4 ms·

The article doesn't say which sweeteners did they study and this is a very bad style. Fortunately it links to an article on EurekAlert which in its turn links t

The article doesn't say which sweeteners did they study and this is a very bad style. Fortunately it links to an article on EurekAlert which in its turn links to the actual scientific paper (doi.org/10.3390/molecules23102454). It says aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame and acesulfame potassium-k (ace-k) (BTW at least saccharine and ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK) were tested against Escherichia Coli (I would rather be interested in testing them against Lactobacillaceae). Lactulose is a great prebiotic (not widely known infortunately) very good for gut bacteria (AFAIK), has geroprotective properties, is a mild osmotic laxative, has zero calories, doesn't affect blood sugar/insulin and tastes great. I use it instead of maple syrup. As far as I also know erythritol (looks, feels and cooks almost exactly like sugar) and palatinose (same, but has calories yet doesn't kick insulin and doesn't feed mouth bacteria so is safe for teeth) are good for gut bacteria too. We could also mention inulin (which is a well-known prebiotic very beneficial for gut microbiome) but it's sweetness is weaker.

haisch 8y ago
According to research from 1985 Xylitol has to been shown to shift the gut microbiome population from gram negative to gram positive bacteria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4076932 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4076932
- jwbwater 8y ago
  Consuming too much xylitol gives me a stomach ache. I tried adding it to water for dental health on multiple occasions and got a stomach ache each time.
  - haisch 8y ago
    Yeah you don't want to consume a lot of it without easing into it. I have been using it for only about a week now and use it as a mouth wash after each meal and my teeth have gotten noticeably whiter. You will get diarrhea if you don't ease into consuming it because it is increasing the production of butyrate which is the mucus that lines yours intestines. If it is also killing off gram negative bacteria as studies claim, you may have some stomach irritability as those bacteria die off initially. I'm surprised xylitol isn't more ubiquitous given the research surrounding it.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
> erythritol (looks, feels and cooks almost exactly like sugar) The taste is quite different though.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Perhaps. This is subjective. But I could hardly tell the difference.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    The taste difference will never let it pass as candy on its own. It has to be used in foods where other flavors can dominate it, and only let the sweetness through. It's not like it's bad, though. It's just not what sucrose-eaters are accustomed to.
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      I actually enjoy eating pure erythritol with a tablespoon.
abakker 8y ago
FWIW, Erithritol doesn't taste like sugar to me, and tends to give me a headache. I've found that any of those "sugar alcohols" are really unpleasant for me. Not sure if this experience is shared by others, but I thought I would add my anecdote.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Yes, it is known that erythritol doesn't feel great to everybody but my experience with it was awesome - I ended up eating huge amounts of it with a tablespoon (resulting in no no unpleasant sensations) in bare form and baking meringues :-) But I've stopped buying it as it's a little bit expensive and supposedly has little health value, lactulose is a way better (but you can get kind of mild diarrhea if you consume too much of it as it has laxative properties).
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Yeah, I'd be interested to know the effect of something like stevia extract on gut bacteria.
- kbutler 8y ago
  Stevia doesn't affect my gut bacteria much - it affects my taste buds too much for it to get that far.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    Stevia is weird - to me it tastes absolutely awful in coffee and tea but pretty decent when not dissolved, e.g. over cereal or something.
    - jwbwater 8y ago
      I've found that some brands of stevia taste much better than others.
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      AFAIK there are many kinds of Stevia, it is not a name for a single substance marketed under a number of different brands, every brand of Stevia may differ significantly from the others. There are "stevias" that taste fairly unpleasant to me and there is a brand that tastes better than any candy I've ever tasted.
quantumwoke 8y ago
>BTW at least saccharine ad ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK Not according to the National Cancer Institute [1]. The amount of misinformation in nutrition is frustrating at times. [1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/artificial-sweeteners-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d...
logfromblammo 8y ago
Paranoid mistrust, cancer fears, and fart-driven explosive diarrhea had already winnowed my list of non-sucrose sweeteners down to just erythritol, pure stevia powder, and very small amounts of xylitol. I'll have to look into lactulose and palatinose.... And it looks like lactulose is out for the diarrhea reason, and isomaltulose--Palatinose is a trademarked name for it--looks practically identical to slow-motion sucrose, including caloric content. It has a lower glycemic index, but is half as sweet as sucrose, so you may end up consuming more calories for the same amount of sweetness. Erythritol is not good for gut bacteria. It is 90% absorbed before reaching the colon, and excreted mostly intact in urine and feces, and the early absorption is why it doesn't have the diarrheal effect common to most sugar alcohols. Sweeteners that are neither absorbed nor digested draw water out of the digestive tract as they pass. Those that can be fermented by colon bacteria also tend to produce gases, that help push the water out. Xylitol is not fermentable, so the diarrhea you might get won't be quite so bad. I think I'll stick with a mix of erthyritol and stevia, with proportions titrated such that equal-volume measures of erythritol/stevia and sucrose crystals have roughly equivalent sweetness. The flavor profile isn't quite right, but it's good enough for me until something better comes along. (edit) I'll also add that it seems to work best in foods where other flavors can dominate. While you can sort of taste it as not being real sugar in lemonade, in sugar-free fudge, all you can taste is the sweetness. But it also forms crystals during cooling, and I haven't quite worked that out yet. Gritty/crunchy fudge is not exactly ideal.
