I like how all the people who benefit from artificial sweeteners are refuting something which the study doesn't claim. For example:
"The International Sweeteners Association (ISA) says it strongly
refutes the claims made in the study: 'There is a broad body of
scientific evidence which clearly demonstrates that low-calorie
sweeteners are not associated with an increased risk of obesity
and diabetes as they do not have an effect on appetite, blood
glucose levels or weight gain.'"
It's true that artificial sweeteners have no immediate effect on appetite, blood glucose levels, nor weight gain. None of these are claims made by the study. Everyone is refuting the immediate effects of artificial sweeteners. The study claims that after consuming artificial sweeteners, if you then consume something naturally sweet, the prior consumption of an artificial sweetener alters your glucose tolerance levels.
It's the equivalent of saying that removing all the trees from around rivers has no effect on fish population because clearly fish don't live in trees. But it's the secondary effects of this which such a statement ignores: the increase in soil erosion impacting water quality, change in water temperature due to having more direct sunlight, and so on.
Also:
"'Decades of clinical research shows that low-calorie sweeteners
have been found to aid weight-control when part of an overall
healthy diet, and assist with diabetes management,' says Gavin
Partington of the British Soft Drinks Association."
This has little meaning without having a reference point to compare the results to. If the study is correct, take one group of people who use diet soft drinks with an overall healthy diet and compare it to another group of people who consume the same overall healthy diet but drink water instead of diet soft drinks, and the group that drinks water should have a better glucose tolerance response than the diet soft drink group.
> It's true that artificial sweeteners have no immediate effect on appetite
Yes, but the quote you give doesn't mention immediate effects in particular. And to the contrary, they mention things like obesity and diabetes which are not immediate effects.
To me, it sounds like they are not saying what you say they are.
For each quote, I wondered whether the journalist selected the worst part to make them look arrogant/ignorant. Later in the article there are more reasonable answers they could have used, saying there has been research (and funds?) allocated to this topic and they had found nothing, saying that there are several levels of peer review until a scientific study acquires the credit of trust, that further research and counter-studies are necessary before anything is confirmed, that based on the current knowledge there is nothing to worry about.
The obsession of dodging the issue of the PR people quoted in the article raised red flags all around my mind.
This write up also only implicates saccharin in the harmful alterations of the gut flora, not other sweeteners. Yet the introductory text talks about artificial sweeteners are a group.
You cannot confirm the effects of "artificial sweeteners" as a category with an experiment that is based on saccharin. They are all different molecules. A bacterium that thrives on saccharin might not consume sucralose or aspartame.
Also glaringly absent is any mention of the sugar alcohols: sorbitol, xylitol, maltitol.
Who cares about saccharin. It is an outdated sweetener which is not widely used. Where can you find a diet soft drink or protein bar sweetened with saccharin?
> The dose of sweetener was the equivalent to the maximum acceptable daily intake in humans, as set by the FDA.
Now I realize that I, random commenter from the Internet, am unlikely to find a fatal flaw in an experiment designed and carried out by folks who do this professionally, but can someone explain to me why it's okay to give mice a human-amount of sweetener, and not a mice-amount?
It just seems to me that our larger bodies are probably better capable of handling... well, most everything, and to start dosing mice with human levels of sweetener is actually going to cause a much worse reaction than if humans were to consume that amount.
Edit: Also, it looks like the effects are reversible by "wiping" gut bacteria via antibiotics. If mice can survive the process of "wiping" gut bacteria, can humans? Is there a cure for this pre-diabetic state?
For those not aware, other studies have shown that consuming diet soda may actually increase the chance of obesity. So that is not necessarily news. If you are curious, here is a pretty good study (full text):
More recently, studies have tried to determine whether there is a satiety or protein mechanism that can explain this, whereas this new study demonstrates that gut flora may play a role.
This needs to be confirmed, and there may still be other mechanisms at play as well, but it is interesting.
(Disclaimer: I do have a healthcare background, but am not a researcher in this field. Would be happy to hear more from anyone who is.)
