For decades, public health bodies around the world have promoted artificial sweeteners as a substitute for sugar to support weight loss and reduce the risk of things like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. And for around the same number of years, there have been arguments that there is nothing good about artificial sweeteners.
In April 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a systematic review and meta-analysis (a scientific evaluation and synthesis of evidence presented in multiple peer review papers to help draw conclusions about a particular issue) on the health effects of the use of artificial sweeteners. And then, in mid-May 2023, the WHO issued a statement advising that artificial sweeteners should not be used for weight control. Because it seems that, not only do they NOT help to control weight, they actually increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality (a measure of the total number of deaths from any cause) in adults.
So – not so good for you?
No. Really not.
A couple of decades back, the concerns being raised were that artificial sweeteners give you cancer. There wasn’t a great deal of evidence for that back then and the concerns were dismissed as unfounded and just plain silly. But a recent study (2022) of over 100,000 individuals (so a pretty solid evidence base) has found that two of the most widely used sweeteners, acesulfame-K (sometimes written as acesulfame potassium) and aspartame really do increase overall cancer risk.
This could be because artificial sweeteners stimulate inflammation in the digestive system. Long-term inflammation changes the structure of the cells that are affected, and if that is happening in the gut, it creates all sorts of problems.
Inflammation in the gut
Our gut is a thing of wonder. It processes everything that we eat, enables us to absorb the nutrients we need from food, eliminates about a kilo of waste a day, and gives a home to the microbiome, those vast colonies of microorganisms that help to train our immune system and produce a range of hormones and neurotransmitters. But to do all of that effectively, it needs to be healthy.
A healthy gut is lined with cells that sit tight up against each other, but also allow the passage of nutrients through into the bloodstream. If there is inflammation in the gut, those absorptive processes get messed up and things that really shouldn’t get through, like proteins that are not properly digested, or pathogens (microorganisms that cause disease) can slip through. Sometimes called ‘leaky gut’, this can cause lots of health problems, including bloating, food allergies, depression, autoimmune diseases, and possibly even cancer.
Evidence not included in the WHO reports indicates that some artificial sweeteners (saccharine, sucralose and aspartame) increase the abilities of pathogens to invade and kill our cells, and make them more resistant to both antibiotics and our own immune system. And many appear to have a negative impact on our microbiome, which may well be at the root of their undesirable effects on our health.
Saccharine, and sucralose may increase the risk of inflammatory bowel disease, acesulfame K, sucralose and saccharine upset our ability to balance blood sugar effectively, and sucralose disrupts the microbiome, increasing levels of pathogens and reducing levels of beneficial bacteria.
Evolution doesn’t help – and neither does the food industry
Humanity evolved to actively seek out sweetness. From a survival perspective, sweetness generally means two things: easy calories and the strong probability that whatever the food is, it is unlikely to be poisonous. Fruit is unlikely to kill you and you don’t have to expend a load of energy to hunt it down – although honey can be pretty risky if you annoy the bees!
But back in the day (say 100,000 years ago) humanity didn’t consume anything like the level of sugar that we do today. In the UK, average intake of ‘free sugar’ (ie sugar that has been added to foods in some way) is around 53 grams. That’s over 19.3 kilos a year.
The food industry is very aware of humanity’s sweet tooth; it makes them a lot of profit. And, as I noted in a previous article for Kent Bylines, the food industry cares a lot more about profit than they do about health. They know that products with lots of sweetness sell, so sugar – or artificial sweeteners – get put into all sorts of foods that they really don’t belong in.
History repeating itself?
The food industry knows that sugar is linked to obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, heart disease and some cancers. Rather like the tobacco companies, who knew in the 1940s and ’50s that the products that they sold would ultimately kill people, but kept on selling them anyway. The health risks of smoking were not made public knowledge until the 1970s, and it took even longer for governments to take action to drive societal change on smoking. That action has gradually had a positive impact; according to the Office of National Statistics, smoking is declining and is now at its lowest level on record.
Being aware of the damage sugar causes hasn’t stopped the food industry using it in vast quantities. But does the food industry already know how toxic artificial sweeteners are? And will it take any action? Equally, how effective (or otherwise) will governments be? When it comes to sugar and obesity, successive UK governments have been spectacularly unsuccessful. Between 1996 and 2020 the UK government published 689 policies on obesity. Yet obesity has continued to grow.
It’s down to you
Reading food labels is horrible. The font is really small. The ingredients list is really long and full of stuff that most people have never heard of. You are in a supermarket and just want to get the shopping done and get home. But if you care about your health you need to start reading those labels.
Food labelling law says ingredients must be listed in descending order of weight. Because artificial sweeteners are many thousands of times sweeter than sugar, they are present in very small quantities. So they will be listed a long way down the ingredients list. And all additives need to be tagged with their category in the ingredients list, either before or after the ingredient itself. So the ingredients list will show something like “(sweeteners) xylitol, sucralose, aspartame.” Or possibly “xylitol, sucralose, aspartame (sweeteners).”
Alternatively, if the ingredients list of a product you pick up contains a load of things you have never heard of (emulsifiers, fillers, preservatives, colours, sweeteners, stabilisers, gelling agents, flavouring etc), put it back on the shelf and walk away.
T C Callis’ articles are very well researched, and always come with a wealth of references. If you are interested in following up anything in the article, don’t hesitate to contact us at Kent Bylines for more information.
