# Artificial sweeteners: recent bad news **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 30, 2023, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345 "2023-06-30T11:04:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2023, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/41 "2023-06-30T20:57:28Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Saccharin’s the pink stuff, right? And aspartame’s the stuff that comes in blue packets? Just want to know what we’re talking about. Yes; as a rule, most manufacturers (both name brand and private label) tend to use the same color schemes for their products, likely to reduce confusion and help consumers find the sweetener variety that they prefer: - Pink: saccharin (Sweet’N Low) - Blue: aspartame (Equal) - Yellow: sucralose (Splenda) - Green: stevia - Orange: monkfruit ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2023, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/42 "2023-06-30T21:38:37Z")
No, this does not give me pause. Sugar is big business. There is lots of documentation on how this industry tried to smear competitive artificial sweeteners and fund research to this end. One method was by manipulating the “generally regarded as safe” category. Testing on sugar only used doses similar to what one might reasonably consume. Testing for cyclamates and other sweeteners typically used far, far higher doses (any cancer risk is considered under GRAS, which does not even test many additives used) and even then most studies did not suggest much risk in people, which are bigger than mice. But some people consume a lot of artificially sweetened products. It is obviously worth studying this, and it has been studied up the yin yang. Rightfully so, if there are real risks identifying them is important. Most studies show little risk at reasonable doses. The study quoted in the original post, worse than most, suggests a relative risk of 1.13 If you smoke, your chance of getting lung cancer goes up from seven to twenty-five times (depending on the details). This is a huge effect and has been repeatedly shown. This is a relative risk as high as 25. Saying something increases risk is not always helpful: living in a city increases risks. Taking something rare and slightly increasing the risk still leaves something rare. Eating sweetener is not rare, but some of the claimed effects are. In some cases, relative risks under 1.3 are not significant enough to worry about, even if it genuinely reflects an increased risk, this is tiny. Who eats sweeteners? People concerned about their weight. Is this population more likely to be obese or diabetic or have other issues? I don’t know. But nutrition studies, scientifically speaking, suck. They generally rely on surveys and imperfect memories and trusting people to use or not use things. They often compare two very similar things (a low fat diet with 30% calories from fat may not differ much from a high fat diet at 38%). And proving causation is very hard to do. Most nutrition studies are garbage and so is the way their results are reported in the media. Still, it is the WHO. Should this give it gravitas? Only a little. It is likely true that it is better to consume less sugar and less sweetener. We know excessive sugar consumption has a number of possible detrimental effects and so should be enjoyed in moderation. These risks seem pretty tiny and barely reach statistical significance. But if you eat a lot of sweet foods it makes sense to reduce sweeteners too if you wish to. I consume sweeteners, and try to enjoy sugary foods around times I am physically active. I think sweeteners are sometimes healthier than fructose which forms 50% of table sugar (the amounts of fructose in fruit are low, easily handled by your body, and eating whole fruit is still wise). ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2023, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/43 "2023-06-30T21:47:19Z")
Amen, brother! Or, as I was planning to put it: The nice thing about artificial sweeteners is that they have a useful feature that prevents me from experiencing any of their potentially harmful effects, which is that they taste like shit. Inevitably, I see a new one come along for which there is a claim for no aftertaste and I taste it and say, “Like hell there isn’t!” And…for that matter…artificial salt (i.e., potassium chloride in place of sodium chloride) is another one of those nasty-tasting things. I wish products that had any different sweetener or salt had to say so prominently on the label. Instead, they sucker you in with “reduced sugar” or “reduced sodium” and don’t bother to tell you that they just replaced it with something that tastes awful. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2023, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/44 "2023-06-30T22:24:58Z")
This certainly doesn’t give me pause. I don’t understand people’s dislike of the taste of artificial sweeteners, but I also am sure most people can’t grok the fact that normal sugar tastes “dirty” (as in, literally tastes somewhat like dirt) to me. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2023, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/45 "2023-06-30T22:24:59Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > AIUI, the risk is real but at a concentration level so high that reaching it would be impossible There actually is a non-zero risk to people with [phenylketouria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria), hence the warning label on all aspartame products in the US, but people with that disorder are routinely identified shortly after birth, and if they aren’t it will become apparent that something is amiss before too long. But that’s a small minority of people, for most folks aspartame is a negligible risk at most. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2023, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/46 "2023-06-30T22:31:51Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Looking it up, [Fresca had originally been sweetened with cyclamates, and shifted to saccharine when cyclamates were banned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresca#Formula_changes). Which would explain why I stopped drinking it. And now Fresca is sweetened with aspartame. According to the can of Fresca I was, coincidentally, drinking while reading this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Turki-lurki](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/turki-lurki/32/7168_2.png) [@Turki-lurki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turki-lurki)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/47 "2023-07-01T04:04:33Z")
If I am remembering the right study it was a compilation of data from multiple sources and was regarded as a low data quality review. I still drink my diet colas. Gotta die of something. Probably won’t be aspartame… ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/48 "2023-07-01T14:19:37Z")
> [@2\_More\_Bits](#): > > And this report about [erythritol perhaps causing blood clots](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/erythritol-cardiovascular-events#:~:text=These%20results%20suggest%20that%20consuming,risks%20of%20erythritol%20are%20warranted.) I was bummed to hear this news. When I was doing keto, sometimes I just needed a fix of something sweet-tasting, and erythritol was the most natural-tasting fake sugar in baked goods. I’d make some awesome sugar-free brownies with it, and homemade sugar-free ice cream made with almond milk, cocoa powder and erythritol was delicious; as good or better than the real thing. Mrs. solost got me a big Costco box of monk fruit / stevia sweetener packets to put in my coffee. That’s still ok, right? Wrong! What do they use as a bulking agent to make enough fake sugar to fill a packet? That’s right, erythritol. But you don’t know that unless you read the ingredient list. Normally I don’t worry too much about all these various health warnings, but there’s a gene that runs in our family that can cause dangerous blood clots. My sister found out she had the gene when she had pregnancy complications, which means I may have it; I’ve never been tested for it. ---
