A new health scare is brewing as reporters speculate about the cancer risk of consuming the sweetener sucralose. Is there any evidence behind the panic? No. A team of scientists recently argued that it's time for oil companies to pay reparations for causing climate change. Let's take a critical look at their claims.
sucralose
Can a degradation product and chemical used to make sucralose – sucralose-6-acetate – damage our DNA? As is often the case, it depends. Here, it's about your metric of DNA damage and your exposure. Leaving the scary headlines and media confabulation behind, here's a breakdown of the study.
We have been reading a bunch of nonsense about artificial sweeteners causing elevated blood glucose for years. A study out of Britain puts this to rest – and does so in no uncertain terms.
Once again, the Ramazini Foundation published a study suggesting that the artificial sweetener sucralose causes cancer —specifically blood cancers — in mice. But a panel from the European Food Safety Authority analyzed that study and found that its conclusions were spurious and in no way should be construed to indict the sweetener. Can we say we told you so?
A recent study found that only about 15 percent of the sweetener sucralose, when consumed in a beverage, is actually absorbed into the blood. Within five days about 93 percent is excreted. Children, because of their smaller size, had significantly higher blood concentrations than adults. But these results don't imply negative health consequences for either group.
Often, experienced chemists can look at the structure of a chemical and make good guess about whether it will be toxic. But "eyeball toxicology" is not foolproof. Many of us got it wrong with sucralose. We were suspicious that it might be toxic. But it isn't, and here's why.
Corporate flights from science, Part 2 and 3: Caving to consumer concerns. (For Part 1: see Mac/Cheese). Chipotle rids itself of GMOs, while Pepsi eliminates aspartame from Diet Pepsi for sucralose. Major benefit for...public health? Not.
Some junk science studies can be difficult to detect. Some, however, require no effort at all. Here we have one shining example of the latter not that you could tell from all the media hype surrounding this nonsense.
The new Nature article, claiming that artificial sweeteners might contribute to obesity, seemed to be so chemically naive, that ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom, after a brief perusal of the authors and their affiliations, saw that the answer was obvious.
Not only are regular soft drinks (those sweetened by sugar) blamed for overeating and obesity, some studies have also pointed the finger at artificial sweeteners. But a new study, published in the journal Diabetes Care undermines such conclusions.