Well we know we can curb even cocaine addicted rats (behavior) by offering a mutually exclusive option of the cocaine or sugar/sweetener. They don't exactly ge

Well we know we can curb even cocaine addicted rats (behavior) by offering a mutually exclusive option of the cocaine or sugar/sweetener. They don't exactly get into the microbiome, but in a separate study they do test the differences of high fat vs high sugar diets and the impact on the microbiome: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ The study showed the same preference using both saccharin –a calorie-free sweetener - and sucrose (natural sugar w/calories). The study was also performed on rats who had never been introduced to cocaine and those exposed and with addiction to the drug. Up to 94% of the rats preferred the sweetener. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ I'd go into some of the human studies, but it tends to start a flame war here, so I'll skip it and just link to this, and allow people to draw there own conclusions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/