<story><title>Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/artificial-sweeteners-are-toxic-to-digestive-gut-bacteria-study.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>biomcgary</author><text>The underlying research article (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mdpi.com&amp;#x2F;1420-3049&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;2454&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mdpi.com&amp;#x2F;1420-3049&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;2454&lt;/a&gt;) is set up as a &amp;quot;no-fail&amp;quot; experiment since it infers toxicity with the slightest change (inhibition or induction) in a very sensitive reporter (luciferase). They are NOT measuring change in growth rate of the bacterial cells, the traditional measure of toxicity (aka IC, or inhibitory concentration). The study has positive and negative controls, but this assay is poorly controlled relative to how it is being interpreted (impact of artificial sweeteners on human gut microbiome).&lt;p&gt;The only way to accurately calibrate this novel assay for relevance to human health is to expose the bacteria to a wide range of natural foods (e.g., avocado, spinach, berries, honey, etc) and show that it does not return a positive result. If nearly everything is toxic, the assay is not useful. However, if most natural foods have no toxicity signal, then the assay has genuine value.</text></comment>
<story><title>Study: Artificial sweeteners toxic to digestive gut bacteria</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/artificial-sweeteners-are-toxic-to-digestive-gut-bacteria-study.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>qwerty456127</author><text>The article doesn&amp;#x27;t say which sweeteners did they study and this is a very bad style. Fortunately it links to an article on EurekAlert which in its turn links to the actual scientific paper (doi.org&amp;#x2F;10.3390&amp;#x2F;molecules23102454). It says aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame and acesulfame potassium-k (ace-k) (BTW at least saccharine and ace-k are already known to be carcinogenic AFAIK) were tested against Escherichia Coli (I would rather be interested in testing them against Lactobacillaceae).&lt;p&gt;Lactulose is a great prebiotic (not widely known infortunately) very good for gut bacteria (AFAIK), has geroprotective properties, is a mild osmotic laxative, has zero calories, doesn&amp;#x27;t affect blood sugar&amp;#x2F;insulin and tastes great. I use it instead of maple syrup. As far as I also know erythritol (looks, feels and cooks almost exactly like sugar) and palatinose (same, but has calories yet doesn&amp;#x27;t kick insulin and doesn&amp;#x27;t feed mouth bacteria so is safe for teeth) are good for gut bacteria too. We could also mention inulin (which is a well-known prebiotic very beneficial for gut microbiome) but it&amp;#x27;s sweetness is weaker.</text></comment>