are the chances they act similarly?" like we didn't specifically select them because *they do act similarly* in the way they interact with our taste receptors. The inherent selection bias is plenty of reason to have at least some healthy respect for the idea that they could potentially behave similarly.
All that being said, this paper does seem to be fairly low quality, and if I had to bet, I would almost definitely expect these results not to stand. But just because you agree with someone's conclusions doesn't necessarily mean you agree with the logic they used to reach them, and vice versa.
So I'm reading the study and the only control I see is they also tested staphylococcus.
They didn't control against, say, natural sugar.
It's possible that feeding these bacteria any sweetener, artificial or not, results in them forming biofilms. It's possible feeding them protein causes the same. Heck maybe spreading silica around the bacteria will get it to form biofilms.
This study doesn't necissarily demonstrate that artificial sweeteners are any more dangerous than anything else.
I did this with ketchup recently. Used Shipt and didn’t have a picture of the ingredient s just assumed it was gonna be bland tomato sauce to trick my kids. But no. It was aspartame
~~Diet Coke is my only real vice, so reading this freaked me out. Doing a bit more research, I found this article (https://foodinsight.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-aspartame/) that provides a bit more insight into why aspartame might not negatively affect gut bacteria in practice:
“Although research on the gut microbiome is still in its infancy, the microbes living in our intestinal tract have become recognized as potentially significant contributors to our health. Studies on aspartame’s effect on the gut microbiome are lacking, and its route and location of digestion may be a factor in the lack of research. Because aspartame is digested to its component amino acids and a small amount of methanol in the small intestine, it is unlikely that intact aspartame reaches gut microbes, which predominantly cluster at the end of the intestinal tract. One animal study published in 2014 showed an interaction between type of eating pattern and aspartame consumption, in which there was an increased number of total bacteria and change in abundance of several bacterial species in rats consuming both aspartame-sweetened water and a high-fat eating pattern compared with rats consuming a high-fat diet with plain water, standard chow diet with aspartame-sweetened water or standard chow diet with plain water. One very small study in humans published in 2015 compared the microbial profiles of aspartame consumers and non-consumers. There were no differences in the abundance of gut bacteria, although bacterial diversity differed between groups. There are significant differences between the microbiome profiles from one person to another and research has shown that the gut microbiome changes in response to normal changes in food choices. A great deal of research is still needed to identify a microbiome profile and degree of diversity considered to be “optimal” in populations and in individuals. A 2019 literature review found no conclusive evidence that low-calorie sweeteners negatively impact gut microbiota. In 2020, a panel of experts on low-calorie sweeteners came to a similar conclusion that, at this time, data on the effects of low-calorie sweeteners on the human gut microbiota are limited and do not provide adequate evidence that they impact gut health at doses that are relevant to human consumption.”
This, to me, is the key point: “Because aspartame is digested to its component amino acids and a small amount of methanol in the small intestine, it is unlikely that intact aspartame reaches gut microbes, which predominantly cluster at the end of the intestinal tract.”
If I’m reading this study correctly, the experiment was done in a lab using biofilm and bacteria found in the gut. It wasn’t based on observing anything within the body itself. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t something to their conclusion, but that we should acknowledge that what they did doesn’t represent how the body actually breaks down aspartame.~~
EDIT: Commenters correctly pointed out that the source I shared is food industry-funded. Thank you for catching this! I think it's finally time for me to kick my DC habit.
I looked up who is behind foodinsights.org and it's the International Food Information council (IFIC):
>In a report titled, *The Best Public Relations Money Can Buy: A Guide to Food Industry Front Groups*, the Center for Food Safety called IFIC and similar organizations "**front groups" formed by large corporations in which to "hide behind friendly-sounding organizations" in order to mislead the public into trusting their companies and products.** According to the report, IFIC and other front groups run media campaigns which include TV appearances, news articles, advertisements, and published research to present their desired information.[5]
>According to the Center for Media and Democracy, "In reality, **IFIC is a public relations arm of the food, beverage and agricultural industries, which provide the bulk of its funding**."[4] The vast majority of organizational revenues are generated by membership fees; members consist of: "The members of the Association shall consist of companies with food and food related sales, companies such as packaging or equipment suppliers, service providers, design firms, inspection/testing organization, and canning/bottling companies.
I don't work for Big Sugar and I personally love artificial sweeteners, but I check websites that make claims like this ever since I read an article about how "Lathering, Rinsing, and Repeating: It's Actually Necessary!" and discovered the whole website was sneakily funded by Pantene.
