From a quick read : It was tested in a cell culture, so not in a human or animal. That does change a lot of things.
For the dosage:
> Thereafter, hCMECs were treated116 with regular media or media containing 6 mM erythritol (Sigma Aldrich, Cat #E7500; St. Louis MO), a117 dose equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in a single can of commercially available118 artificially sweetened beverage, for 24 hours (N=5 experimental units)
James_K 1 minutes ago [-]
Zero-calorie sugar is on of those things that's just too good to be true. It's either gotta taste awful or give you cancer.
thangalin 60 minutes ago [-]
UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.
I wonder if the similar molecule Xylitol has the same problem. It seems like so many artificial sweeteners have dangerous health effects, I don't trust any of them. Unless you're diabetic or something, regular sugar seems to be the healthiest choice (in moderation!)
aydyn 3 hours ago [-]
Regular sugar is very bad for you in a modern diet as its essentially extra calories that are not compensated by satiety.
Why prefer something that you know is definitely bad for you over something that maybe is but more likely benign?
abenga 2 hours ago [-]
"Too many calories" is a simpler problem to solve: increase physical activity, take less sugar, or take sugar less frequently. The signal to watch out for to tell that you are taking too much (increasing weight) is straightforward as well.
The possible artificial sweetener issues implied by the article ("may be poison") are ultra scary.
aydyn 2 hours ago [-]
Easier to understand does not mean simpler to solve.
40% of the U.S. is overweight, 11% are diabetic, etc etc. There is no such magnitude of a problem due to erythritol or artificial sweeteners.
If "too many calories" were easy to solve we would not have an epidemic of it.
Propelloni 45 minutes ago [-]
No, the GP is correct. The solution is simple. Calculate your daily passive calorie requirement, take in less calories and/or up active calorie requirement. Simple.
Now, implementing this is hard or maybe impossible for many individuals, I'm not denying this. The solution is simple, but for some it is not easy to implement.
rat9988 13 minutes ago [-]
This is word play on the meaning of word simple in "simple solution" that can mean both easy to do or easy to understand. This is orthogonal to the point being made.
uncircle 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
vladvasiliu 29 minutes ago [-]
While this looks simple on the surface, what I've found is that there's a missing component to what you describe: the effect sugar has on the perception of satiety: when I eat sugar, I always have a hunger-like feeling, which incites me to keep on eating. I don't get this with sweeteners.
This happens with sugary drinks, but also with solid food, such as cake.
Sure, once you see your weight go up, you can adjust. But adjusting is difficult, and I think this is a contributing factor to the weight problems people have.
hedora 2 hours ago [-]
Studies have shown artificial (and non-nutritional organic) sweeteners are much worse than sugar for decades.
For instance, they disrupt your metabolism, so equivalently sweet amounts of sweeteners cause more weight gain than sugar. (Due to increased hunger vs. eating nothing, decreased metabolism and decreased calorie burn.)
The study in the article isn’t surprising at all. Links between nutrisweet and migraine headaches have been well understood for a long time. It’s not surprising other similar chemicals have similar negative side effects.
There’s no valid reason to use artificial sweeteners (other than diabetes, but even then, gaining weight from the sweeteners is a problem if the diabetes is weight related.)
aydyn 2 hours ago [-]
Thats wrong. You can find any individual study to support nearly any conclusion you want.
I was under the impression that this is not the case. Aspartame has been studied a lot and not found to be harmful.
f_bit 1 hours ago [-]
Anecdotal but I have experienced body ache from drinking diet soda with aspartame. I drank regular soda when younger but switched over to watch my weight as I aged. A year on during a more sleep deprived week I went heavy on the caffeinated diet soda and ended up with all muscles feeling like I had done some major exercising. Thinking back, I had been experiencing regular aches. I stopped for a week, felt better. Tested again by going heavy for a week and the aches returned. Tried regular soda and no aches. I just stopped soda all together at that point. I check labels now and avoid anything with aspartame in it.
chrisco255 1 hours ago [-]
Anecdotal but I drink diet sodas all the time and have never felt any such thing.
datameta 1 hours ago [-]
Aspartame is linked to anxiety.
