A Popular Sweetener Was Linked to Increased Anxiety in Generations of Mice

The sweetener is aspartame

1, it's aspartame
2, Mice aren't humans, and routinely, things that happen in mice do not happen in humans. It is not at all indicative of anything and can really only be used as a hint better than nothing for looking into similar effects in humans.
You don't need to change your diet, and you certainly don't need to replace it with sugar.
- *But drinking a glass of water from time to time won't kill you either.
- Comment paid for Big Aspartame.
  
  Deep Sugar take
  
  Big aspertame made that account 6 months ago, posted 1300 unrelated comments, just for this one moment...
  
  How much is Big Sugar paying you?
  
  Considering the patent was held by Monsanto, and all the decades of concerns have been raised by independent researchers but shut down by lobbying...
  Well, I mean, who can you trust to not hide that they're making poison if not Monsanto?
- Not to mention that the gene pool of these lab mice is super small. Source: my brother is a PhD biochemist and lectured me often on this shit when I said, "hey, look at this study!"
  
  Such a small groups are fine for initial investigation, they have enough of a size to be acceptable statistically for most of the performed studies. I don't think they'd get approval from ethical committee overseeing animal experiments without initial study like this to conduct something on very high groups.
  
  The small gene pool is done on purpose. The mice are supposed to be as close to clones as possible so that you can have control populations and be confident that the results weren't affected by certain genes and mutations in the test population.
  The size of the gene pool isn't really an issue though because they can be bred however it's required for tests. They have quite a lot of control over the genetics of those lab mice.
  Testing for a cure for diabetes? They can produce mice that are almost guaranteed to develop diabetes that you can then try to cure.
- Removing all forms of added sugar would probably make everyone feel better. Even minimizing natural sugar intake.
  Sugar is terrible, there’s no doubt about it. Artificial or otherwise.
  
  There's no research that indicates the currently used artificial sweeteners are bad for you.
  
  there's little research to show sugar dangers to be more than correlation
  fat people eat a lot of sugar. fat people also eat a lot. eating a lot is how you get fat, drinking calories just happens to be a fast track to getting fat. diet soda happens to be physiologically like drinking water. fat people drink diet instead of sugar coke thats already 200-1000 calories of their day GONE with very very minimal change.
  then those fat people supplement the lost sugars with more food and they gain weight. then you get studies showing GUYS DIET SODA CAUSES WEIGHT GAIN (in fat people)
  but no its not the sugar its not the macros its YOU eating too much and you can eat less to lose weight that's just simple science. body types, "nuance", "bad metabolism". none of that shits real it all stems from shitty dietary choices and lack of muscle.
  all of this to say unless theres medical issues or medical intervention your weight and body type is 100% in your control should you choose to take control
  
  Absolutely nothing wrong with a diet high in fruit and veg, both of which contain significant amounts of sugar.
  
  There’s nothing inherently bad about sugar. It’s just energy. If you intake more energy than you burn it’s getting stored for future use (you get fat). The same goes for almost anything “unhealthy”. Manage your energy intake and almost nothing is unhealthy.
  
  The biggest question in this thread, who would downvote this?
- I am a relatively recent transplant from the red place, I can tell I ain't in Kansas anymore, actual good information being up voted so cool.
  Aspartame is, because of all the claims against it, the single most studied food substance known, and it seems to somehow keep coming okay. There are a lot of studies with really bad methods that were a smear job attempt but science doing what it does they were labeled for what they are and disregarded. Is it possible to be allergic and a reaction to be anxiety sure, but that is not on the food.
- Guarantee the study also states that you have to consume an ungodly amount of it too...
  News reports grab on to stuff like this all the time. Like what they did with safrole.
  
  The article actually states how much. 15% of the daily recommended amount.

Oh, good! I thought it was the rapidly declining state of the world.

Sugar shills and don't touch my diet coke ppl in this thread doing Spidermanpointing.jpg
Stevia crew represent.
- Stevia is great, but I really love monk fruit. No licorice root like aftertaste. I have more of a problem with the carcinogenic preservative they always pair with aspartame personally.
  
  I don't mind monk fruit all that much but it definitely has its own particular flavour which can require adjustment too. Bit of its own aftertaste as well.
- The only good Natural Low calorie sweetner
  J prefers that munkmunk sauce

The control was plain water. That seems like the sort of methodological flaw that would preclude a study from publication in a journal like PNAS.
- It's so bizarre that you wouldn't have other sweeteners in other experimental groups and, especially, an experimental group that was actual sugar.
- Can you elaborate why do you think that water is improper control?
  