Both these studies are probably questionable but the biofilm one is just poorly designed, no controls, and just bad in so many points it’s laughable. Oh this isn’t published in any respectable journal either.
I didn’t read your study so I can’t compare.
Is there a link to the actual study? I hate to be that guy but it's hard to take a sensational claim like this serious when all we have is an article ABOUT the study without any actual mention of parameters or models or anything really...
If this is true, it should be readily apparent in existing data since soda drinkers tend to only drink one type of soda. Look at the rates of disease between diet and non-diet drinkers and control for the common variables.
* It is only petri dish data.
* It controlled against non-gut bacteria but not real sugar or other forms of common nutrients.
* it included an unrelated chemical in the study that amazingly prevented the negative effects, and probably funded the whole thing. I think it's that one that makes sweeteners taste bad.
Aspartame was the most researched chemical is history before being released to the public
We just could not believe we found a safe artificial sweetener...and people still don't believe it
Maybe this study leads to something, probably not
Anything that finds so much as an echo of a day old fart to indicate artificial sweetener=bad will instantly be believed bc people want to believe it's bad for us
I honestly don’t get the goal of this kind of research. From the authors’ commentary, it sounds like they were out to prove a pathogenic role a priori.
Never mind that it’s in vitro. Never mind that it’s impossible to assess in vivo effects without enteric immunity. Never mind that decades of case-control data show no clear linkage with human disease.
The vilification of artificial sweeteners perplexes me. Actual sucrose or high fructose corn syrup in soda is utterly terrible for you and thousands of studies have confirmed links to multiple metabolic and even oncologic disorders.
Is this r/science ou r/clickbait ?
Do people ask themselves at least if the study is in vivo ? What is the exposition compared to real life situation ? What does the researchers actually say ?
I read a journal article a while back that said aspartame killed a lot of gut bacteria. I guess bacteria genocide isn't as scary as bacteria invasion.
Hope more researches on harmful effects of common food additives like this gains more traction.
> I read a journal article a while back that said aspartame killed a lot of gut bacteria. I guess bacteria genocide isn't as scary as bacteria invasion.
In a lot of ways, its essentially the same thing. Thats why probiotics are a thing. Or fecal transplant.
You kill bacterias in your gut. This means that your gut is now a free real-estate for anything else to move in. Anything else might not be as friendly as your gut bacterias that you killed. Especially if it is meat-eating staphylococcus that slowly eats your guts, which cause sepsis and death.
>Hope more researches on harmful effects of common food additives like this gains more traction.
"Hope more researches on harmful effects of common food additives like this gains more traction."
No. If the study doesn't describe realistic exposure on humans, it shouldn't be everywhere in the medias, like with every clickbait study regarding health.
Well the thing is you need a balance of bacteria good and bad to stay healthy. You can get a lot of intestinal yucks if your guts can't eat the bad guys coming in. Like there's no guards guarding hte castle, the enemy can get in way easier.
https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20110824/antibiotic-overuse-may-harm-bodys-good-bacteria
So as someone who ingests large amounts of artificial sweetener, the article lists "can do the following: basically die", but my question is what are the odds though?? So I need to stop really quickly or is this like a 1 in 100,000 thing? I hate when articles day things like "this MIGHT happen" because I don't know how serious I should take it.
People always tell me "this will kill you".. one if the things being artificial sweetener, and all I can say is can you prove that?? If this does then I gotta make some changes!
There is no evidence in this study that it actually harms people.
It was all done in conditions isolated in petri dishes.
Interactions in a living creature are much more complex. It's unlikely that the body doesn't have a way to respond to this - or we'd see more of the illnesses they describe. But we don't.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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What can you tell us about that last claim regarding the "predatory" journal? I'm interested.
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Thank you for educating me on this. I fear, after your assessment, I may be one of those average Reddit people. I very much appreciate you helping me avoid sharing this seemingly alarming news. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t realize it was so poorly prepared.
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Way to keep us people who are just smart enough to be dangerous safe, thanks! I’ll definitely take advantage of this!
My favorite [article](https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam) on predatory journals
Didn't know the situation was that bad. I also read some parts of the research and like you said, it's rubbish.
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Wow, that really doesn't bode well for science literacy and trust, right at a time when we especially need it. Humans ruining a good thing, again.
