Artificial Sweeteners-liberal Labeling a Problem to Address Spot-on

Sugar-free foods are becoming more popular as a result of their reduced calorie content and health concerns regarding high-sugar diets. Natural and artificial non-nutritive sweeteners, NNSs are regarded safe and well-tolerated, however, their effects on glucose intolerance and the composition of the gut flora are debatable.

Artificial sweeteners are replacing sugar in foods and beverages, slowly but steadily. Their long-term health benefits, on the other hand, are uncertain. A team of scientists led by Prof. Ariel Kushmaro and Dr. Karina Golberg of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev tested six FDA-approved artificial sweeteners and determined that they interfere with bacterial communication.

‘Aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin impede bacterial transmission in the gut and hence cause digestive illness.’

While none of the natural and artificial non-nutritive sweeteners NNS kill the bacteria directly, three of the six severely disrupt communication, which the scientists believe could contribute to digestive illnesses and pain, exposes a study published in The International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

"The fact that bacteria use quorum sensing to communicate with each other revolutionizes our understanding and enables us to provide clearer answers. Artificial sweeteners disrupt that communication, which indicates that artificial sweeteners may be problematic in the long run," says lead researcher Dr. Golberg.

The researchers theorize that sports supplements contain enough artificial sweeteners to provide a reasonable basis for testing, given that athletes continually monitor their intakes.

After thoroughly investigating, saccharin, advantame, neotame, aspartame, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), it was discovered that aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin impede bacterial transmission considerably.

All the sports supplements they looked at contained at least one of the three. They employed bioluminescent indicator bacteria, whose luminosity was lowered when bacterial communication was disturbed, to test the sweeteners.

"There is little accurate labeling of artificial sweeteners on products, which makes it difficult to know how much each product contains. Our research should push the food industry to reevaluate their use of artificial sweeteners," says Prof. Ariel Kushmaro, head of the Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology in the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering at Ben-Gurion University. Dr. Golberg is a researcher in his lab. Prof. Kushmaro is also a member of BGU's Ilse Katz Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

Source: Medindia