TeMPOraL 56 minutes ago [-]
Direction of causation would be very relevant here.
Sugar is still the cultural default; artificial sweeteners are something you explicitly choose due to health concerns (worried about being or becoming diabetic, or overweight, or worried about sugar being unhealthy in general, or about the mood/motivation angle, etc.).
I imagine becoming overweight itself is linked to anxiety both ways, as eating or snacking is a common reaction to stress, a way to relieve it in the moment.
srean 2 hours ago [-]
Gee, I don't know if this artificial chemical (that no other species consumes) is toxic.
Let me consume it everyday.
Radium, too was deemed safe to suck on. Thalidomide, perfectly safe. Hormone replacement therapy, perfectly safe...
The safety of these (Thalidomide, HRT) were also backed by studies.
I find safety studies very suspect unless there's years of experience, especially if there is money to be made by someone.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it -- Upton Sinclair
birn559 2 hours ago [-]
Sweeteners have been researched quite extensively. If there are problems with regular typical consumption, the effect size is very small.
Small as in "the alternatives are most likely worse" or as in "you are consuming already a dozen other things that are known to be more problematic by an order of magnitude and you should focus on them instead".
jrapdx3 1 hours ago [-]
While I'm most familiar with evaluating pharmaceuticals, the same principles apply to food additives. The issue arises that certain adverse effects occur infrequently or only after an extended interval from the time of exposure. Safety of drugs, food additives, et.al., are evaluated in relatively small premarketing samples. For uncommon (or delayed) effects to become evident it requires a much larger population to be exposed to the drug or additive.
"Years of experience" means an increasingly larger population has been subject to use of the compound. It may take 10's of millions of exposures for the problems to become clear enough to elicit action.
A surprising number of drugs (and food additives) have been used for decades before their adverse effects were recognized and the offenders removed from the market.
We should regard initial or early claims of safety as preliminary statements. Indeed skepticism is warranted. Ongoing monitoring/reevaluation is necessary. Certainly utmost caution is needed before allowing products to be widely used.
ta20240528 2 hours ago [-]
Hormone replacement therapy is perfectly safe.
The unsafe reputation came from a flawed study of far older, women.
IMHO the inventors should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
aydyn 2 hours ago [-]
Non sequitur. Lots of studies examining the toxicity of artificial sweetners. The body of evidence shows null distribution.
konart 1 hours ago [-]
>Regular sugar is very bad for you
No it is not. The overwhelming quantites are bad. But this applies to almost any food.
aydyn 1 hours ago [-]
That is why I conditioned the claim with the qualifier "in a modern diet".
To a starving child in a impoverished nation? Sugar would be great.
Context is important.
chrisco255 1 hours ago [-]
It's extremely addictive and very, very difficult for most people to control.
It's not terrible, I've used it in hot drinks (fruit green teas) to give some sweetness.
Doesn't immediately taste horrific like Stevia.... I'm glad the fashion for shoving that in everything has passed.
mock-possum 2 hours ago [-]
Last I checked, xylitol tastes sweet but is actually fairly lethal to plaque-causing bacteria… on the other hand, it’s also a laxative.
Oh also it’s super lethal for dogs.
I only chew gum if it has xylitol in it.
abcd_f 1 hours ago [-]
It was also linked to the elevated risk of blood clots in another study a couple of years ago. Even then it instantly looked like an instant "nope" ... and now this.
linux_devil 39 minutes ago [-]
I've been consuming protein bars that has Maltitol, in the ingredients its mentioned as : INS 965(i) . I am not sure how this can impact in the long run , wish there was an easier way to find out
latchkey 2 hours ago [-]
Almost every single other sugar substitute is filled with erythritol as an additive. Monk Fruit products tend to be really bad offenders. Check the labels carefully.
aitchnyu 20 minutes ago [-]
Monk fruit products seem to be false advertising. Why are pure monkfruit sweeteners rare?