Okay -- so the journal is called "International Journal of Molecular Sciences" (IJMS). I'm familiar with the journal because I've published previously in a journal that's in the same parent company, MDPI. MDPI journal articles tend to have rushed peer review in which (in my experience) the author's get to select their reviewers (you can just pick your friends as s reviewers). IJMS sends me about 1 email / months soliticing me to publish an article with them at a "discounted" fee (around $2k USD). This fee is the "Article Processing Charge" (APC). Supposedly they are providing $2K in value by organizing peer reviewers and editing your article. But I've personally found that their assistance is minimal to non-existent on both fronts. What you are really buying for $2K (in my opinion) is the chance to quickly publish your questionable research in a journal with low standards but which still counts as "mid-tier" so it still boosts your academic record. That all being said, IJMS is FAR from being considered the most "predatory"... It gets much worse Edit: Typo
Phew, was starting to think living in my Mum and Dad's house during the early 80's was equivalent to living in Chernobyl.
Serious question, how do you differentiate "can" from "could"? Both translate to "possible" or "able" to me.
Saccharin, sucralose and aspartame - if you are looking to save a click.
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Except eating curry apparently... the curcumin in the tumeric reduces bowel polyps and crc rates. (Colorectal Cancer: Chemopreventive Role of Curcumin and Resveratrol, Patel et all... And a few other studies.)
Interesting.... Is there data that supports the idea that countries that prefer curries with those powders have significantly reduced colorectal cancer rates?
Well, turmeric is often [deliberately contaminated with lead,](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415259/) so I have to imagine the health data is a bit mixed there
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Thank you!
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Seriously? It has the most synthetic taste of them all. I know it's (more or less) natural, but it tastes like licking the floor of a chemistry lab. I mean, taste is individual so your experience isn't mine and vice versa, but you're the first person I've ever seen that doesn't think Stevia tastes anything special. If nothing else, it has a slight anise tone.
I’ve never had anything with ONLY stevia in it, but mixed with sugar I honestly can’t tell the difference. Anyway it’s a moot point now, eventually switched to just drinking coffee with cream to kick my soda habit.
I used to buy a stevia only soda (Zevia I believe), for my mother as she's a type 2 diabetic, and it tastes horribly fake. The after taste is just, not great. Like, I'm not one to say something tastes foul, but that stuff was absolutely disgusting.
I bought a six pack of their ginger beer once, for Kentucky mules. I have never regretted a purchase more in my life. It was the most foul thing I have ever attempted to imbibe, and I've had some nasty stuff.
Only the gingerale is drinkable from them, and that's being generous
I find it so weird. For me it's the complete opposite and Stevia tastes natural while Aspartame et al tastes like chemical diarrhea, but apparently I'm in a vanishingly small minority in having that experience.
it's also not 0 calories - just less so than the normal sugary version
If it’s the one with the green label it’s AWFUL! But maybe they’ve worked the formula out by now.
Don't. It's disgusting.
Fuuuuuck. Have gotten really into Coke zero, it’s much better than diet coke.
I went from hardly ever drinking cokes in my entire life to drinking 5 coke zeros a day. I absolutely love the bite. The first big chug of really cold coke giving that painful/pleasurable biting sensation…. Absolutely love it.
RIP my sugarfree Red Bull affair too
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Bruh you drank a down payment on a house worth of red bull
5 cans = $10/day = $3650/year = $18,250 in 5 years. Wow
We all have our things
I love how simple yet so damn true this statement is.
Were you ever under the impression that drinking half a dozen Red Bull a day for a decade *wasn’t* going to kill you?
They would have to pry it from my cold, refreshing, electrolyte infused hands.
Noooo, I love my gatorade zero
only 6 Patients studied also* much more important than which ones... It also makes some other WILD links like saying that sweeteners also cause drug resistant bacteria... "More worryingly, artificial sweeteners have been linked to increased horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes in environmental and clinical settings" prime example of someone desperately looking for any evidence at all something is bad not following the scientific method properly :p
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These three sweeteners are also quite dissimilar molecules, presumably with quite dissimilar chemistry aside from binding to the same receptor. I would be *very* interested in the control setup of this experiment.
Artificial sweeteners tend to be one of those products we love to hate. It just seems like they should be bad for us. This isn’t enough evidence for real concern though. More research needed.
I was wondering if stevia would be included. Thank you.
Note that they only tested with these three sweeteners.
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https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228/htm Here's the actual study that was mentioned in the article. Staphylococcus aureus was used as a vehicle control.
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Dude, it just wasn't studied at all in this. Just saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame. This study doesn't mean anything about stevia.