  They're providing a sweetener at all times. That alone would have some affect, so I'd think you'd want another sweetenere like sucrose, glucose, some other artificial sweetener, in addition to a water treatment. Alternatively, a dose response could be informative. They did have different doses of aspartame, but in both groups of mice (male and female), the dose response was opposite what you'd expect; the lower dose had a larger effect.

Mice lie, monkeys exaggurate.
This is a study on a small number of mice using a measure of anxiety which does not directly map to humans. Using mice for a study like this is fine for a pilot study but this has not clinical significance and can be safely ignored by the scientific press as well as the public. When we see a long term study which is double blinded in humans with reasonable doses, good controls, and hopefully some sort of mechanism of action then we can pay attention. Until then, aspartame has been linked to everything under the sun and yet nothing has been shown to be meaningful yet. It is one of the most well studied substances in the human diet and it seems to be at the very least mostly fine. Worry about lead in your water before you worry about this.
- When we see a long term study which is double blinded in humans
  For several generations like the this one this would be 60 years minimum. Basically can't be done.
  
  I see what you are saying but I disagree. The changes that we would consider important for aspartame should happen over a reasonable period of time. If it takes 100 years to have an impact then we probably don't care because most people won't live that long. What we care about is whether it has an impact over meaningful lengths of time in a human life, say over a decade or two.
  If I have tobacco every day for a year will I have cancer? Unlikely. But if I give a large number of people who are well randomised tobacco or tobacco substitute I will see changes in their outcomes in a short time, even as little as a year.
  So for aspartame, we already know it is not a massive signal. If it were then people who find the taste acrid would be better off than those who do not. But is there a possible issue there? Sure, it is possible, but it will very likely be a mild issue over a long time at a high dose, not at small doses over a short time, so this study design is not fit for purpose and it should be ignored.
- I think I'll pass on the opinion of someone who can't spell "exaggerate."
  
  Cool, fair enough, I do have a little trouble with spelling and that is fine. Of course it could be software, learning difficulties, or just a bad day, but feel free to discard all the words I spelled correctly. Also, if you are in the US including the full stop in your quotation is typical but in the rest of the world you would keep the punctuation outside the quotes unless it is what you are quoting, otherwise the sentence doesn't have its own full stop.
  
  Cool, take the low hanging ad hom, instead of actually interacting with the statement. Also it's "exaggerate".

So my problems are because my mom is addicted to diet coke? It's all adding up!
- What problems do you have?

Wow, lots of astroturfed opinions defending aspartame.
- It's not astroturfing it's people sick of these studies where they pump ungodly amounts of aspartame into mice until they get a reaction. Aspartame doesn't do anything at the levels humans consume it, it's one of the most studied compounds in food.
  
  It still tastes shit though.
  Worse are the drinks that took half the sugar out, but pumped sweeteners in as well, so you still get fat and now it tastes crap too.
  
  It said it was like 15% of human recommended intake.
  
  And cigarettes don't cause cancer, and burning fossil fuels doesn't cause global warming, and...
- Glad to see the "everything positive is astroturfing" clowns made their way over from reddit, too.
  
  The important thing is you found a way to feel superior to both without needing to voice your opinion.
- Any evidence to back up the assertion that they are shills, or is it just an empty ad hominem because you can't address an actual point?
  To be clear, fuck that aspartame garbage.
  
  Any reason you think I should care about your opinion on anything, at all?
  But to address your question, maybe it has something to do with walls of replies that read like a PR script. Use your head for more than memes.
- I mean, if the choice is between sugar and aspartame... seems like an easy choice to make - the science should speak for itself
  I've been dabbling with stevia but last time I put to packets in my tea and it was apparently too much and I did not feel well after
  
  Choice should be sugar, just a lot less of it
  
  I tried stevia, also, and it's too sweet.

In my research to find a substitute for mom's sugar intake, Stevia came down to being the safest and most reliable, albeit not the best flavor substitute, necessarily.
And avoid Erythritol above all else.
- Erythritol is tolerated by people at pretty varying rates. Some people have no issues, others have stomach problems. It doesn’t really bother me much.
  I personally like allulose the best tho, but it’s not easy to get in the EU yet.
  