Indeed. I think it helps to unpack the various claims being studied:
1) Carcinogenicity. Do certain sweeteners cause harmful mutations and increase cancer risk? This is one of the oldest and most frequent allegations, especially against saccharin and aspartame. Mostly inconclusive, though both sweeteners have been exonerated at least as often as they've been accused.
2) Insulin triggering. Artificial sweeteners may not bear the caloric load of sugars and starches -- but do they trigger the release of insulin, just the same? Again, the jury is still out, but certain sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, and possibly saccharin) are looking suspect.
3) Caloric load. Some sweeteners and putatively indigestible molecules (sugar alcohols, "resistant starches," etc.) may contain more effective calories than in vitro studies predict them to contain. This is because the chemicals aren't digested in the traditional sense, but are fermented and absorbed in the gut. Caloric bioavailability is often different from nominal calorie count. (Indeed, this is the entire principle behind the supposed benefits of resistant sweeteners and starches; those benefits may have been overstated or misunderstood).
4) Disruption or adverse selection of gut microbiota. As detailed in this study. While not all sweeteners have been implicated here, this field of study is only just kicking into high gear. It seems reasonable to suspect that molecules fermented by / consumed by gut bacteria could have some effect on flora composition. Many sweeteners fit that criterion.
5) Other toxicities. Liver or kidney toxicity, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, etc. As with carcinogenicity, the jury is still out. Unlikely for some sweeteners that are not metabolized via these pathways. Possible for others. Most sweeteners (all?) on the market right now are generally recognized as safe in this respect, despite popular beliefs to the contrary. Notable exceptions exist for those with rare metabolic or genetic disorders, such as phenylketonuria (aspartame contains phenylalanine).
6) Side effects. Some sweeteners, particularly those in the sugar alcohol family (and sorbitol especially), can cause laxative effects and other GI-related issues. Individual tolerance can vary. Breaking this category out from #4 because the action here can be purely mechanical (i.e., increasing intestinal water absorption).
I'm not a doctor or medical researcher myself. Just an interested nerd. But I have been following this area for awhile. I welcome any corrections, comments, or additions from people more knowledgeable than I am. I assume there are many such people on HN. :)
The headline is suspicious, but unfortunately, this article is paywalled, so I can't tell what's really going on. The main problem with the headline is that it lumps together "artificial sweeteners" as a category, when that is in fact a pretty widely varied class of molecules.
Agreed. From the article Nostromo just posted[1], looks like the mouse models were based on aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose, and the human subjects were taking saccharin.
FDA acceptable daily intake (ADI) for aspartame is 50 mg per kg of body mass.[0] For an individual 180 pounds, that's about 82 kg. That means his ADI is 4100 mg. Aspartame in popular diet sodas is between 50 and 125 mg.[1]
You'd have to drink A LOT of diet soda to reach these levels.
I have a friend who used to drink nothing but Diet Coke. He went through a few 2l bottles a day. According to that link (assuming it's the same in Europe), Diet Coke is 125mg per 8 ounces, so a 2l bottle is 125 / 8 x 70.4 = 1100mg. So if he drank four 2l bottles, that's over the daily limit.
This is an impressive piece of work but I worry that a larger amount of work is needed in the relationship between glucose intolerance, diabetes and metabolic syndromes in general. The fact that glucose intolerance is induced by a high sugar diet and leads towards a path of clinical outcomes ending in diabetes, doesn't necessarily indicate that glucose intolerance developed via artificial sweetener consumption is indicative of being on the same clinical pathways towards metabolic syndrome and diabetes.
I'd be curious if they tried this study with xylitol. I chew xylitol gum for dental health and from my understanding it's not thought to contribute to metabolic problems in reasonable quantities:
Xylitol was not included in the study. Because xylitol is absorbed more slowly from the gut and gut microflora appear to be the mechanism of action found in this study, I'd personally be at least a little concerned.
Mice in this study were given sweeteners for 11 weeks, long enough that their use apparently led to changes in microflora which were associated with glucose intolerance. Existing studies of xylitol could well be for much shorter lengths of time and might not have been able to detect these kinds of changes.