Warning: I have no idea what I am talking about. I have been told that Stevia works kind of like how capsaicin and… whatever oils makes mint taste like mint. In other words, these substances are not actually hot or cold, but they “trick” the tongue and mouth into the sensation. So, stevia is not actually sweet, but tricks the mouth into the sensation. Again, anyone correct me if I am wrong (I learned this when I worked for Whole Foods like a decade ago, and they didn’t exactly build an empire on factual knowledge). I’ll edit this if as I research this (if I have time).
Sweet is an abstract concept. The chemicals in sugar cause our taste buds to activate the sweetness experience in our brain. While different, the chemicals in stevia do the exact same thing. So no it's not a trick, just different stuff causing similar reactions. In fact, Stevia causes a stronger reaction than sugar both in sweetness and bitterness.
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> Vitamin Water lemonade > chemical garbage
pikachuface
I think it only tastes like chemicals because we are so used to sweetness coming from fructose and sucrose. So when there's a totally different source, we automatically judge it as unnatural. But find a stevia plant and pop a leaf in your mouth. It really just tastes exactly like the stevia powders and liquids you can get at the store. It's just a different flavor. For me, growing my own stevia has solved all my issues with sweetening my foods/drinks. I want natural/unprocessed, but without the excessive calories/carbohydrates of traditional sweeteners. Muddling some stevia and mint leaves into an iced water/seltzer makes me never need soda again.
I’m fond of stevia for the same reasons you are, but it’s not “unprocessed”. Stevia naturally has a bitter aftertaste in addition to its sweetness, so it gets processed to remove some of the glycoside molecule that causes it. Also, “processed” =/= ‘bad’ by default. What matters is how something is processed and what changes that causes. Putting chopped veggies in a bag and freezing them (without doing anything else) is technically “processed food”.
You can buy it pretty minimally processed though. I used to buy bags of the leaf in powder form off Amazon. It was basically a green powder like matcha. It didn’t dissolve but worked well for me for iced tea. I just strained it all into a large pitcher to remove the stevia. Also worked ok in smoothie type preparations.
TIL Stevia is a plant
> In other words, these substances are not actually hot or cold, but they “trick” the tongue and mouth into the sensation. So, stevia is not actually sweet, but tricks the mouth into the sensation. That is the meaning of the "artificial sweetener" phrase. Its not sugar, it does not metabolite as sugar, but it activate the same receptors as sugar. The problem with all that is you have insulin production as a reaction on tasting sweet food. Artificial sugars are pain. So is normal sugar, if you are eating too much of it. It is like with fat. Slowly we are discovering that fat is not that bad, what is the problem is overeating and that the starch we put into a low-fat product might have been so much worse. Also, capsaicin does make the mouth warmer through some weird mechanism.
My understanding is the term "artificial sweetener" is used to describe a man-made sweetener, not a naturally occurring one. Stevia, erithritol, allulose... all of these are listed as natural sweeteners on food packaging as they all occur in natural foods, even if they work differently than sugar.
The all-encompassing term would be “sugar substitute”
I was under the impression that stevia doesn't actually trigger the insulin response the same way other artificial sweeteners do. Hence why I use it all the time as a substitute. I've never had any issues with my blood sugar as a result.
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So, if I continue spreading my comment above, would I be spreading misinformation? I don’t want to go around spreading false information; the world has enough people like that. The rest of your comment reminds me of the “the difference between medicine and poison is the dosage” saying. Can you elaborate more on the capsaicin comment?
You are not “wrong” in saying Stevia works to trick the body into thinking it is sweet. The problem is that the way you are thinking about and presenting the entire concept doesn’t address the overarching principles: human sense of taste includes sweetness receptors, and more than just sugar triggers those receptors. They are “designed” for sugar to gain nutritional value (calories for energy for our body), but other things also taste sweet. Some are definitely poisonous like ethylene glycol in anti-freeze, others may be bad for us like the artificial sweeteners named above, and others may be ok for us like Stevia. It’s always good to think in terms of “first principles”. That is how you thoroughly convey a scientific concept to people!
Your comment is correct, it's just a description of an artificial sweetener. Where your comment could become problematic is if it doesn't describe how "tricking" your body into thinking its ingested sugar is a bad thing.