- jfhufl 8y ago
  I've found that stevia sweeteners with inulin (not insulin) seen to be beneficial for my gut bacteria. Actually seems to help with "loose days". Sweetleaf is generally what I use.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    Inulin may "help with loose days" much more than you probably think. It may actually help to systematically decrease your appetite and insulin resistance, decrease ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and increase leptin (the "fullness hormone") if you eat it every day. I can recommend Dr. Raphael Kellman's "The microbiome diet" book for more info, it is easy and exciting to read and has a fair amount references to scientific research in it, it may happen that you will never have to worry about calories again after you read it.
escherplex 8y ago
BTW at least saccharine and ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK It would appear that the US FDA and European FSA disagree with you on that subject. Concerning saccharin: In a December 14, 2010 release, the EPA stated that saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin Concerning Acesulfame potassium Critics say acesulfame potassium has not been studied adequately and may be carcinogenic, although these claims have been dismissed by the European Food Safety Authority and FDA Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acesulfame_potassium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acesulfame_potassium Plus a report that lactobacillus concentration may actually be enhanced by artificial sweeteners: In vitro analyses of Lactobacillus 4228 growth characteristics showed that presence of NHDC significantly reduces the lag phase of growth and enhances expression of specific sugar transporters, independently of NHDC metabolism. This study suggests that sensing of NHDC by a bacterial plasma membrane receptor underlies sweetener-induced growth of a health promoting gut bacterium. Bacterial sensing underlies artificial sweetener-induced growth of gut Lactobacillus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278045609_Bacterial_sensing_underlies_artificial_sweetener-induced_growth_of_gut_Lactobacillus_Sweetener-induced_growth_of_gut_Lactobacillus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278045609_Bacterial... Plus one of the last hold-outs to declassification of saccharin as carcinogenic was Health Canada which based the original prohibition on University of Nebraska studies but later concluded: Such sodium salts, the council said, “produce tumours only when administered at high doses and only in rats,” thus “the mechanism by which the rats develop cancer is not present in humans.” https://www.agcanada.com/daily/saccharin-cleared-for-use-in-foods-in-canada https://www.agcanada.com/daily/saccharin-cleared-for-use-in-... Appears the jury is still out.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Thank you for a lot of interesting information. "Bacterial sensing underlies artificial sweetener-induced growth of gut Lactobacillus" seemed the most interesting to me, funny thing is it's about SUCRAM - a sweetener I've never heard about before now. Where can I possibly buy some? What kind of a chemical substance it even is? Does it have a more scientific name?
user3359 8y ago
It looks like they may have been added since you read it, as they're in the article now. What I find problematic is that they list a concentration, but no real world examples. We sell a concentrated product that contains 1.3mg sucralose per ml which would seem damning, if not for the fact it gets diluted 8-16x when mixed. Current daily allowance is about 5mg/kg which for a 50kg/120lb person (very tiny) is 250mg. At 8x dilution this is 2 liters of sugar-free sweetened drinks. Which actually doesn't sound that difficult to hit.
com2kid 8y ago
It is sad, but understandable, that only the mass quantity, low quality, sweeteners are being considered. Rarely are the alternative sweeteners used by health conscious consumers at home examined. You mentioned erythritol, which is undergoing an explosion in popularity due to Swerve. Xylitol is available in Whole Foods, and even some regular grocers on occasion, and is a bit more work to good with but works very well for some uses. And of course Stevia, when used appropriately, is all over the place. Monk Fruit is also used on occasion, but its flavor profile has to be carefully considered. As an aside, for those complaining about Stevia, the $6 bottle from Whole Foods has more than 10x as much Stevia in it as the $6 bottle from your local grocery store. Stevia is also not appropriate in all places, but as a replacement for simple syrup in gin drinks it is great, and it is also great to use in Lemonade and Limeade. (In ice cream, or anyplace with dairy? Use something else, and maybe add a couple drops at the end for a bit extra of a kick.) It looks like lactulose is prescription only in the US, so that makes it a no go for home chefs! My ultimate advice for people though, it just get used to things not being sweet. After a couple weeks, the taste isn't missed, and food tastes a lot more subtle when everything isn't accompanied by a sweet aftertaste.
dwighttk 8y ago
>Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore tested the toxicity of aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame, and acesulfame potassium-k.