In both humans and dogs, the level of blood sugar is controlled by the release of insulin from the pancreas. Xylitol does not stimulate the release of insulin from the pancreas in humans. However, when non-primate species (e.g., a dog) eat something containing xylitol, the xylitol is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, resulting in a potent release of insulin from the pancreas. This rapid release of insulin results in a rapid and profound decrease in the level of blood sugar (hypoglycemia), an effect that occurs within 10-60 minutes of eating the xylitol. Untreated, this [canine] hypoglycemia can be life-threatening.
From the caption on one of the figures (which is all I can access without buying the article) "NAS; saccharin, sucralose and aspartame". So I don't think they tried xylitol.
Does this mean diabetes could (in some cases) be caused by gut bacteria? Can we reduce diabetes risk factors with targeted antibiotics that attack certain glucose-intolerance-causing bacteria?
It's fiendishly difficult to pry apart correlation and causation for complex conditions like diabetes (which we're steadily reconceptualizing as less of a "disease," and more of a chain reaction of metabolic and hormonal disorders). Changes in gut bacteria are associated with the condition sometimes called "pre-diabetes," or a "pre-diabetic state." But we're not yet sure if they are a causative factor, if they are the result of the condition, or if they're simply co-morbid with it.
Whatever the case, gut bacteria appear to play a vital role in our metabolic health, and we're only beginning to explore this area in earnest.
Yes, absolutely possible. There is so much potential in gut bacteria research and we are only starting to recently scratch the surface with it. I get really excited about the topic of gut bacteria for some reason, it is just very interesting.
Its hard to separate cause and effect right now though. There also may be a snowball effect. We just know so little so there is a lot of research that needs to be done.
Antibiotics are unlikely. Fecal transparents are much more likely. Fecal transparents are starting to be used for c. Diff infections with success.
This result seems pretty strange to me - why would artificial sweeteners affect bacteria's metabolism in this way?
It seems like a bizarre coincidence that bacteria would react in the same way to three different sweeteners, unless they have receptors that happen to match human taste receptors (which also seems unlikely). In other words, to bacteria these sweeteners should just seem like unrelated random chemicals.
(I read the Nature paper - most of it looks at saccharin since that had the strongest response, but all three artificial sweeteners caused marked glucose intolerance.)
If you go through the graphs and results, what emerges is that only the sweetener saccharin has that altering effect on the gut bacteria. I cannot find among the results any claim that the other NAS that were studied (sucralose and aspartame) have the effect.
The thing is that saccharin is not widely used any more. If saccharin is found to be harmful, that is nice to know, but not highly relevant.
The New Scientist article notes that four of the seven human subjects who consumed three to four sachets of sweetener a day saw a significant change in their gut bacteria.
As someone who has consumed significantly more than that for a very long time, my question would be, did their gut flora reconstitute itself after they stopped using the sweetener? And if not, how could you go about repopulating your microbiome short of a stool sample?
The gut flora is as resilient as any other part of human body. It might take a significant time though. I've heard Korean food helps a lot because it's fermented. Also usual bifido youghurts you'll find at any grocery store.
The does in the article is higher than your post: 3-4 sachets taken 3 times a day.
Those packets to me are sweet. I alternate between honey and half a packet in my tea.
Gut Flora do come back (eg after taking antibiotics which cuts them down). They're crowded in there, so the ratio of them is important. Everyone has different ratio and there is no easy way to measure and control that.
This seems very misleading. The abstract (available without paywall) mentions a group of sweeteners, whereas the findings seem to show that only saccharin has these negative effects. I feel like NAS are probably bad, but without evidence to support it they should not claim that in the abstract.
For some biological context, we have taste receptors in our digestive tracts identical or nearly identical to those on our tongue, only the ones in our digestive tract are not hooked directly to sensory neurons, but instead trigger endocrine signals and such. Since the receptors are identical, then anything that tastes sweet on your tongue will activate these receptors as well. If I recall my metabolism course correctly, studies have found that artificial sweeteners can trigger insulin release through these receptors in the same way as real sugar (leading to possible hypoglycemia as your body compensates for a rush of sugar that never comes).
So basically, I have no trouble believing that artificial sweeteners can have many of the same long-term health effects as excessive consumption of real sugar, since they're already known to have many of the same short-term effects, including effects on insulin regulation.