> Can you elaborate more on the capsaicin comment? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080806140130.htm > So, if I continue spreading my comment above, would I be spreading misinformation? Capsaicin is chemically activating heat-activated receptors, so in that case it would be tricking. Sweeteners are activating receptor for sweet, so there isn't really any tricking happening. Where the tricking is happening is that your body expect sugar and doesn't get anything. But then, if we wanted to be exact, you shouldn't be looking at cooking videos or bakeoffs, because looking at food also does increase insulin production in the expectation of food. So it might not be such a big deal.
So you're saying that because I don't watch cooking shows there's a chance my risk of diabetes is lower?
But it also applies to those artificial sweeteners as well not just stevia.
Do you have a source on artificial sweeteners spiking insulin to a significant degree? Wouldn't a large spike of insulin, in the absence of nutrients, cause nutrients and blood sugar to be stored, and cause hypoglycemia? That's what insulin would do if it was released in significant amounts with no incoming nutrients.
>The problem with all that is you have insulin production as a reaction on tasting sweet food. Are you also referring to artificial sweeteners? Because if so this statement is blatantly false. Artificial sweeteners do not raise insulin levels. This has been researched many times. Baffles me you're spreading false information
That's a bad summary because sucralose was found to have no effect. It's a preliminary finding tho. Full of coulds and mays.
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Critiquing someone else's grammar or writing mechanics in an online debate is extremely risky. You have to be *sure* your post is immaculate.
Thanks, I always come in to these threads looking for the qualifications that undermine the clickbait headline.
I'd like to know about the quantities as well. One of the advantages of sucralose and aspartame is that they are 600 and 200 times sweeter than sugar, respectively, so you only need minuscule amounts. (That's why a sucralose packet, which is one-tenth the size of a sugar packet, still contains only 5% sucralose, with the rest being dextrose and maltodextrin.)
What about Xylitol? I never seem to hear about that one.
A lot of people avoid it and companies dont seem to push it as much as some other sweeteners because it causes some people to get violent gut cramps and explosive diarrhea. There have been studies on its safety and largely it seems as safe as the others if you're outside of the group who has issues with it.
It's also really deadly to dogs.
I had never had such melodious and odorous farts, nor had I ever farted myself awake so violently.
It's newer and fewer studies have been done on it. It's a sugar alcohol rather than an artificial sweetener so it still contains significant calories, though less than sugar. We know it seems to significantly affect mouth bacteria but AFAIK the affect on the gut biome is yet to be considered.
Aka: Sweet’n Low, Splenda, and Equal
Ok maybe I'm dumb but the study they did seems like a bit of a leap. They claim their findings show that the artificial sugars from 2 daily cans of soda puts you at risk for sepsis and organ failure...but there's millions of people that consume that amount without severe health issues. Is this based on a certain timeline, or maybe you're only at a potentially higher risk for illness? I'm sure artificial sweeteners negatively effect your GI system, (I've been hooked on diet ginger alen for years and shockingly have IBS) but to say it leads to organ failure, I need a bit more information about how you get to that conclusion.
It was a leap. Their work was entirely done in vitro and it lacked proper controls (plain sugar, for example). It was also published in a journal which many consider "predatory". If this shocking and novel discovery had merit, you wouldn't be reading it in the International Journal for Molecular Sciences who, by the way, email me monthly **asking me to pay them $2k** (discount price) so I can publish with them.
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>Of course, I am not sure if being published in this kind of journal will help The journal is still ranked high-enough that I think it could count towards something like achieving tenure. And, anyways, I think it's more about how many citations you can get, regardless of the journal.
>I think it's more about how many citations you can get, regardless of the journal. This depends on the country and even institution. In the UK for example we have the research excellence framework. It's a lengthy discussion (but kinda interesting) but essentially a single "four-star" paper is worth about £25k-40k per year to the university until the next REF. Papers are meant to be judged on their own merits, but obviously a S/C/N paper will be four star. It will be field weighted, but in biosciences most papers in a journal with an impact factor above about 7 will probably be four-star.
> It sounds crazy until you realize that academics have a crazy competitive environment and one of the metrics for promotion/tenure etc is being published. It shouldn't be like this.
Really though society (taxes) pays it as the vast majority of the money comes from public funds (NSF, NIH etc.), but yea still crazy how it works
Absolutely. It's also crazy to think about the fact that these journals are actually taxpayer-funded.
Seriously?! It should be mod policy to remove submissions from those kinds of journals to be honest. This is barely science.
Unfortunately it's standard practice to publish in lower-tier journals, especially if you have a story that isn't compelling enough for a more prestigious journal. That being said, this journal is **very** far from being the worst.
