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Major sugar substitute found to impair brain blood vessel cell function
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]
- wglb 1y agoArticle in Physioliogy https://journals.physiology.org/doi/10.1152/japplphysiol.00276.2025 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/10.1152/japplphysiol.002...
- mjd 1y agoThanks. This is the study that the article is talking about. The complete paper is https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/japplphysiol.00276.2025 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/japplphysiol... It's based on earlier work that suggests that erythritol consumption is associated with increased risk of stroke or myocardial infarction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02223-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02223-9
- wglb 1y agoThanks!
- TimorousBestie 1y agoIn vitro with human cells, at a reasonable concentration, apparently. Looks worrying.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoErythritol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol
- elevaet 1y agoI wonder if the similar molecule Xylitol has the same problem. It seems like so many artificial sweeteners have dangerous health effects, I don't trust any of them. Unless you're diabetic or something, regular sugar seems to be the healthiest choice (in moderation!)
- aydyn 1y agoRegular sugar is very bad for you in a modern diet as its essentially extra calories that are not compensated by satiety. Why prefer something that you know is definitely bad for you over something that maybe is but more likely benign?
- hedora 1y agoStudies have shown artificial (and non-nutritional organic) sweeteners are much worse than sugar for decades. For instance, they disrupt your metabolism, so equivalently sweet amounts of sweeteners cause more weight gain than sugar. (Due to increased hunger vs. eating nothing, decreased metabolism and decreased calorie burn.) The study in the article isn’t surprising at all. Links between nutrisweet and migraine headaches have been well understood for a long time. It’s not surprising other similar chemicals have similar negative side effects. There’s no valid reason to use artificial sweeteners (other than diabetes, but even then, gaining weight from the sweeteners is a problem if the diabetes is weight related.)
- aydyn 1y agoThats wrong. You can find any individual study to support nearly any conclusion you want. The most credible meta analyses (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429) only show positive or null effects compared to equivalent sugar amounts.
- Hugsun 1y agoI was under the impression that this is not the case. Aspartame has been studied a lot and not found to be harmful.
- umvi 1y agoDang, I think my favorite brand of sugar free ice cream uses erythritol (Rebel)
- petesergeant 1y agoEasy to make sugar-free ice-cream with a Ninja Creami
- latchkey 1y agoAlmost every single other sugar substitute is filled with erythritol as an additive. Monk Fruit products tend to be really bad offenders. Check the labels carefully.
- aitchnyu 1y agoMonk fruit products seem to be false advertising. Why are pure monkfruit sweeteners rare?
- xtracto 1y agoBecause of the price of Monk Fruit. Pure monk fruit is expensive.
- sgt 1y agoWhat about aspartame[sic]?
- chrisco255 1y agoAspartame is fine in things like soda, but the reason erythritol is mixed with monk fruit (and perhaps aspartame as well?) is it is closer to the sweetness level of sugar in terms of sweetness per gram, and so it's usually easier to use in recipes that are based on sugar quantities.
- ShakataGaNai 1y agoThis I found out the unfortunate way. I used some popular monk fruit sweetener... packets were just monk fruit but the bulk packages were monk fruit/erythritol blend and I didn't pay enough attention to the label. Made lemonade with it. Spent the rest of the day on the toilet.
- fellowniusmonk 1y agoLiquid sweeteners are fine, I switched to liquid monk fruit stevia blend, really like it.
- milleramp 1y agoDoes this mean it also effects athletic performance due to lowering nitric oxide production?
- hnlmorg 1y agoSurely if you’re concerned about athletic performance then you’d be wanting to consume calories rather than intending to buy sugar substitutes?
- rafaelmn 1y agoDepends if you're in a weight restricted sport or not
- maksimur 1y agoI think it depends. An athlete might want to keep the same or less weight for performance or aesthetical reasons.
- hnlmorg 1y agoI meant that the problem many atheists have is consuming enough calories rather than too many. But I guess it depends on the discipline. Triathletes, for example, would burn plenty of more calories training than boxers might. Back when I was athletic, I definitely had a problem putting weight on rather than taking it off.
