This is a study done on cell cultures. It should NOT be used to influence behaviors regarding human health. The article linked makes a lot of leaps not supported by the study itself.
>It should NOT be used to influence behaviors regarding human health.
It's not like erythritol is hard for a consumer to avoid. P(serious problems like brain cell damage) does not need to get very high for it to start to make sense to avoid it, and it seems to me that studies done on cell culture can raise P high enough.
Moto7451 · 32m ago
The test setup ignores the digestive system. There are going to be a lot of substances you can pour on a culture of brain cells with negative affect that your body produces or happily consumes. That’s the point of the parent.
Add milk, an alcoholic beverage, or some lemon juice and those cells are unlikely to survive. Meanwhile the standard path of consumption handles the situation just fine before your brain is ever involved in metabolism.
bestouff · 16m ago
Alcoholic beverage, just fine ? I disagree.
ethan_smith · 2h ago
In vitro studies demonstrate potential mechanisms but cannot establish causality in humans due to differences in metabolism, bioavailability, and the blood-brain barrier's protective effects.
The German Wikipedia article says it appears naturally in cheese, funghi, plums, strawberries and pistachios. So maybe the lab experiment might be a bit artifial, or the dose much higher than from normal consumption if the above?
heavyset_go · 1h ago
The dose people use for sweetener can be 1,000x - 10,000x the amount you'd find in fruit. There's micro to milligrams of it in some foods, people eat anywhere between 3g to 20g+ if they're eating goods baked with it as a sugar replacement.
MichealCodes · 3h ago
The concern is more unnatural consumption. Some use it as a sugar replacement in drinks and foods.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
In natural foods, there are other substances that balance out the harm, making it healthy overall. These other substances are absent when it's used as an additive.
burnt-resistor · 10m ago
No, I'm sorry but that's not correct. "Natural" is a meaningless health and wellness buzzword that handwaves away the details that each food comes with benefits and disadvantages. There are variable amounts of anti-nutrients almost every "natural" ingredient, some of which we process or cook to lessen them.
Indigenous people processed acorns to remove tanins.
Kidney beans (and many other legumes to variably lesser degree) naturally contain phytohaemagglutinins (PHA-E) which cause red blood cells to clump together. These can be reduces several orders of magnitude by repeated cooking, washing, and draining.
Men shouldn't eat too much soy or chia seeds. Small amounts of chia seeds are fine.
Most adults are lactose intolerant unless they have lactase persistence genes.
Spinach, pepper (the spice kind), rhubarb, almonds, and more contain oxalate that can lead to kidney stone formation. Excess vitamin C does also. Increasing citrate intake helps prevent calcium kidney stone formation, but doesn't help with oxalate kidney stones as much.
The list of antinutrients is long. Don't overdo eating one "natural" ingredient or another because that's the greatest risk of becoming a Chubbyemu video subject.
Eisenstein · 2h ago
Can you go into detail about these substances?
oarla · 2h ago
Maybe the fiber helps?
burnt-resistor · 8m ago
Fiber is great for gut health but it's actually works against nutrient absorption. Increasing fiber intake requires increasing intake of certain vitamins, possibly with supplementation.
It's better to eat things in moderation and know what antinutrients are in what foods. There are tradeoffs.
IcyWindows · 4h ago
Hmm, the dose seems odd.
Would the whole drink amount really all be given to those cells?
abeyer · 1h ago
I could be off, my molar math is pretty rusty, but a back of the envelope stab seems like 6mM concentration would be _way_ below the 30g "serving" in a drink so assume their "equivalent of" is taking into account the concentrations estimated in the body after consumption or some such.
MichealCodes · 3h ago
I've consumed large amounts of erythritol for probably 10+ years. What should I watch for? Blood pressure?
ryanmerket · 3h ago
Unless you're a cell, this study isn't super relevant to you.
* It does not show human harm, only cellular disruption.
* It uses an unnatural exposure method.
* It builds on epidemiological correlations that may be reverse causality.
* It does not account for systemic factors, metabolism, or adaptive responses.
seec · 1h ago
Yes the conclusion is baffling.
As you say I believe the correlation is reverse causality. It's much more likely that people who consume stuff with "artificial" sweetener are already at risk for stroke than the other way around.
If you don't have weight/cardio problems it is weird to consume "sugar-free" stuff and associated because they are almost always worse tasting than the real deal.
To have any importance they would need a big population sample and correct for already existing risks for stroke and I believe they would find that this stuff has very little impact, if any.
But as always, it doesn't cost much to limit consumption, so why not?
