Be cautious in consuming sweeteners
2023-11-02
Sweetener, which is what we usually call saccharin, is not a sugar, but its sweetness is 10~100 times higher than the ordinary flavored sucrose in our lives. In food production, only a little artificial sweetener is needed to make food or drink very sweet and almost no calories, which is an essential chemical in food processing today.
Many people think that sweeteners are not as safe and healthy as advertised, why? Here are four points that will tell you why.
First of all, sweeteners have the potential to cause cancer, but some people disagree. For example, as early as the 70s of the 20th century, scientists found that saccharin caused bladder cancer in experimental mice, but later confirmed that the mechanism that causes cancer in mice does not exist in humans; By 2005, a laboratory study had found that long-term injection of large doses of a sweetener called aspartame into rats could lead to lymphoma and leukemia. This discovery has attracted great attention. However, some opponents say that the dose of sweetener that causes disease in laboratory rats is so large that it is equivalent to humans drinking 2,000 cans of Coke a week for a period of time before it can cause cancer. Scientists are still studying whether sweeteners can cause cancer.
Second, large amounts of sweeteners may cause bloating or diarrhea. Common artificial sweeteners such as sorbitol and fructose are not easily digested in the human body, and they ferment in the stomach and intestines of the human body to produce large amounts of gas, which can inflate the stomach and intestinal lumen and cause a feeling of bloating. These gases require a lot of water to soothe them, and stomach pain and diarrhea follow. We adults have good immunity, so there's nothing wrong with that. However, for newborns whose organs are not fully developed, sweetened drinks should not be given to newborns, otherwise they can cause severe diarrhea.
Third, scientists recently conducted an experiment in which they found that sweeteners can trigger diabetes and obesity in mice. Scientists' explanation for this is that sweeteners are a kind of "fake sugar" that makes our bodies think that sugar is coming when it enters the body, and then it starts working. But there's no sugar in the body. This is a "wolf coming" story. After a long time, the body knows that it is not sugar, and it will not work. However, when the real sugar arrives, the body will think that it is "fake sugar", and it will not release hormones to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and the sugar accumulates in the body, and it is possible to suffer from diabetes and obesity.
Fourth, sweeteners also alter the microbial community in our body, potentially causing them to undergo harmful metabolism in our body, such as the beneficial bacteria Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus may produce harmful substances in our body. In addition, if you drink drinks with added sweeteners for a long time, there are indeed other proven harms, such as carbon dioxide in soda if you consume it in excess, which will cause a great burden on people's bones and kidneys. So drink as few of these drinks as possible.
The above are the effects that sweeteners may have on the human body. You may be surprised that the advertised sugar-free drink that is safe and healthy and can help you lose weight can cause diabetes? Wouldn't that cause a huge panic? There may also be naysayers that while sweeteners can cause diabetes and obesity in mice, animals are genetically different from humans, so it's uncertain whether this is the case. However, if you look at the data on the number of people with diabetes and obesity in the United States over the years, you will find that the incidence of diabetes and obesity has been rising since the widespread use of sweeteners in food and beverages in the 50s of the 20th century, which is enough to prove that sweeteners may play an undesirable role.