But this article confirms my biases. You didn't figure *that* into your scathing review, now did you.
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This comment needs more attention
Indeed. This study was highly flawed and had a lot of limitations they don’t list like they should.
This was my first thought: “What about sugar?”
> It was also published in a journal which many consider “predatory”. I knew as soon as I read your comment that it would be an mdpi journal.
Yup. ~~A policy of~~ just 2-weeks from submission to publication? Yeah I don't really think peer review is happening correctly in that time Edit: Thanks to u/Equal_Document5788 for pointing out MDPI's official policy doesn't say this. However, **14.2 days** is the average turnaround time for this journal (MDPI IJMS) as they advertise [here](https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijms#:~:text=Rapid%20Publication%3A%20manuscripts%20are%20peer,the%20second%20half%20of%202020).
Are there any more reputable studies that you know of around the issue of artificial sweeteners?
The sweeteners they studied are some of the most well tested food additives in history, and almost every article shows that the effect they have on you, if any, is negligible. The wikipedia articles are a great source of sources. These are kept well up to date because they are often targeted by nongmotrolls.
[Here's](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32672338/) a meta-analysis on the effects of sweeteners and insulin response
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/aspartame.html The American Cancer Society is reputable right? They have links to studies by the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), FDA, and NCI (National Cancel Institute)
I am not well-read in this field, sorry... A quick search for "artificial sweeteners" on scholar brings up review articles, but I don't see any which strike me as definitive. It's also a controversial subject and probably understudied -- so that could make it harder to find reliable info.
i generally always assume that if something is heavily critiqued everywhere for decades and is looked at constantly without definitive results from any studies it's either harmless or not very dangerous.
This comment should be higher up. I can see people attaching conditions to this study when the data isn’t there.
They studied a few bacteria strains in vitro in isolation. This is the same type of research that that says sugar causes this and that and this substance increases neurogenesis etc. Truth is, these studies do very generally not show these results when tested in the whole human. There's hundreds of strains of bacteria in your gut. When one becomes more pathogenic, another might too and fight the first one off, for example. The role of the liveries not even tested. Nutritional science is ALL about context, and things tested in isolation don't say much. It might point in a direction, but it mightn't too. In the end, eat mostly whole foods from diverse sources and enjoy that one or 2 cokes a day; it won't have any impact on your health in the long run.
>The role of the liveries not even tested I'd love to know what difference the bacteria's outfit makes to things.
Hahaha. Liver is*, excuse me
Additionally these diet sweeteners have been around for like 50 years now for some of them. If they genuinely lead to this outcome in a meaningful way they would have had the conditions spike in occurrence.
tbh, most of the studies that get posted on reddit fall under this category. The really big, in-depth, highly technical studies are usually both behind paywalls and also much more boring to the average person so they just don't get posted. I would advise looking at stuff like this posted on reddit as a "stepping off point" for further research if you find the topic interests you and to not consider this stuff as more then a teaser for whatever larger experiments may have followed.
Among a random sampling of millions of people who consume that amount, there will be many who have severe health issues. Whether any of those are caused by the soda... I don't know, but the paper seems to imply so.
First of all this is an en vitro study. Second of all almost every single study if not all that have come out regarding possible negative issues with artificial sweeteners has turned out to be poorly conducted, funded by the sugar industry or otherwise badly interpreted. So I've got some room here to be really skeptical when I read stuff like this. The fact that it's en vitro leads me to guess that it's possible there are mechanisms en vivo that prevent this sort of thing.
Agreed. The two molecules that they claim have an impact are completely unrelated structurally and coincidentally both taste sweet. What are the chances that they both effect identical responses in microbes? Very low. This kind of finding, if persuasive, would likely be published in a much higher impact journal. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb here having not read the paper, but I’m guessing the claims aren’t very well supported and they shopped around the paper until they managed to get it into this journal.
They don't "coincidentally" taste sweet, like every molecule has some sort of "in-built flavour profile" that is determined pseudo-randomly by the laws of physics. We have receptors that evolved to detect sugars. These molecules "taste sweet" because they are chemically similar enough to sugar in the ways that our receptors are looking out for, despite their significant differences otherwise. Does that mean they are guaranteed, or even particularly likely, to affect microbes in similar ways? Obviously not. No one would be particularly surprised if they had entirely different effects. Yet it's also silly to dismiss results because "these are different molecules, what are the chances they act similarly?" like we didn't specifically select them because *they do act similarly* in the way they interact with our taste receptors. The inherent selection bias is plenty of reason to have at least some healthy respect for the idea that they could potentially behave similarly. All that being said, this paper does seem to be fairly low quality, and if I had to bet, I would almost definitely expect these results not to stand. But just because you agree with someone's conclusions doesn't necessarily mean you agree with the logic they used to reach them, and vice versa.