  Digestive issues aside I'm mostly concerned with the evidenced increased risk of stroke and heart-attack.
  https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-q-and-a-is-erythritol-a-safe-and-healthy-sugar-substitute/
  In recent decades, some concerning research has been published about possible adverse health effects of erythritol.
  An American study from 2001 found that people who used erythritol as a sweetener had a three-year increased risk of major adverse cardiac events – defined as non-fatal heart attack or stroke. While this was an incidental finding – meaning that the erythritol did not necessarily cause or contribute to their cardiac issues – it highlighted the need for more research to determine if using a sugar substitute predisposes a person to higher heart attack or stroke rates.
  A 2021 study examined people who consumed erythritol or a similar sugar alcohol, xylitol. The results found that ingesting erythritol as a sugar substitute caused a spike in blood levels and increased the stickiness of the volunteers’ platelets. Platelets help the blood to clot if we cut ourselves, but if they are sticky, the risk of blood clots in the body increases, raising our risk of heart attack, stroke or other vascular issues.
  While the findings still do not definitely prove that erythritol directly increases the risk for cardiovascular issues, the results indicate it may be best to avoid it until we have more evidence to suggest that it is or is not safe.

When a sample of mice were given free access to water dosed with aspartame equivalent to 15 percent of the FDA's recommended maximum daily amount for humans, they generally displayed more anxious behavior in specially designed mood tests.
What's truly surprising is the effects could be seen in the animals' offspring, for up to two generations.
We know that when it's consumed, aspartame splits into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol, which can all affect the central nervous system. There have already been question marks over potentially adverse reactions to the sweetener in some people.
- We know that when it’s consumed, aspartame splits into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol, which can all affect the central nervous system.
  This is precisely why this all sounds like BS and such studies have frequently been called out for their poor methodologies. Aspartic acid and phenylalanine are crucial amino acids that we consume in a bunch of foods at much higher concentrations. And the methanol produced in its breakdown is extremely minimal.
  Hence why the vast amount of pseudoscience claims about aspartame have been debunked one after the other.
  
  Taurine is an amino acid we generate ourselves
  Its also a blood thinner and critical component of all energy drinks. And is why energy drinks can kill you.
  Just because its an amino acid doesn't mean its harmless.
  
  Hence why the vast amount of pseudoscience claims about aspartame have been debunked one after the other.
  This is literally them doing science, lol. It's a study.
- I didn't read the study, and I'm not going to, but was this a double blind test? Especially for the offspring claim?
- People need to get in touch with their groceries. I'm lucky that I have really strong reactions to food because it's obvious what affects me or not. I become a full on grouchy interrogator when I have aspertame, same with MSG but that's more of an accumulation thing.
  
  So you also believe in MSG health claims, despite that being a salt of glutamate, an amino acid found in all meats, mushrooms, and plenty other foods already.
  
  MSG is more of a racism thing. It was just a trick crackers came up with to keep their business from going to Asian restaurants.

Ah, another one of the "we found something in mice and that totally means it happens in humans" pseudoscience studies. Though we can probably blame the press for making such claims that the studies do not, unless this is one of those studies made by the known pseudoscience "scientists" like Seneff.
- The title used by the reporter:
  A Popular Sweetener Was Linked to Increased Anxiety in Generations of Mice
  The title of the original publication:
  Transgenerational transmission of aspartame-induced anxiety and changes in glutamate-GABA signaling and gene expression
  I did not read the latter so I cannot vouch for it, but the former is most definitely click bait, through and through, from title to content. I mean, here we are talking about it and sharing the link so... they accomplished their purpose, and why should they care what happens afterwards?
  
  So they're saying that it's epigenetically transmitted? That's interesting. What mechanism are they suggesting?

Donald Rumsfeld and the Strange History of Aspartame
Edit: I think he came back from the dead to downvote this.

Well, shit.

And it still is too.

I wonder if the inherited anxious behaviour is through epigenetics or learned from the parents?
- My theory, and again it's just a theory, anxiousness from things you eat is your body stressing out that you can't process it or something. Of course, it needs more studies, but you could inherit slight allergies and the learned behavior.
  
  My understanding is your body processes aspartame just fine. It's just much sweeter than cane sugar so you have to use less than a calorie to achieve the same effect as a hundred calories of cane sugar.

Need a doi. This sounds like cherry picking.

As bad as all the sugar substitutes taste I honestly don't get how they ever caught on, starting at saccharine and on down the line. Stevia, aspartame, just taste... wrong. Minimally refined cane sugar or honey are the only way to go.

Aspartame is shit. It tastes like shit and it's dangerous. I have an aspartame story but it's gonna draw the astroturfers and coporate cucks, so just refer back to my first two statements here.

Stop putting artificial things in your body.
Except dildos, those are still ok.