Sweetener may have sugar-like effect on metabolism

Some of the most used sweeteners in the world, created to replace sugar and avoid the harmful effects of its consumption, can actually end up having similar effects on metabolism, in addition to affecting intestinal micro-organisms, according to a study by researchers. Israelis.

It is still too early to say what these findings mean for the health of those who consume sweeteners for a long time or in large quantities. But they are equivalent to a yellow light on the use of these substances and indicate that they should not be expected to be “neutral” for the organism, as it was thought for a long time.

“This means that these compounds are probably not inert in the human body,” he told Sheet study coordinator Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

“It is important to note that our findings in no way suggest that the consumption of sugar is more recommended than that of sweeteners. We believe that sugar should be avoided or its use minimized, especially in populations susceptible to metabolic diseases such as diabetes, or who suffer from them”, he says.

In the research, which has just appeared in the specialized journal Cell, the Israeli team, together with colleagues from Germany, investigated in depth the metabolic effects of a quartet of so-called ANNs (non-nutritive sweeteners), so named because their absorption by the body is very low. or null. The research group of ANNs includes saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and stevia.

As Elinav explains, commercial sachets of these sweeteners usually receive a small addition of glucose (a type of “real” sugar), which serves to increase their volume and soften their characteristic taste. To avoid this confounding the analysis, the researchers also tested the effect of this small amount of glucose on study participants.

In fact, selecting these people was a challenge in itself. After recruiting more than 1,000 volunteers, the team did rigorous screening to identify only healthy adults who had not consumed the sweeteners before. Finally, they reached a group of 120 people, who began to receive the sweeteners in a random way (that is, through a lottery in which the participants were assigned to consume a certain compound). Within this total there were also two control groups, one receiving only the small amount of glucose and the other without any extra substance.

The volunteers received the sachets three times a day, a total well below the recommended daily maximum. The consumption of sweeteners took place over two weeks, during which the team monitored the metabolism of the participants and also their microbiota (set of microorganisms) in the mouth and intestine. The analysis of the microbiota is relevant because the human organism is a kind of zoo of these creatures, which affect factors such as food digestion and immunity, and there were already indications that sweeteners are able to affect these microbes.

The most concerning finding from this initial analysis was that saccharin and sucralose are able to negatively affect blood sugar metabolism. For this metabolism to take place, the person does not need to ingest sugar directly: any normal diet converts part of the food into glucose during digestion. According to the study, those who consumed the sweeteners had more difficulty absorbing glucose normally, which was more present than normal in their bloodstream.

In addition, all sweeteners significantly modified the volunteers’ microbiota. In a later phase of the experiment, the researchers transferred this altered microbiota from the human participants to mice raised in completely sterile hygienic conditions — that is, the rodents had no microorganisms of their own.

It turns out that in several of these cases, the animals developed the same shifts in glucose metabolism that had appeared in the volunteers. That is, it is probably the interference of sweeteners in the microbiota that is behind the metabolic changes, as Israeli scientists suspected.

For the authors of the study, the results show that caution is needed regarding the consumption of sweeteners and, above all, that it is necessary to better understand the long-term effects of substances on the body.