Over the last five to six years, a new sweetener has found its way into a variety of common foods. Its name is neotame or E961. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced in 2007 that this substance, which is an alternative to aspartame, which is 8,000 times sweeter than sugar, is safe to use in food and non-alcoholic beverages.
But new research has shown that neotame may not be as harmless as initially thought. Last week Dr Havovi Chichger published a study in the journal Limits of Nutrition This suggested that it could damage cells in the intestinal lining. These cells play important roles in digesting food, absorbing nutrients, and protecting the body from microbial infections.
Researcher Dr. working on neotame at Anglia Ruskin University. “Neotam was developed to be a more stable, sweeter version of the traditional sweetener,” says Chichger. “We became interested in neotame because it is so unusual; it is chemically similar to traditional sweeteners but is very intensely sweet by comparison, 100 times sweeter than sweeteners like sucralose.”
With EFSA recently announcing that it is reviewing the safety of neotame, this study adds to a growing body of research suggesting that the following five artificial sweeteners may be problematic for our health.
Let’s take a closer look at what we know so far.
neotame
Neotame has been subtly introduced into a variety of products, including canned fruit, jelly, some sodas, dairy products, and industrially produced cakes. It has gained popularity among manufacturers because it does not contain the problematic aftertaste that can be a problem with some sweeteners and remains stable even when exposed to production temperatures of up to 450°C.
However, Dr Chichger’s research showed that when intestinal cells were exposed to neotame in a petri dish, 10 mM of the sweetener could actually be toxic to these cells; This dose is within the acceptable daily limit defined by food safety regulators.
While it’s unlikely that the average person would consume that much neotame in a day through food and beverages, relatively low concentrations of the sweetener can disrupt the microbiome in a variety of ways, making consumers more prone to gut disease. or even blood poisoning.
“At concentrations that a person could easily consume on a daily basis, our studies show that the intestinal barrier is disrupted and the bacteria become more damaging, including increased invasion of healthy intestinal cells, leading to cell death,” says Chichger. .
aspartame
It is perhaps the most widely used sweetener, found in products ranging from Diet Coke to breakfast cereals, ice cream, low-sugar yogurts and sugar-free gum. The main disadvantage of aspartame, which is 180 to 200 times sweeter than sugar, is that it breaks down and loses its sweetness when heated, limiting its use in desserts.
But since aspartame was first approved by regulators in the 1970s, it has faced suggestions that it might be linked to health problems. In the mid-2000s, studies on laboratory mice suggested that high doses of sweeteners consumed over a long period of time may be associated with lymphoma and leukemia. Although the conclusion was ultimately rejected, the findings of various epidemiological studies continued to raise concern.
In 2022, an analysis of more than a decade of dietary records of 102,865 adults in France linked higher consumption of aspartame and another sweetener called acesulfame-K to various cancers. Subsequent research last year also linked high consumption of foods sweetened with aspartame and other artificial sweeteners to cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.
A small minority may even develop acute neurological symptoms due to aspartame consumption. Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at the University of Sussex, has studied aspartame for decades and says it is thought to be an adverse reaction to phenylalanine, an amino acid produced when aspartame is metabolized. “Based on the evidence I’ve seen, I think it would probably be no less than 3 percent of consumers, but no more than 10 percent,” he says. “The problems that arise are things like headaches, blurred vision and, in a small proportion of cases, quite severe epileptic seizures. These people are probably having difficulty coping with the fairly large influx of phenylalanine into their bodies.”
Acesulfame potassium (As-K)
First approved in the late 1980s, acesulfame potassium has been used in combination with aspartame in Diet Coke since the mid-2000s and is also found in salad dressings and sauces, jams, jellies and marmalades, ice cream and other dairy products. even toothpaste and mouthwash.
It is speculated that, like aspartame and other sweeteners, the intense flavor of acesulfame potassium may disrupt the body’s natural hormonal processes that govern blood sugar control and cause the release of excessive amounts of the hormone insulin, which is one of the causal factors of progression towards Type 2. diabetes. One study suggested that it may even increase the amount of sugar absorbed by cells in the gut, a possible mechanism that triggers intestinal inflammation.
However, acesulfame potassium tends to be combined with other sweeteners to mask the bitter aftertaste, says Dr. According to Jotham Suez, it is currently difficult to identify some of these health concerns on an individual basis. sweetener because many foods and beverages contain a mixture of them.
“We can’t say right now that one sweetener is associated with more harm than others,” he says. “However, there is evidence that cannot be ignored that suggests a potential causal link between consumption of foods and beverages containing these sweeteners and increased weight gain and impaired glucose homeostasis, hence potentially high blood sugar.”
sucralose
Sucralose is also frequently used in combination with acesulfame potassium in a variety of foods, from condiments to sugar-free jams, fruit spreads, salad dressings, diet sodas, and gummies.
Last year, a new study in which researchers from universities in North Carolina experimented with human intestinal cells raised concerns about the sweetener, suggesting that sucralose-6-acetate, a chemical in sucralose, may damage DNA, something that can increase levels of harmful oxidants. it lasted. stress and inflammatory molecules in the gut.
But while one of the purported purposes of sweeteners is to reduce the problem that excessive sugar consumption leads to weight gain, it turns out that sweeteners themselves can actually alter our metabolism, especially when combined with our food ingredients.
Prof., a neuroscientist at McGill University in Canada and one of the world’s leading sucralose experts. Dana Small conducted a pioneering experiment in 2020; This experiment found that drinks in which sucralose was combined with carbohydrates made them worse by altering the brain and metabolic responses to that carbohydrate. are more vulnerable to weight gain.
“Our paper showed that sucralose, when combined with the carbohydrate maltodextrin, changes the brain’s physiological response to sugars quite rapidly,” says Prof Small.
Saccharin
This is the original sweetener discovered in 1879. Like aspartame, saccharin has been subject to controversy over the years regarding accusations that it may be carcinogenic, following a 1970s Canadian study that linked the sweetener to bladder cancer in mice.
However, there is no clear evidence linking saccharin consumption to bladder cancer in humans, and saccharin is currently found in many processed foods branded as low-calorie, such as juices, smoothies, jams, jellies, and cookies.
But concerns still abound that, like other sweeteners, saccharin may disrupt the gut in a variety of ways, with potentially broader consequences for our health.
At the same time, Dr Suez predicts that some people are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of sweeteners than others. As personalized nutrition technologies such as microbiome sequencing become more popular among consumers around the world, he thinks the future may involve looking for signals in the gut microbiome that could indicate how sweeteners might affect that person.
“As we try to think about the next step, we need to try and really develop some algorithms to be able to predict who could potentially benefit from sweeteners because that person is not negatively affected by the consumption of sweeteners, versus those who are,” he says.