You're probably better off not choosing carbonated liquid candy -- especially not doing so regularly and in significant quantities -- even if the sweetener happens to be non-caloric.
And the point where you've reduced your choices to regular soda vs. diet soda, you've already failed.
Not a direct answer, but noting that there's also a third choice, which is to not drink anything sweet. I'll chug a diet soda once in a while because what's the downside? But in light of new compelling evidence I might change that habit without too much fuss.
Diet. Artificial sweetener concerns aren't much different from "cell phones cause cancer" fears. Meta-analyses of decades of aspartame research shows it is safe.
Sugar, in liquid form, on the other hand - not so much.
C: Ice Mint Rooibos Tea, lemon water, lime water, green tea, sparkling water with a dash of lime (not "lime flavored bottled water, which usually contains sweeteners). If none of those satisfy your tongue, you might look into diet adjustments to re-calibrate your flavor response.
I'm not really surprised Saccharin isn't great for you personally- but this isn't so damning there are many other artificial sweeteners to choose from.
According to the New Scientist article others have linked to, the equivalent human dose was 9-12 packets of sweetener a day. I'm sure there are heavy coffee drinkers that go through that much.
I also don't like those studies where the human equivalent dose is like 50 pounds of sweetener a day, or something silly. This one isn't so bad.
The industry takeaway should be to try to isolate the bacteria that play the secondary part in the glucose resistance, then put ANOTHER additive in the drinks to kill that bacteria, then sell a more expensive NEW zero calorie drink?
This raises more questions than it answers I think (which is a good thing)
1 - Is there such thing as a "sweet base"? Our tongues perceive sweeteners as sweet (duh) but it seems it mimics sugar in a way for bacteria as well.
2 - From the article "Wiping out the rodents' gut bacteria using antibiotics abolished all the effects of glucose intolerance in the mice. In other words, no bacteria, no problem regulating glucose levels."
Soooo... Bacteria affects absorption of glucose? They consume it? They change the intestinal PH? Or something else?
[+] [-] biot|11 years ago|reply
It's the equivalent of saying that removing all the trees from around rivers has no effect on fish population because clearly fish don't live in trees. But it's the secondary effects of this which such a statement ignores: the increase in soil erosion impacting water quality, change in water temperature due to having more direct sunlight, and so on.
Also:
This has little meaning without having a reference point to compare the results to. If the study is correct, take one group of people who use diet soft drinks with an overall healthy diet and compare it to another group of people who consume the same overall healthy diet but drink water instead of diet soft drinks, and the group that drinks water should have a better glucose tolerance response than the diet soft drink group.[+] [-] function_seven|11 years ago|reply
Eating deep-fried Twinkies and a 32oz Mountain Dew is not bad for you, when done as part of an overall healthy diet.
[+] [-] azakai|11 years ago|reply
Yes, but the quote you give doesn't mention immediate effects in particular. And to the contrary, they mention things like obesity and diabetes which are not immediate effects.
To me, it sounds like they are not saying what you say they are.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aragot|11 years ago|reply
The obsession of dodging the issue of the PR people quoted in the article raised red flags all around my mind.
[+] [-] nostromo|11 years ago|reply
Note that the mice were given the human equivalent of 18 to 19 cans of diet soda a day.
[+] [-] kazinator|11 years ago|reply
You cannot confirm the effects of "artificial sweeteners" as a category with an experiment that is based on saccharin. They are all different molecules. A bacterium that thrives on saccharin might not consume sucralose or aspartame.
Also glaringly absent is any mention of the sugar alcohols: sorbitol, xylitol, maltitol.
Who cares about saccharin. It is an outdated sweetener which is not widely used. Where can you find a diet soft drink or protein bar sweetened with saccharin?
[+] [-] dang|11 years ago|reply
There is also http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2161331..., via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8331143.
[+] [-] diminoten|11 years ago|reply
> The dose of sweetener was the equivalent to the maximum acceptable daily intake in humans, as set by the FDA.
Now I realize that I, random commenter from the Internet, am unlikely to find a fatal flaw in an experiment designed and carried out by folks who do this professionally, but can someone explain to me why it's okay to give mice a human-amount of sweetener, and not a mice-amount?