ShakataGaNai 2 hours ago [-]
This I found out the unfortunate way. I used some popular monk fruit sweetener... packets were just monk fruit but the bulk packages were monk fruit/erythritol blend and I didn't pay enough attention to the label. Made lemonade with it.
Spent the rest of the day on the toilet.
fellowniusmonk 1 hours ago [-]
Liquid sweeteners are fine, I switched to liquid monk fruit stevia blend, really like it.
sgt 2 hours ago [-]
What about aspartame[sic]?
chrisco255 1 hours ago [-]
Aspartame is fine in things like soda, but the reason erythritol is mixed with monk fruit (and perhaps aspartame as well?) is it is closer to the sweetness level of sugar in terms of sweetness per gram, and so it's usually easier to use in recipes that are based on sugar quantities.
> Human cerebral cells were cultured and treated with 6 mM of erythritol, equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in an artificially sweetened beverage, for 3 hr.
the cells were in the substance for 3hrs? I'm not reading the whole study now, but that sounds...interesting.
TimorousBestie 7 hours ago [-]
In vitro with human cells, at a reasonable concentration, apparently. Looks worrying.
DidYaWipe 2 hours ago [-]
These sugar alcohols are a scourge. I quit buying my favorite fake crab (Kroger) because it's full of this garbage.
tlavoie 1 hours ago [-]
We stopped buying fake crab (made from pollock), after we noticed that the dogs wouldn't eat it. Don't know what was there to cause that, but since there isn't much they won't eat, we wouldn't either. That bar is very, very low.
_ink_ 2 hours ago [-]
Is any amount dangerous? Or would you need to drink 6 Bottles of something with Erythritol daily to see the effect?
ipsum2 2 hours ago [-]
It's in the article:
"Human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells were cultured and exposed to an amount of erythritol equivalent to consuming a typical beverage. Experimental conditions included five biological replicates per group."
So it needs to cross the blood-brain barrier. From the research paper: "Moreover, it is important to note that erythritol does cross the blood brain barrier and interact with the cerebrovasculature". Unclear what percentage this is.
milleramp 2 hours ago [-]
Does this mean it also effects athletic performance due to lowering nitric oxide production?
hnlmorg 1 hours ago [-]
Surely if you’re concerned about athletic performance then you’d be wanting to consume calories rather than intending to buy sugar substitutes?
maksimur 1 hours ago [-]
I think it depends. An athlete might want to keep the same or less weight for performance or aesthetical reasons.
hnlmorg 50 minutes ago [-]
I meant that the problem many atheists have is consuming enough calories rather than too many. But I guess it depends on the discipline. Triathletes, for example, would burn plenty of more calories training than boxers might.
Back when I was athletic, I definitely had a problem putting weight on rather than taking it off.
rafaelmn 1 hours ago [-]
Depends if you're in a weight restricted sport or not
maksimur 2 hours ago [-]
There you go. No artificial sweetener seems to be safe...guess I'll have to get used to making unsweetened protein bars and the occasional drinks and ice cream. Their sugar counterparts are too caloric.
Nursie 1 hours ago [-]
> No artificial sweetener seems to be safe
Are we at that point yet?
AFAICT aspartame seems to be pretty safe and well-researched, and the IARC listing it as "possibly carcinogenic" itself seems to be controversial. In that category it is listed along side such things as Aloe Vera, Carpentry, Low-frequency magnetic fields, Traditional asian pickled vegetables, Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and Gingko Biloba extract...
adrian_b 1 hours ago [-]
In principle, it seems impossible for any artificial sweetener to be completely safe, unless it is consumed only sporadically, not regularly.
Unfortunately, the receptors for sweetness do not exist for the sole purpose of giving pleasure to the brain.
They are also used to signal to various organs to prepare for an influx of carbohydrates. When the signal is frequently present, but then the expected carbohydrates do not come, then this is likely to perturb some control functions of the body, like in the fable about the boy who cried wolf.
arghwhat 32 minutes ago [-]
> it seems impossible for any artificial sweetener to be completely safe, unless it is consumed only sporadically, not regularly.