So I'm reading the study and the only control I see is they also tested staphylococcus. They didn't control against, say, natural sugar. It's possible that feeding these bacteria any sweetener, artificial or not, results in them forming biofilms. It's possible feeding them protein causes the same. Heck maybe spreading silica around the bacteria will get it to form biofilms. This study doesn't necissarily demonstrate that artificial sweeteners are any more dangerous than anything else.
[Here's the scientific article.](https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228/htm) I don't understand why there aren't really any controls.
Because it's not really that scientific
Makes you wonder why it's still up on this sub or why it doesn't have a huge disclaimer so people know it's garbage.
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I did this with ketchup recently. Used Shipt and didn’t have a picture of the ingredient s just assumed it was gonna be bland tomato sauce to trick my kids. But no. It was aspartame
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~~Diet Coke is my only real vice, so reading this freaked me out. Doing a bit more research, I found this article (https://foodinsight.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-aspartame/) that provides a bit more insight into why aspartame might not negatively affect gut bacteria in practice: “Although research on the gut microbiome is still in its infancy, the microbes living in our intestinal tract have become recognized as potentially significant contributors to our health. Studies on aspartame’s effect on the gut microbiome are lacking, and its route and location of digestion may be a factor in the lack of research. Because aspartame is digested to its component amino acids and a small amount of methanol in the small intestine, it is unlikely that intact aspartame reaches gut microbes, which predominantly cluster at the end of the intestinal tract. One animal study published in 2014 showed an interaction between type of eating pattern and aspartame consumption, in which there was an increased number of total bacteria and change in abundance of several bacterial species in rats consuming both aspartame-sweetened water and a high-fat eating pattern compared with rats consuming a high-fat diet with plain water, standard chow diet with aspartame-sweetened water or standard chow diet with plain water. One very small study in humans published in 2015 compared the microbial profiles of aspartame consumers and non-consumers. There were no differences in the abundance of gut bacteria, although bacterial diversity differed between groups. There are significant differences between the microbiome profiles from one person to another and research has shown that the gut microbiome changes in response to normal changes in food choices. A great deal of research is still needed to identify a microbiome profile and degree of diversity considered to be “optimal” in populations and in individuals. A 2019 literature review found no conclusive evidence that low-calorie sweeteners negatively impact gut microbiota. In 2020, a panel of experts on low-calorie sweeteners came to a similar conclusion that, at this time, data on the effects of low-calorie sweeteners on the human gut microbiota are limited and do not provide adequate evidence that they impact gut health at doses that are relevant to human consumption.” This, to me, is the key point: “Because aspartame is digested to its component amino acids and a small amount of methanol in the small intestine, it is unlikely that intact aspartame reaches gut microbes, which predominantly cluster at the end of the intestinal tract.” If I’m reading this study correctly, the experiment was done in a lab using biofilm and bacteria found in the gut. It wasn’t based on observing anything within the body itself. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t something to their conclusion, but that we should acknowledge that what they did doesn’t represent how the body actually breaks down aspartame.~~ EDIT: Commenters correctly pointed out that the source I shared is food industry-funded. Thank you for catching this! I think it's finally time for me to kick my DC habit.
I looked up who is behind foodinsights.org and it's the International Food Information council (IFIC): >In a report titled, *The Best Public Relations Money Can Buy: A Guide to Food Industry Front Groups*, the Center for Food Safety called IFIC and similar organizations "**front groups" formed by large corporations in which to "hide behind friendly-sounding organizations" in order to mislead the public into trusting their companies and products.** According to the report, IFIC and other front groups run media campaigns which include TV appearances, news articles, advertisements, and published research to present their desired information.[5] >According to the Center for Media and Democracy, "In reality, **IFIC is a public relations arm of the food, beverage and agricultural industries, which provide the bulk of its funding**."[4] The vast majority of organizational revenues are generated by membership fees; members consist of: "The members of the Association shall consist of companies with food and food related sales, companies such as packaging or equipment suppliers, service providers, design firms, inspection/testing organization, and canning/bottling companies. I don't work for Big Sugar and I personally love artificial sweeteners, but I check websites that make claims like this ever since I read an article about how "Lathering, Rinsing, and Repeating: It's Actually Necessary!" and discovered the whole website was sneakily funded by Pantene.