It just seems to me that our larger bodies are probably better capable of handling... well, most everything, and to start dosing mice with human levels of sweetener is actually going to cause a much worse reaction than if humans were to consume that amount.
Edit: Also, it looks like the effects are reversible by "wiping" gut bacteria via antibiotics. If mice can survive the process of "wiping" gut bacteria, can humans? Is there a cure for this pre-diabetic state?
[+] [-] el_duderino|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skue|11 years ago|reply
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2008.284/full
More recently, studies have tried to determine whether there is a satiety or protein mechanism that can explain this, whereas this new study demonstrates that gut flora may play a role.
This needs to be confirmed, and there may still be other mechanisms at play as well, but it is interesting.
(Disclaimer: I do have a healthcare background, but am not a researcher in this field. Would be happy to hear more from anyone who is.)
[+] [-] jonnathanson|11 years ago|reply
1) Carcinogenicity. Do certain sweeteners cause harmful mutations and increase cancer risk? This is one of the oldest and most frequent allegations, especially against saccharin and aspartame. Mostly inconclusive, though both sweeteners have been exonerated at least as often as they've been accused.
2) Insulin triggering. Artificial sweeteners may not bear the caloric load of sugars and starches -- but do they trigger the release of insulin, just the same? Again, the jury is still out, but certain sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, and possibly saccharin) are looking suspect.
3) Caloric load. Some sweeteners and putatively indigestible molecules (sugar alcohols, "resistant starches," etc.) may contain more effective calories than in vitro studies predict them to contain. This is because the chemicals aren't digested in the traditional sense, but are fermented and absorbed in the gut. Caloric bioavailability is often different from nominal calorie count. (Indeed, this is the entire principle behind the supposed benefits of resistant sweeteners and starches; those benefits may have been overstated or misunderstood).
4) Disruption or adverse selection of gut microbiota. As detailed in this study. While not all sweeteners have been implicated here, this field of study is only just kicking into high gear. It seems reasonable to suspect that molecules fermented by / consumed by gut bacteria could have some effect on flora composition. Many sweeteners fit that criterion.
5) Other toxicities. Liver or kidney toxicity, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, etc. As with carcinogenicity, the jury is still out. Unlikely for some sweeteners that are not metabolized via these pathways. Possible for others. Most sweeteners (all?) on the market right now are generally recognized as safe in this respect, despite popular beliefs to the contrary. Notable exceptions exist for those with rare metabolic or genetic disorders, such as phenylketonuria (aspartame contains phenylalanine).
6) Side effects. Some sweeteners, particularly those in the sugar alcohol family (and sorbitol especially), can cause laxative effects and other GI-related issues. Individual tolerance can vary. Breaking this category out from #4 because the action here can be purely mechanical (i.e., increasing intestinal water absorption).
I'm not a doctor or medical researcher myself. Just an interested nerd. But I have been following this area for awhile. I welcome any corrections, comments, or additions from people more knowledgeable than I am. I assume there are many such people on HN. :)
[+] [-] rando289|11 years ago|reply
Also, diet soda may decrease the chance of obesity by up to 100%! And may may may.
[+] [-] Istof|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimrandomh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glaugh|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329872.600-artificia...
[+] [-] mratzloff|11 years ago|reply
You'd have to drink A LOT of diet soda to reach these levels.
[0] http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/a...
[1] http://static.diabetesselfmanagement.com/pdfs/DSM0310_012.pd...
[+] [-] lucaspiller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sadfaceunread|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themgt|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Diabetes
[+] [-] whyenot|11 years ago|reply
Mice in this study were given sweeteners for 11 weeks, long enough that their use apparently led to changes in microflora which were associated with glucose intolerance. Existing studies of xylitol could well be for much shorter lengths of time and might not have been able to detect these kinds of changes.