- mjd 1y agoThis is definitely typo of the week.
- petesergeant 1y agoProtein powder is full of fake sweeteners
- adrian_b 1y ago
- pixxel 1y ago[dead]
- DidYaWipe 1y agoThese sugar alcohols are a scourge. I quit buying my favorite fake crab (Kroger) because it's full of this garbage.
- tlavoie 1y agoWe stopped buying fake crab (made from pollock), after we noticed that the dogs wouldn't eat it. Don't know what was there to cause that, but since there isn't much they won't eat, we wouldn't either. That bar is very, very low.
- jemmyw 1y agoSugar alcohols are toxic to dogs
- tlavoie 1y agoRight, I know that thanks. The question here is, what would have it been doing, unlabeled, in fake crab product?
- DidYaWipe 1y agoIt is labeled in the Kroger one, but it obviously doesn't belong in there. It sucks, too, because the Kroger one's texture is really good and is great in salad.
- tlavoie 1y agoInteresting, thanks. This would have been a number of years ago that we noticed this rejection by our dogs, and also in Canada if that makes any difference. I'll certainly be looking at ingredients going forward.
- DidYaWipe 1y agoThat's a great anecdote. I mean... I've seen a dog eat an entire pumpkin. If it won't eat your whitefish... be worried.
- _ink_ 1y agoIs any amount dangerous? Or would you need to drink 6 Bottles of something with Erythritol daily to see the effect?
- ipsum2 1y agoIt's in the article: "Human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells were cultured and exposed to an amount of erythritol equivalent to consuming a typical beverage. Experimental conditions included five biological replicates per group." So it needs to cross the blood-brain barrier. From the research paper: "Moreover, it is important to note that erythritol does cross the blood brain barrier and interact with the cerebrovasculature". Unclear what percentage this is.
- Eisenstein 1y agoHuman cerebral microvascular endothelial cells are the blood brain barrier.
- HexPhantom 1y agoAlways tricky translating cell culture doses to what actually happens in a living person, but it sounds like there's at least a plausible mechanism here.
- maksimur 1y agoThere you go. No artificial sweetener seems to be safe...guess I'll have to get used to making unsweetened protein bars and the occasional drinks and ice cream. Their sugar counterparts are too caloric.
- Nursie 1y ago> No artificial sweetener seems to be safe Are we at that point yet? AFAICT aspartame seems to be pretty safe and well-researched, and the IARC listing it as "possibly carcinogenic" itself seems to be controversial. In that category it is listed along side such things as Aloe Vera, Carpentry, Low-frequency magnetic fields, Traditional asian pickled vegetables, Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and Gingko Biloba extract...
- adrian_b 1y agoIn principle, it seems impossible for any artificial sweetener to be completely safe, unless it is consumed only sporadically, not regularly. Unfortunately, the receptors for sweetness do not exist for the sole purpose of giving pleasure to the brain. They are also used to signal to various organs to prepare for an influx of carbohydrates. When the signal is frequently present, but then the expected carbohydrates do not come, then this is likely to perturb some control functions of the body, like in the fable about the boy who cried wolf.
- arghwhat 1y ago> it seems impossible for any artificial sweetener to be completely safe, unless it is consumed only sporadically, not regularly. This also holds for non-artificial sweetener, or in fact any substance entering our body. Disturbing a process expecting a large influx of carbohydrates vs. disturbing the body with an actual high influx of carbohydrates, disturbing the body by neither consuming nor triggering carbohydrate processes, ... Drinking bitter fluids - say, coffee - trigger early toxicity warnings that prepare your body for emergency oral bowel evacuation, as "bitter" is the taste of various substances evolution associated with food poisoning. What other mechanisms might that trigger? That's a lot of "crying wolf" for many people.
- voidfunc 1y agoLol at all the people in this thread stressing out about their artificial sweetener consumption while disregarding all the other dangerous shit they do, eat, and drink. Forest for the trees.