haisch 8y ago

According to research from 1985 Xylitol has to been shown to shift the gut microbiome population from gram negative to gram positive bacteria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4076932 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4076932

jwbwater 8y ago
Consuming too much xylitol gives me a stomach ache. I tried adding it to water for dental health on multiple occasions and got a stomach ache each time.
- haisch 8y ago
  Yeah you don't want to consume a lot of it without easing into it. I have been using it for only about a week now and use it as a mouth wash after each meal and my teeth have gotten noticeably whiter. You will get diarrhea if you don't ease into consuming it because it is increasing the production of butyrate which is the mucus that lines yours intestines. If it is also killing off gram negative bacteria as studies claim, you may have some stomach irritability as those bacteria die off initially. I'm surprised xylitol isn't more ubiquitous given the research surrounding it.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

> erythritol (looks, feels and cooks almost exactly like sugar) The taste is quite different though.

qwerty456127 8y ago
Perhaps. This is subjective. But I could hardly tell the difference.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  The taste difference will never let it pass as candy on its own. It has to be used in foods where other flavors can dominate it, and only let the sweetness through. It's not like it's bad, though. It's just not what sucrose-eaters are accustomed to.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    I actually enjoy eating pure erythritol with a tablespoon.

abakker 8y ago

FWIW, Erithritol doesn't taste like sugar to me, and tends to give me a headache. I've found that any of those "sugar alcohols" are really unpleasant for me. Not sure if this experience is shared by others, but I thought I would add my anecdote.

qwerty456127 8y ago
Yes, it is known that erythritol doesn't feel great to everybody but my experience with it was awesome - I ended up eating huge amounts of it with a tablespoon (resulting in no no unpleasant sensations) in bare form and baking meringues :-) But I've stopped buying it as it's a little bit expensive and supposedly has little health value, lactulose is a way better (but you can get kind of mild diarrhea if you consume too much of it as it has laxative properties).

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

Yeah, I'd be interested to know the effect of something like stevia extract on gut bacteria.

kbutler 8y ago
Stevia doesn't affect my gut bacteria much - it affects my taste buds too much for it to get that far.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Stevia is weird - to me it tastes absolutely awful in coffee and tea but pretty decent when not dissolved, e.g. over cereal or something.
  - jwbwater 8y ago
    I've found that some brands of stevia taste much better than others.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    AFAIK there are many kinds of Stevia, it is not a name for a single substance marketed under a number of different brands, every brand of Stevia may differ significantly from the others. There are "stevias" that taste fairly unpleasant to me and there is a brand that tastes better than any candy I've ever tasted.

quantumwoke 8y ago

>BTW at least saccharine ad ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK Not according to the National Cancer Institute [1]. The amount of misinformation in nutrition is frustrating at times. [1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/artificial-sweeteners-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d...

logfromblammo 8y ago

Paranoid mistrust, cancer fears, and fart-driven explosive diarrhea had already winnowed my list of non-sucrose sweeteners down to just erythritol, pure stevia powder, and very small amounts of xylitol. I'll have to look into lactulose and palatinose.... And it looks like lactulose is out for the diarrhea reason, and isomaltulose--Palatinose is a trademarked name for it--looks practically identical to slow-motion sucrose, including caloric content. It has a lower glycemic index, but is half as sweet as sucrose, so you may end up consuming more calories for the same amount of sweetness. Erythritol is not good for gut bacteria. It is 90% absorbed before reaching the colon, and excreted mostly intact in urine and feces, and the early absorption is why it doesn't have the diarrheal effect common to most sugar alcohols. Sweeteners that are neither absorbed nor digested draw water out of the digestive tract as they pass. Those that can be fermented by colon bacteria also tend to produce gases, that help push the water out. Xylitol is not fermentable, so the diarrhea you might get won't be quite so bad. I think I'll stick with a mix of erthyritol and stevia, with proportions titrated such that equal-volume measures of erythritol/stevia and sucrose crystals have roughly equivalent sweetness. The flavor profile isn't quite right, but it's good enough for me until something better comes along. (edit) I'll also add that it seems to work best in foods where other flavors can dominate. While you can sort of taste it as not being real sugar in lemonade, in sugar-free fudge, all you can taste is the sweetness. But it also forms crystals during cooling, and I haven't quite worked that out yet. Gritty/crunchy fudge is not exactly ideal.

