Sugar Substitutes Could Impact Your Memory
We’ve known for a while that consuming
excessive amounts of sugar can be dangerous to our overall health.
Emerging scientific evidence suggests that many popular sugar-free
alternatives may not be much safer than sugar.
According to research recently published in the journal JCI Insight,
consuming saccharin, stevia, and Ace K - even within FDA-approved limits
- can affect the body, and, notably, brain areas linked to memory.
Sugar Substitutes Impact the Developing Brain and Gut
The findings of the study are unsettling,
as they suggest that adolescents who consume saccharin, stevia, and Ace K
exhibit memory impairments later on in their lives. The same sweeteners
also harm the metabolism, which could contribute to diabetes and other
metabolic issues.
The study also seems to indicate that these low-calorie sweeteners
desensitize one to sugar, so you need to eat more sugar when it’s
readily accessible.
Is Regular Sugar Better, Then?
Unfortunately, no. Similar studies were conducted on sugar intake in the
early years, and they too reveal identical memory impairments.
It needs to be noted, however, that both studies mentioned here were
conducted on animal models, i.e. rats. This comes with its own
limitations, but the researchers tried their best to make this study as
applicable to humans as possible. As Prof. Lindsey Schier pointed out to
Science Daily:
“Research using rodent models and low-calorie sweeteners has typically
involved consumption levels that far exceed the FDA ‘acceptable daily
intake’ (ADI) levels and used only a single sweetener. To design our
research to be more applicable to humans, we kept consumption levels
within the ADI and used multiple low-calorie sweeteners to determine if
effects were specific to a given sweetener or general across
sweeteners.”
How Was the Experiment Conducted?
At this point, you may start wondering -
how do you test memory in rats anyway? Don’t worry, no one asked rats to
recite poems. Instead, the researchers tested their object
identification and spatial recognition - two tasks in which rats excel.
At the beginning of the experiment, rats were given water sweetened with
saccharin, stevia, Ace K, or nothing at all in addition to food. A
month later, the researchers tested the rats’ memory. One of these
memory tests required the rats to remember a known object, and another
one involved finding their way out of a maze.
As expected, all the rats that consumed sweetened water performed much
worse on both tasks. Moreover, they also had fewer receptors capable of
detecting sweetness on their tongues, and the way the intestines
metabolized glucose was different too. Last but not least, the specific
regions of the brain responsible for memory and reward behavior were
affected.
The Potentially Harmful Low-Calorie
Sweeteners Are:
Stevia - Considered a natural low-calorie sweetener, it’s very
popular among those on a weight loss journey. It’s low-calorie and 25
times sweeter than sugar.
Saccharin - A popular sugar substitute among diabetics and one of
the oldest artificial sweeteners. However, previous research also found
links between saccharin to an increased incidence of cancer.
Acesulfame potassium (Ace K) - a synthetic calorie-free sweetener
marketed under such names as Sunett and Sweet One. It’s also in many
diet sodas, such as Coca-Cola. However, Ace K has undergone the least
scientific scrutiny, and it’s certainly alarming that one of its
ingredients - methylene chloride - is a known carcinogen.
That being said, all of these sweeteners have been deemed safe by the
FDA. While the current study doesn’t give blanket advice to cut out
these sweeteners from the diet, it provides much-needed information to
consumers and medical professionals, and hopefully will lead to better
health decisions.
To wrap up on a bright note, let’s also add the next step for the
research team is to develop ways to reverse the adverse effects of
sweetener consumption.