A new study reveals that sweeteners can have a detrimental effect on brain and gut development.
- Sweeteners are food additives that reduce added sugar content and corresponding calories while retaining sweetness.
- Scientists had already found that compared to nonconsumers, people who consumed the most sweeteners, especially aspartame and acesulfame-K, had a higher risk of developing cancer, all types of cancer combined.
We knew that sugar consumption early in life affects brain function but it appears that consuming sweeteners would have the same impact, according to a study published in the journal JCI Insight.
Sweeteners lead to long-term deficiencies
Research conducted on adolescent rats indeed shows that they exhibited long-term memory impairments after consuming low-calorie sweeteners such as saccharin, acesulfame potassium and stevia commonly used to sweeten foods.
To determine the deleterious effect of sweetener consumption on memory, the researchers used different test methods: object recognition and spatial recognition.
The results were rapid and unequivocal since after a month, the rats having consumed the sweetener in water in addition to their usual food, were less likely to remember an object or the path. through the maze than those who had only drunk plain water.
Sweeteners influence food preferences and behavior
Additionally, scientists found that rats had fewer receptors on their tongues that detect sugar after consuming sweeteners, which may cause them to change their eating behavior and need to consume more of it to taste it.
The biological mechanism in their gut that transports glucose into the blood was also altered, and the effects of this change are not yet known to researchers.
In addition, the rats’ brains had changed, especially in regions associated with memory control and reward-motivated behavior.
Consumption of low-calorie sweeteners also affected metabolic signaling in the body, which can lead to diabetes and other metabolism-related diseases.
The food industry is increasingly using artificial sweeteners
“Although our results do not necessarily indicate that a person should not consume low calorie sweeteners in general, they do highlight that habitual consumption of low calorie sweeteners early in life can have unintended and long-lasting effects.“said Scott Kanoski, associate professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife.
This is all the more worrying since, in order to deal with the obesity epidemic, the use of these “fake sugars” in industrial foods has been generalized and that the consumption of sweeteners in children has increased dramatically, the authors point out.
