Measuring Artificial Sweeteners Toxicity Using a Bioluminescent Bacterial Panel, 2018, Harpaz et al

Open access at https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/10/2454


Neuroscience News article about the study.

Link to article, https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener-microbiome-9935/

 

This piece of ‘research’ has pretty much been slammed as fake news across most of the reputable scientific community in my world...the main reason being that pretty much any ingredient at artificially high doses would cause a toxic effect at 100’s of times it’s normal dose ever found in the gut. This study cannot be directly related to how food is absorbed and metabolised by the gut, so just sitting bacteria in a toxic bath and claiming they die is a bit of a nonsense. I think microflora in the gut is much more complicated than that so this study tells us nothing. Perhaps they should have done lemon juice or even peanut butter for context?

There is no reliable in vitro study that is accepted as representative of the human gut, so this study scores a double nonsense award from me. , I didn’t even bother saving the study for my file at work when I saw it ...it’s that bad.

Bioluminescence assays are very old techniques btw, one of my mentors when I was working in a research lab ...in the uhmm, 1980’s did his phd using them.

It’s disappointing to see such blatant fake propaganda based on such garbage, but poor reporting by journalists are likely to have a field day on this...let’s hope some sense will prevail with a balanced view. I notice the crazies are emerging from under their rocks already this morning.

 

I didn't know its already been slammed having not heard of it till this thread but as soon as i read it i thought how can such disparate molecules all cause the same thing. Gut bacteria are not homogeneous. Its like those who believe natural is good and artificial is bad, thats simplistic stupidity.

 

But artificial sweeteners still taste bad.

 

Yes they do to me too. And we are not alone....around about 20-25% of people (from memory) will taste much stronger bitter notes from aspartame and saccharine (and other sweeteners) than everyone else ...it’s genetic.