jfhufl 8y ago
I've found that stevia sweeteners with inulin (not insulin) seen to be beneficial for my gut bacteria. Actually seems to help with "loose days". Sweetleaf is generally what I use.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Inulin may "help with loose days" much more than you probably think. It may actually help to systematically decrease your appetite and insulin resistance, decrease ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and increase leptin (the "fullness hormone") if you eat it every day. I can recommend Dr. Raphael Kellman's "The microbiome diet" book for more info, it is easy and exciting to read and has a fair amount references to scientific research in it, it may happen that you will never have to worry about calories again after you read it.

escherplex 8y ago

BTW at least saccharine and ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK It would appear that the US FDA and European FSA disagree with you on that subject. Concerning saccharin: In a December 14, 2010 release, the EPA stated that saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin Concerning Acesulfame potassium Critics say acesulfame potassium has not been studied adequately and may be carcinogenic, although these claims have been dismissed by the European Food Safety Authority and FDA Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acesulfame_potassium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acesulfame_potassium Plus a report that lactobacillus concentration may actually be enhanced by artificial sweeteners: In vitro analyses of Lactobacillus 4228 growth characteristics showed that presence of NHDC significantly reduces the lag phase of growth and enhances expression of specific sugar transporters, independently of NHDC metabolism. This study suggests that sensing of NHDC by a bacterial plasma membrane receptor underlies sweetener-induced growth of a health promoting gut bacterium. Bacterial sensing underlies artificial sweetener-induced growth of gut Lactobacillus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278045609_Bacterial_sensing_underlies_artificial_sweetener-induced_growth_of_gut_Lactobacillus_Sweetener-induced_growth_of_gut_Lactobacillus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278045609_Bacterial... Plus one of the last hold-outs to declassification of saccharin as carcinogenic was Health Canada which based the original prohibition on University of Nebraska studies but later concluded: Such sodium salts, the council said, “produce tumours only when administered at high doses and only in rats,” thus “the mechanism by which the rats develop cancer is not present in humans.” https://www.agcanada.com/daily/saccharin-cleared-for-use-in-foods-in-canada https://www.agcanada.com/daily/saccharin-cleared-for-use-in-... Appears the jury is still out.

qwerty456127 8y ago
Thank you for a lot of interesting information. "Bacterial sensing underlies artificial sweetener-induced growth of gut Lactobacillus" seemed the most interesting to me, funny thing is it's about SUCRAM - a sweetener I've never heard about before now. Where can I possibly buy some? What kind of a chemical substance it even is? Does it have a more scientific name?

user3359 8y ago

It looks like they may have been added since you read it, as they're in the article now. What I find problematic is that they list a concentration, but no real world examples. We sell a concentrated product that contains 1.3mg sucralose per ml which would seem damning, if not for the fact it gets diluted 8-16x when mixed. Current daily allowance is about 5mg/kg which for a 50kg/120lb person (very tiny) is 250mg. At 8x dilution this is 2 liters of sugar-free sweetened drinks. Which actually doesn't sound that difficult to hit.

com2kid 8y ago

It is sad, but understandable, that only the mass quantity, low quality, sweeteners are being considered. Rarely are the alternative sweeteners used by health conscious consumers at home examined. You mentioned erythritol, which is undergoing an explosion in popularity due to Swerve. Xylitol is available in Whole Foods, and even some regular grocers on occasion, and is a bit more work to good with but works very well for some uses. And of course Stevia, when used appropriately, is all over the place. Monk Fruit is also used on occasion, but its flavor profile has to be carefully considered. As an aside, for those complaining about Stevia, the $6 bottle from Whole Foods has more than 10x as much Stevia in it as the $6 bottle from your local grocery store. Stevia is also not appropriate in all places, but as a replacement for simple syrup in gin drinks it is great, and it is also great to use in Lemonade and Limeade. (In ice cream, or anyplace with dairy? Use something else, and maybe add a couple drops at the end for a bit extra of a kick.) It looks like lactulose is prescription only in the US, so that makes it a no go for home chefs! My ultimate advice for people though, it just get used to things not being sweet. After a couple weeks, the taste isn't missed, and food tastes a lot more subtle when everything isn't accompanied by a sweet aftertaste.

dwighttk 8y ago

>Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore tested the toxicity of aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame, and acesulfame potassium-k.