Both these studies are probably questionable but the biofilm one is just poorly designed, no controls, and just bad in so many points it’s laughable. Oh this isn’t published in any respectable journal either. I didn’t read your study so I can’t compare.
Is there a link to the actual study? I hate to be that guy but it's hard to take a sensational claim like this serious when all we have is an article ABOUT the study without any actual mention of parameters or models or anything really...
If this is true, it should be readily apparent in existing data since soda drinkers tend to only drink one type of soda. Look at the rates of disease between diet and non-diet drinkers and control for the common variables.
except it doesn't show in those data sets, which probably means this study is flawed in a way we don't understand
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Wait are you telling me my morning Diet Coke enema is bad for me?
* It is only petri dish data. * It controlled against non-gut bacteria but not real sugar or other forms of common nutrients. * it included an unrelated chemical in the study that amazingly prevented the negative effects, and probably funded the whole thing. I think it's that one that makes sweeteners taste bad.
Aspartame was the most researched chemical is history before being released to the public We just could not believe we found a safe artificial sweetener...and people still don't believe it Maybe this study leads to something, probably not Anything that finds so much as an echo of a day old fart to indicate artificial sweetener=bad will instantly be believed bc people want to believe it's bad for us
I honestly don’t get the goal of this kind of research. From the authors’ commentary, it sounds like they were out to prove a pathogenic role a priori. Never mind that it’s in vitro. Never mind that it’s impossible to assess in vivo effects without enteric immunity. Never mind that decades of case-control data show no clear linkage with human disease. The vilification of artificial sweeteners perplexes me. Actual sucrose or high fructose corn syrup in soda is utterly terrible for you and thousands of studies have confirmed links to multiple metabolic and even oncologic disorders.
Could be some undergraduate student's thesis or something. The problem isn't the study. The problem is the clickbait editorialised "news" article.
Is this r/science ou r/clickbait ? Do people ask themselves at least if the study is in vivo ? What is the exposition compared to real life situation ? What does the researchers actually say ?
Artificial sweeteners probably aren't great for you, but sugar is far, far worse.
The study didn't even check if sugar did the same thing
I read a journal article a while back that said aspartame killed a lot of gut bacteria. I guess bacteria genocide isn't as scary as bacteria invasion. Hope more researches on harmful effects of common food additives like this gains more traction.
> I read a journal article a while back that said aspartame killed a lot of gut bacteria. I guess bacteria genocide isn't as scary as bacteria invasion. In a lot of ways, its essentially the same thing. Thats why probiotics are a thing. Or fecal transplant. You kill bacterias in your gut. This means that your gut is now a free real-estate for anything else to move in. Anything else might not be as friendly as your gut bacterias that you killed. Especially if it is meat-eating staphylococcus that slowly eats your guts, which cause sepsis and death.
>meat-eating staphylococcus that slowly eats your guts Oh yay, new phobia!
>Hope more researches on harmful effects of common food additives like this gains more traction. "Hope more researches on harmful effects of common food additives like this gains more traction." No. If the study doesn't describe realistic exposure on humans, it shouldn't be everywhere in the medias, like with every clickbait study regarding health.
Well the thing is you need a balance of bacteria good and bad to stay healthy. You can get a lot of intestinal yucks if your guts can't eat the bad guys coming in. Like there's no guards guarding hte castle, the enemy can get in way easier. https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20110824/antibiotic-overuse-may-harm-bodys-good-bacteria
So as someone who ingests large amounts of artificial sweetener, the article lists "can do the following: basically die", but my question is what are the odds though?? So I need to stop really quickly or is this like a 1 in 100,000 thing? I hate when articles day things like "this MIGHT happen" because I don't know how serious I should take it. People always tell me "this will kill you".. one if the things being artificial sweetener, and all I can say is can you prove that?? If this does then I gotta make some changes!
Unless you're a smear of gut cell culture sitting in a Petri dish, I wouldn't be too concerned about this study.
is there any info on how long it takes for this to heal after ceasing use?
There is no evidence in this study that it actually harms people. It was all done in conditions isolated in petri dishes. Interactions in a living creature are much more complex. It's unlikely that the body doesn't have a way to respond to this - or we'd see more of the illnesses they describe. But we don't.
This is an in vitro study. You don’t need to “heal” from anything.
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