- maksimur 1y agoMaybe they have omitted those because the focus is on artificial sweeteners? As for myself I try to avoid anything that could be dangerous, not only what I eat or drink.
- DHRicoF 1y agoI partially agree with you. But the selling point of artificial sweeteners was that they were a healthier substitute. It's better to teach people that there is no free lunch, and they should take care about the calories they are consuming, even if that imply reduce frequency of sweet foods, than sugar coating an equally bad alternative to make it sound like it's healthier.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- const_cast 1y ago1. Artificial sweeteners are healthier substitutes. Aspartame is truly a free lunch. It's not carcinogenic, it's zero-calories for real, it doesn't cause X Y Z. It's perfectly safe. 2. "no free lunch" is a phrase we need to retire forever. Yes, there is free lunch, we do it all the time. That's why infant mortality was 50% and now it's 1 in 1000. That's just called progress, we make things better all the time. That's kind of what humans do.
- mkfs 1y agoIt's even funnier when you realize a good chunk of them are still doing low-carb diets like keto or carnivore, gorging on saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
- 1y ago
- almosthere 1y agoSwitch to Stevia, but it kind of has a weird taste imo
- Yizahi 1y agoIt seems to be individual and depends on brand. I'm buying Stevia Inulina, it tastes fine for me and it doesn't contain Maltodextrin as do some other sweeteners. The only problem is that it is less popular and hard to find, compared to shelves filled with Xylitol and Erythritol.
- thangalin 1y agoUCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=75 https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=75
- mkfs 1y agoThis is about sugar alcohols, not simple sugars, and total sugar consumption in the US has been declining since a peak around the turn of the millennium, reverting back to levels on par with the 1970s, yet overweight/obesity rates just kept right on climbing until the recent advent of GLP-1 drugs.
- netdevphoenix 1y agoIf your calorie intake is higher than your calorie usage, it doesn't matter how little sugar you take. People ingest more calories than ever (relative to their calorie usage) and barely engage in physical activities (relative to their calorie intake). Sure, other factors might worsen this but doesn't change the underlying core
- PaulRobinson 1y agoMost nutritionists would today argue that is far too simple a model. Your body does not metabolize all calories in the same way. The role of your microbiome in terms of metabolization was barely understood at all only 50 years ago, and we're only now starting to get a handle on it. If it were a case of "calories in, calories out", all the experiments down by food technicians to understand what is happening in the brain when you consume certain flavors (they were literally getting people to taste soda in an MRI scanner decades ago), would not be an efficient use of time and the food industry would collapse. If you eat 2000 kCals of lettuce, your body is going to do very, very different things to eating 2000 kCals of potato fries, including how it stores or consumes energy in that moment. Importantly, what your body does is likely going to be very different to what my body does. 10% of the population can stay slim while over-eating crap, because they are genetically lucky. A %age of the population will struggle to stay at a healthy BMI even if they eat mostly salads and fruits. This isn't radical new age voodoo: the best science available today tells us the calories in/out model isn't anywhere near nuanced enough to help educate people on eating healthily and managing their weight. Tim Spector has written some material on this, and I've been reading Camilla Stokholm's book recently. It's all quite interesting, and very different to what I was taught when growing up. I'd also do some digging on ultra-processed foods - it might stop you thinking overweight people are just doing it to themselves. They're not.
- htx80nerd 1y agoTest tube study. > Human cerebral cells were cultured and treated with 6 mM of erythritol, equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in an artificially sweetened beverage, for 3 hr. the cells were in the substance for 3hrs? I'm not reading the whole study now, but that sounds...interesting.