**Author:** ![2\_More\_Bits](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/2_more_bits/32/4148_2.png) [@2\_More\_Bits](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2_More_Bits)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/49 "2023-07-01T14:25:32Z")
In one of the articles I read about this a researcher suggested that erythritol might go the way of trans fats. (cannot re-find that article) ---
**Author:** ![Digger11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@Digger11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digger11)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/50 "2023-07-01T14:29:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t avoid artificial sweeteners because they’re unhealthy. I avoid them because they taste terrible. Now, I haven’t tried all of them, and so it’s of course possible that one of the ones I haven’t tried tastes just fine, but I’ve tried enough that I have no particular interest in trying more. Given the choice between diet pop and water (and water is pretty much always an option, at least here in the First World), I’ll take the water. > > But then, my usual beverage is tea, which has much, much less sugar than pop does anyway. To me, at least, the artificial sweeteners have significantly different tastes. I prefer Sweet’N Low, I tolerate Equal, and I don’t like most of the others. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/51 "2023-07-01T14:34:55Z")
I doubt this is what you were reading, but the effect looks real > **[Erythritol and cardiovascular events](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/erythritol-cardiovascular-events)** > > Higher blood levels of the artificial sweetener erythritol were associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke. That’s a pretty good set of data. A real observation of increased frequency of events, followed by a testable theory of causation, followed by observing the events that could lead to increased clotting risk in healthy volunteers who ate amounts of erythritol that are actually found in food. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/52 "2023-07-01T14:42:13Z")
The stuff was first approved for use in food in 1990, in Japan. I’m having trouble finding how rapidly its use caught on, and how much real human experience we have of it. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/53 "2023-07-01T14:43:30Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > I replied - “Because, we a doing a huge science experiment every day. Every single day, _millions_ of people are consuming Nutrasweet. If it was that bad for you, it would be obvious - people would be dropping like flies.” Here’s the thing though: people do drop like flies and determining if a specific input, be it nutritional or behavioral, is a significant factor is very often not so obvious unless it is carefully studied For kicks I looked at the actual erythritol study (not Nutasweet). If I used the stuff it _would_ give me pause. These are numbers that are clinically meaningful. Solid study to my read. [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as\_sdt=0%2C14&q=erythritol+clots&btnG=#d=gs\_qabs&t=1688220372329&u=%23p%3DFrJg5CDzMfMJ](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=erythritol+clots&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1688220372329&u=%23p%3DFrJg5CDzMfMJ) Worse than the equivalent of that much added sugar? Probably not. But that really should not be the choice. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/54 "2023-07-01T19:31:13Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Given the choice between diet pop and water (and water is pretty much always an option, at least here in the First World), I’ll take the water. > > But then, my usual beverage is tea, which has much, much less sugar than pop does anyway. This is me, except that my tea has _no_ sugar. I think sugar makes tea taste awful. And I’d rather drink water to quench my thirst. I never got in the habit of drinking soda, so it’s not engrained in me. They also leave an aftertaste, so I avoid them generally. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/55 "2023-07-01T22:18:18Z")
I’m **not** saying that all sweeteners act the same, are perfectly safe for every person in any quantity, or that studying them is unimportant. I don’t knowingly eat erythritol myself. But I am saying PubMed shows over 70,000 papers about artificial sweeteners. In addition, billions of people have consumed them daily for over five decades. It is important to know if they are safe and worth checking risk. It is also worth keeping in mind studies showing negative results are often not reported, that increased risk is not the same as significant risk and that similar levels of risk for thrombosis have been shown by having a non-O blood type. I’m not saying it is an unimportant effect. But it needs more study and is not worth losing sleep over if lacking other risk factors. That said, I have no plans to start eating it and alternatives may be safer. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/56 "2023-07-01T22:49:17Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > that increased risk is not the same as significant risk and that similar levels of risk for thrombosis have been shown by having a non-O blood type. But these levels _are_ clinically significant levels of risk. Blood type is also a significant risk (weird that non-O tends to lower BP and higher thrombosis risk …) but we don’t have any choice about that. Consuming any or any specific added sweeteners is OTOH a modifiable choice. If I could choose to be blood type O I would, lower [mortality risk](https://www.biomedcentral.com/about/press-centre/science-press-releases/15-01-2015) overall apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/57 "2023-07-01T23:40:04Z")
Oh, I agree. I think there are smarter alternatives to erythritol and so these risks are avoidable. I was more speaking in general about newspaper articles saying “X increases the chance of nastiness” when this increase might be large, small or insignificant. They also do not generally say the prevalence of whatever nastiness they are trying to call attention to/stoke fear about. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2023, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/58 "2023-07-02T15:29:12Z")
I guess I was trying to put the claimed risk in perspective. 55% of people don’t have type O blood. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2023, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/59 "2023-07-02T17:44:53Z")
So therefore the other 45% of us with a non-modifiable increased risk factor of clinical significance should be especially aware of avoiding increasing our risks significantly further? ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2023, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345/60 "2023-07-02T17:46:22Z")
It is good to minimize avoidable risks. I don’t knowingly use erythritol and am not going to start - there are better alternatives based on current information. But it is also worth keeping risks in perspective. (I am also not knowingly pregnant.) 😉 (Most people do not know their Factor V Leiden status or antithrombin III levels. I don’t think most people need to get these blood tests though. More data is not always better. And we don’t likely know every risk.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/artificial-sweeteners-recent-bad-news/986345.md?page=4)