This also holds for non-artificial sweetener, or in fact any substance entering our body.
Disturbing a process expecting a large influx of carbohydrates vs. disturbing the body with an actual high influx of carbohydrates, disturbing the body by neither consuming nor triggering carbohydrate processes, ...
Drinking bitter fluids - say, coffee - trigger early toxicity warnings that prepare your body for emergency oral bowel evacuation, as "bitter" is the taste of various substances evolution associated with food poisoning. What other mechanisms might that trigger? That's a lot of "crying wolf" for many people.
cpbotha 39 minutes ago [-]
Large prospective cohort study (103 388 participants) showing that artificial sweeteners and specifically aspartame are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease: https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071204
"...findings indicate that these food additives, consumed daily by millions of people and present in thousands of foods and beverages, should not be considered a healthy and safe alternative to sugar..."
Also, artificial sweeteners might not help with obesity: "Long-term aspartame and saccharin intakes are related to greater volumes of visceral, intermuscular, and subcutaneous adipose tissue: the CARDIA study" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-023-01336-y
almosthere 1 hours ago [-]
Switch to Stevia, but it kind of has a weird taste imo
umvi 3 hours ago [-]
Dang, I think my favorite brand of sugar free ice cream uses erythritol (Rebel)
Klaus_ 40 minutes ago [-]
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pixxel 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
voidfunc 2 hours ago [-]
Lol at all the people in this thread stressing out about their artificial sweetener consumption while disregarding all the other dangerous shit they do, eat, and drink.
Forest for the trees.
DHRicoF 2 minutes ago [-]
I partially agree with you. But the selling point of artificial sweeteners was that they were a healthier substitute.
It's better to teach people that there is no free lunch, and they should take care about the calories they are consuming, even if that imply reduce frequency of sweet foods, than sugar coating an equally bad alternative to make it sound like it's healthier.
maksimur 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe they have omitted those because the focus is on artificial sweeteners? As for myself I try to avoid anything that could be dangerous, not only what I eat or drink.
Rendered at 07:58:16 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
From a quick read : It was tested in a cell culture, so not in a human or animal. That does change a lot of things.
For the dosage:
> Thereafter, hCMECs were treated116 with regular media or media containing 6 mM erythritol (Sigma Aldrich, Cat #E7500; St. Louis MO), a117 dose equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in a single can of commercially available118 artificially sweetened beverage, for 24 hours (N=5 experimental units)
https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=75
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol
Why prefer something that you know is definitely bad for you over something that maybe is but more likely benign?
The possible artificial sweetener issues implied by the article ("may be poison") are ultra scary.
40% of the U.S. is overweight, 11% are diabetic, etc etc. There is no such magnitude of a problem due to erythritol or artificial sweeteners.
If "too many calories" were easy to solve we would not have an epidemic of it.
Now, implementing this is hard or maybe impossible for many individuals, I'm not denying this. The solution is simple, but for some it is not easy to implement.
This happens with sugary drinks, but also with solid food, such as cake.
Sure, once you see your weight go up, you can adjust. But adjusting is difficult, and I think this is a contributing factor to the weight problems people have.
For instance, they disrupt your metabolism, so equivalently sweet amounts of sweeteners cause more weight gain than sugar. (Due to increased hunger vs. eating nothing, decreased metabolism and decreased calorie burn.)
The study in the article isn’t surprising at all. Links between nutrisweet and migraine headaches have been well understood for a long time. It’s not surprising other similar chemicals have similar negative side effects.
There’s no valid reason to use artificial sweeteners (other than diabetes, but even then, gaining weight from the sweeteners is a problem if the diabetes is weight related.)
The most credible meta analyses (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429) only show positive or null effects compared to equivalent sugar amounts.
Sugar is still the cultural default; artificial sweeteners are something you explicitly choose due to health concerns (worried about being or becoming diabetic, or overweight, or worried about sugar being unhealthy in general, or about the mood/motivation angle, etc.).
I imagine becoming overweight itself is linked to anxiety both ways, as eating or snacking is a common reaction to stress, a way to relieve it in the moment.
