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A Popular Sweetener Was Linked to Increased Anxiety in Generations of Mice
(www.sciencealert.com)
The sweetener is aspartame
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
291 points (90.1% liked)
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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.
Big aspertame made that account 6 months ago, posted 1300 unrelated comments, just for this one moment...
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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.
Theres mixed analysis over the decades, actually, and different groups have different conclusions.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/sweet-n-low-dangers-still-exist/
Overall, id say limiting added sugars (natural or artificial) is rpobably better for your health long term
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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.
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!"
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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.
There's a daily recommended amount for mice? Or was that 15% of the recommended amount for humans, which would be massive for mice?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So my problems are because my mom is addicted to diet coke? It's all adding up!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Well, shit.
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