OutOfHere · 2h ago
I would discontinue it immediately, then focus on optimizing overall health, just as everyone else.
mixwpl0j · 2h ago
Right but, what are the odds you aren't all that healthy to begin with if you decide to swap normal sweeteners for chemicals?
abeyer · 2h ago
and specifically in that high risk group, those chemicals are correlated with an even higher rate of cardiovascular issues than baseline
For example erythritol itself occurs naturally in some fruit and fermented foods, making it a "normal sweetener".
sharifhsn · 2h ago
“Normal” sweeteners are also chemicals.
hilux · 1h ago
Probably a significant majority of Americans use sugar substitutes.
Of course, a significant majority of Americans aren't all that healthy - I guess I'm not sure what your point is.
Eisenstein · 2h ago
Seeing as this is an in vitro study, they fall back on a specific human study (Witkowski et al., 2023) for many of the human effect claims. However the referenced study has a few issues:
- All study subjects had a "high prevalence of CVD [cardiovascular disease] and risk factor burden"
- Erythritol occurs naturally in the body and and this was not accounted for
- The study subjects were already suffering from cardiovascular disease and were likely to be consuming more artificial sweeteners than a general population, but this was not recognized or accounted for
- Erythritol's presence after a cardiovascular incident could be from consumption or from natural production but only baseline was measured despite data showing dramatic fluctuations after consumption
Another one of the studies cited for evidence of human claims (Khafagy et al., 2024) directly contradicts them. It stated said "we did not find supportive evidence from MR that erythritol increases cardiometabolic disease".
There are two more human studies referenced but I didn't read them.
Link to actual study: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...
It's not like erythritol is hard for a consumer to avoid. P(serious problems like brain cell damage) does not need to get very high for it to start to make sense to avoid it, and it seems to me that studies done on cell culture can raise P high enough.
Add milk, an alcoholic beverage, or some lemon juice and those cells are unlikely to survive. Meanwhile the standard path of consumption handles the situation just fine before your brain is ever involved in metabolism.
If you poured distilled water on cells in culture they'd also all die.
The German Wikipedia article says it appears naturally in cheese, funghi, plums, strawberries and pistachios. So maybe the lab experiment might be a bit artifial, or the dose much higher than from normal consumption if the above?
Indigenous people processed acorns to remove tanins.
Kidney beans (and many other legumes to variably lesser degree) naturally contain phytohaemagglutinins (PHA-E) which cause red blood cells to clump together. These can be reduces several orders of magnitude by repeated cooking, washing, and draining.
Men shouldn't eat too much soy or chia seeds. Small amounts of chia seeds are fine.
Most adults are lactose intolerant unless they have lactase persistence genes.
Spinach, pepper (the spice kind), rhubarb, almonds, and more contain oxalate that can lead to kidney stone formation. Excess vitamin C does also. Increasing citrate intake helps prevent calcium kidney stone formation, but doesn't help with oxalate kidney stones as much.
The list of antinutrients is long. Don't overdo eating one "natural" ingredient or another because that's the greatest risk of becoming a Chubbyemu video subject.
It's better to eat things in moderation and know what antinutrients are in what foods. There are tradeoffs.
Would the whole drink amount really all be given to those cells?
* It does not show human harm, only cellular disruption.
* It uses an unnatural exposure method.
* It builds on epidemiological correlations that may be reverse causality.
* It does not account for systemic factors, metabolism, or adaptive responses.
As you say I believe the correlation is reverse causality. It's much more likely that people who consume stuff with "artificial" sweetener are already at risk for stroke than the other way around.
If you don't have weight/cardio problems it is weird to consume "sugar-free" stuff and associated because they are almost always worse tasting than the real deal.
To have any importance they would need a big population sample and correct for already existing risks for stroke and I believe they would find that this stuff has very little impact, if any.
But as always, it doesn't cost much to limit consumption, so why not?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01504-6
https://www.samsclub.com/p/quest-protein-bar-variety-chocola...
For example erythritol itself occurs naturally in some fruit and fermented foods, making it a "normal sweetener".
Of course, a significant majority of Americans aren't all that healthy - I guess I'm not sure what your point is.
- All study subjects had a "high prevalence of CVD [cardiovascular disease] and risk factor burden"
- Erythritol occurs naturally in the body and and this was not accounted for
- The study subjects were already suffering from cardiovascular disease and were likely to be consuming more artificial sweeteners than a general population, but this was not recognized or accounted for
- Erythritol's presence after a cardiovascular incident could be from consumption or from natural production but only baseline was measured despite data showing dramatic fluctuations after consumption
Another one of the studies cited for evidence of human claims (Khafagy et al., 2024) directly contradicts them. It stated said "we did not find supportive evidence from MR that erythritol increases cardiometabolic disease".
There are two more human studies referenced but I didn't read them.