[+] [-] 001sky|11 years ago|reply
Xylitol is quite toxic to some animals, such as dogs tho.
http://www.vcahospitals.com/main/pet-health-information/arti...
edit: this snippet maybe worth highlighting
In both humans and dogs, the level of blood sugar is controlled by the release of insulin from the pancreas. Xylitol does not stimulate the release of insulin from the pancreas in humans. However, when non-primate species (e.g., a dog) eat something containing xylitol, the xylitol is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, resulting in a potent release of insulin from the pancreas. This rapid release of insulin results in a rapid and profound decrease in the level of blood sugar (hypoglycemia), an effect that occurs within 10-60 minutes of eating the xylitol. Untreated, this [canine] hypoglycemia can be life-threatening.
[+] [-] sp332|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erickhill|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia
[+] [-] sp332|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnathanson|11 years ago|reply
Whatever the case, gut bacteria appear to play a vital role in our metabolic health, and we're only beginning to explore this area in earnest.
[+] [-] UrMomReadsHN|11 years ago|reply
Its hard to separate cause and effect right now though. There also may be a snowball effect. We just know so little so there is a lot of research that needs to be done.
Antibiotics are unlikely. Fecal transparents are much more likely. Fecal transparents are starting to be used for c. Diff infections with success.
[+] [-] cauterized|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kens|11 years ago|reply
It seems like a bizarre coincidence that bacteria would react in the same way to three different sweeteners, unless they have receptors that happen to match human taste receptors (which also seems unlikely). In other words, to bacteria these sweeteners should just seem like unrelated random chemicals.
(I read the Nature paper - most of it looks at saccharin since that had the strongest response, but all three artificial sweeteners caused marked glucose intolerance.)
[+] [-] kazinator|11 years ago|reply
If you go through the graphs and results, what emerges is that only the sweetener saccharin has that altering effect on the gut bacteria. I cannot find among the results any claim that the other NAS that were studied (sucralose and aspartame) have the effect.
The thing is that saccharin is not widely used any more. If saccharin is found to be harmful, that is nice to know, but not highly relevant.
[+] [-] blackbagboys|11 years ago|reply
As someone who has consumed significantly more than that for a very long time, my question would be, did their gut flora reconstitute itself after they stopped using the sweetener? And if not, how could you go about repopulating your microbiome short of a stool sample?
[+] [-] uladzislau|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|11 years ago|reply
Those packets to me are sweet. I alternate between honey and half a packet in my tea.
Gut Flora do come back (eg after taking antibiotics which cuts them down). They're crowded in there, so the ratio of them is important. Everyone has different ratio and there is no easy way to measure and control that.
[+] [-] BadCookie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oomkiller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcthompson|11 years ago|reply
So basically, I have no trouble believing that artificial sweeteners can have many of the same long-term health effects as excessive consumption of real sugar, since they're already known to have many of the same short-term effects, including effects on insulin regulation.
[+] [-] lee|11 years ago|reply
I imagine even with increased glucose intolerance, you're still better off choosing Diet?
[+] [-] dragonwriter|11 years ago|reply
And the point where you've reduced your choices to regular soda vs. diet soda, you've already failed.
[+] [-] _greim_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parasubvert|11 years ago|reply
Sugar, in liquid form, on the other hand - not so much.
Eg. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12180494/
[+] [-] delackner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fanf2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wingman4l7|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voidlogic|11 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_substitute#Artificial_su...
I'd of course like to see them all studied in this manner.
[+] [-] mladenkovacevic|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcmancini|11 years ago|reply
One criticism however would be that the dose of artificial sweetener tested was atypically high.
It'll be neat to see further research into the cause of variable responses of the subjects to the artificial sweeteners.
[+] [-] cschmidt|11 years ago|reply
I also don't like those studies where the human equivalent dose is like 50 pounds of sweetener a day, or something silly. This one isn't so bad.
[+] [-] pistle|11 years ago|reply
People like sweet. Let's make sweet safe.
[+] [-] duschang27|11 years ago|reply
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...
[+] [-] raverbashing|11 years ago|reply
1 - Is there such thing as a "sweet base"? Our tongues perceive sweeteners as sweet (duh) but it seems it mimics sugar in a way for bacteria as well.
2 - From the article "Wiping out the rodents' gut bacteria using antibiotics abolished all the effects of glucose intolerance in the mice. In other words, no bacteria, no problem regulating glucose levels."
Soooo... Bacteria affects absorption of glucose? They consume it? They change the intestinal PH? Or something else?