- maeln 1y agoThe study : https://journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10.1152/japplphysiol.00276.2025 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10.1152/japplphysio... From a quick read : It was tested in a cell culture, so not in a human or animal. That does change a lot of things. For the dosage: > Thereafter, hCMECs were treated116 with regular media or media containing 6 mM erythritol (Sigma Aldrich, Cat #E7500; St. Louis MO), a117 dose equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in a single can of commercially available118 artificially sweetened beverage, for 24 hours (N=5 experimental units)
- sfjailbird 1y ago> It was tested in a cell culture, so not in a human or animal. That does change a lot of things. The article points out that similar observations have already been made in human subjects: > Positive associations between circulating erythritol and incidence of heart attack and stroke have been observed in U.S. and European cohorts
- Eisenstein 1y agoOne of the cited studies (Khafagy et al., 2024) directly contradicts such claims. The study explicitly said "we did not find supportive evidence from MR that erythritol increases cardiometabolic disease". The primary human study they reference (Witkowski et al., 2023) has a few issues: - All subjects had a "high prevalence of CVD and risk factor burden" and represented the sickest patients in the healthcare system - Erythritol was measured only once at baseline, despite data which shows that levels fluctuate dramatically with consumption - It did not differentiate between dietary intake and erythritol produced by the body - Seeing as they were already sick they the subjects may have been consuming more artificial sweeteners than the general population There are two more human studies referenced but I didn't read them.
- ricardobeat 1y agoIt’s tiring to see these quick dismissals of scientific studies at the top of the comment section. They are more often than not based on technicalities or fallacies. Pitting a two minute reading vs months of work by a team of scientists is not a great move. In this case, the nature of the study is clearly acknowledged, it does not “change a lot of things”: > We recognize given the in vitro, isolated single cell nature of this study we cannot make definitive translational conclusions or assertions regarding erythritol and clinical risk. However, the markers and mediators of brain microvascular endothelial cell function studied herein have been shown to have strong causative links with the development cerebrovascular dysfunction, neuronal damage and injury, thrombosis and acute ischemic stroke These findings are a starting point for further understanding, not something to be immediately ranked as true/false.
- Klaus_ 1y ago[dead]
- linux_devil 1y agoI've been consuming protein bars that has Maltitol, in the ingredients its mentioned as : INS 965(i) . I am not sure how this can impact in the long run , wish there was an easier way to find out
- sfjailbird 1y agoMaltitol is a bit different, because it is actually quite caloric. It just digests slower.
- v5v3 1y agoWhy are you consuming protein bars so much? They should really be an occasional treat.
- theshackleford 1y agoThey didn’t give you any indication of their rate of consumption. Why are you making assumptions?
- DontchaKnowit 1y agoIdk whats the point of eating a protein bar as an occassional treat? They taste like shit but have high protein. If youre gonna have an occasional treat, have an actual treat. A cookie or snickers or something
- drakonka 1y agoI wonder if it would be possible to compare the introduction and adoption of erythritol to stroke rate in the population.
- James_K 1y agoZero-calorie sugar is on of those things that's just too good to be true. It's either gotta taste awful or give you cancer.
- lithocarpus 1y agoWhile theoretically it's possible there's some compound that tastes sweet with no other ill effects, I will remain skeptical and not risk my health on novel compounds or novel concentrations of compounds just because a lot of studies failed to show a harm. In the case of sweet, I have found that simply minimizing eating sweet things has caused everything else to taste better/sweeter.
- HexPhantom 1y agoIt is pretty wild how many "healthy" or "sugar-free" products are loaded with erythritol, and how little long-term data we have on what these sweeteners really do. It feels like we’re repeating the same playbook as with artificial sweeteners in the past: new molecule, quick adoption, unintended side effects turn up years later.
- netdevphoenix 1y agoSounds like stevia is the safer choice
- rayiner 1y agoWhy are companies allowed to put this stuff in food before testing to prove safety? Our system is backwards.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- macartain 1y agoAnother allulose fan here. I use it as part of a half-baked, sort-of-keto approach to help me avoid carbs and sugar. Unlike Stevia, I find it has pretty much no distinctive aftertaste - it seems too good to be true. I'm in the UK and buy it mail-order from the US as it is still awaiting regulatory approval in the EU/UK afaik... Does anyone have more background on this process or why it is delayed? Anything I can find via search seems heavily polluted by quack health BS...
- wglb 1y agoAnother related article: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-major-sugar-substitute-impair-brain.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-major-sugar-substitut...