Let me consume it everyday.
Radium, too was deemed safe to suck on. Thalidomide, perfectly safe. Hormone replacement therapy, perfectly safe...
The safety of these (Thalidomide, HRT) were also backed by studies.
I find safety studies very suspect unless there's years of experience, especially if there is money to be made by someone.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it -- Upton Sinclair
Small as in "the alternatives are most likely worse" or as in "you are consuming already a dozen other things that are known to be more problematic by an order of magnitude and you should focus on them instead".
"Years of experience" means an increasingly larger population has been subject to use of the compound. It may take 10's of millions of exposures for the problems to become clear enough to elicit action.
A surprising number of drugs (and food additives) have been used for decades before their adverse effects were recognized and the offenders removed from the market.
We should regard initial or early claims of safety as preliminary statements. Indeed skepticism is warranted. Ongoing monitoring/reevaluation is necessary. Certainly utmost caution is needed before allowing products to be widely used.
The unsafe reputation came from a flawed study of far older, women.
IMHO the inventors should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
No it is not. The overwhelming quantites are bad. But this applies to almost any food.
To a starving child in a impoverished nation? Sugar would be great.
Context is important.
Doesn't immediately taste horrific like Stevia.... I'm glad the fashion for shoving that in everything has passed.
Oh also it’s super lethal for dogs.
I only chew gum if it has xylitol in it.
Spent the rest of the day on the toilet.
This is the study that the article is talking about. The complete paper is https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/japplphysiol...
It's based on earlier work that suggests that erythritol consumption is associated with increased risk of stroke or myocardial infarction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02223-9
> Human cerebral cells were cultured and treated with 6 mM of erythritol, equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in an artificially sweetened beverage, for 3 hr.
the cells were in the substance for 3hrs? I'm not reading the whole study now, but that sounds...interesting.
"Human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells were cultured and exposed to an amount of erythritol equivalent to consuming a typical beverage. Experimental conditions included five biological replicates per group."
So it needs to cross the blood-brain barrier. From the research paper: "Moreover, it is important to note that erythritol does cross the blood brain barrier and interact with the cerebrovasculature". Unclear what percentage this is.
Back when I was athletic, I definitely had a problem putting weight on rather than taking it off.
Are we at that point yet?
AFAICT aspartame seems to be pretty safe and well-researched, and the IARC listing it as "possibly carcinogenic" itself seems to be controversial. In that category it is listed along side such things as Aloe Vera, Carpentry, Low-frequency magnetic fields, Traditional asian pickled vegetables, Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and Gingko Biloba extract...
Unfortunately, the receptors for sweetness do not exist for the sole purpose of giving pleasure to the brain.
They are also used to signal to various organs to prepare for an influx of carbohydrates. When the signal is frequently present, but then the expected carbohydrates do not come, then this is likely to perturb some control functions of the body, like in the fable about the boy who cried wolf.
This also holds for non-artificial sweetener, or in fact any substance entering our body.
Disturbing a process expecting a large influx of carbohydrates vs. disturbing the body with an actual high influx of carbohydrates, disturbing the body by neither consuming nor triggering carbohydrate processes, ...
Drinking bitter fluids - say, coffee - trigger early toxicity warnings that prepare your body for emergency oral bowel evacuation, as "bitter" is the taste of various substances evolution associated with food poisoning. What other mechanisms might that trigger? That's a lot of "crying wolf" for many people.
"...findings indicate that these food additives, consumed daily by millions of people and present in thousands of foods and beverages, should not be considered a healthy and safe alternative to sugar..."
Also, artificial sweeteners might not help with obesity: "Long-term aspartame and saccharin intakes are related to greater volumes of visceral, intermuscular, and subcutaneous adipose tissue: the CARDIA study" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-023-01336-y
Forest for the trees.
It's better to teach people that there is no free lunch, and they should take care about the calories they are consuming, even if that imply reduce frequency of sweet foods, than sugar coating an equally bad alternative to make it sound like it's healthier.