357th original article
Sweet and salty are the two "taste masters" engraved in human genes. Especially the sweetness, from babies who croak on the ground to old people with white hair, almost no one can resist its temptation. Addictive, is that foods with natural sugar and sugary foods can control the "iron wrist" of the brain command for a long time. From a candy to a bag of sugar, from a cup of milk tea to several cups of milk tea, a surge in magnitude, that is, a matter of up to a week and a month. Fixing the human brain and making it dependent on, or even inseparable from, for a long time – this is easy for sweetness!
Sweet, definitely a PUA master!
However, everyone knows that eating sugar will make you fat! What about swelling? "Thankfully there was sugar-free food/drinks! There is sugar Coke to induce people to fat, then I will change the sugar-free version, tons of tons, tons, tons, drink ten boxes I am not afraid! This is probably the happiness countermeasure in the hearts of many small partners. Satisfying my appetite without worrying about heat, killing two birds with one stone, I'm the happiest and I'm the thinnest!
However, today's article, I am afraid that it will make the small friends who love "zero sugar" lose their despair.
In addition to saying "Sorry Oh, Don't Hate Me" in advance for the discomfort caused by reading, I also want you to prepare tissues...
Recently, a cohort study of 102865 adults from Charlotte Debras' team at the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Laboratory (EREB) at the University of Paris XIII, published in the journal Plos Medicine, gave a big hit:
Heavy intake of non-nutritive sweeteners, especially aspartame:
Significantly associated with a 22% increased risk of breast cancer;
It was significantly associated with a 15% increased risk of all obesity-induced cancers such as colorectal, gastric, liver, esophageal, ovarian, prostate, etc.
Before we get into the details, let's briefly review non-nutritive sweeteners.
Non-nutritive sweetener, referred to as NNS (also known as sugar substitute, zero caramel). Their common features are that there is no heat, or because the sweetness is extremely high, the amount of heat is negligible. Members include: saccharin, acesulfame potassium, aspartame, sucralose, alisteen, steviol glycosides and monk glycosides.
The application of NNS in the food industry has been very extensive. In particular, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose can be regarded as the three giants in this circle, and they are also "old comrades" with very early qualifications. If you carefully study the ingredient list of processed foods, you will find that many foods have their shadows, even if they contain added sugar. After all, strategies such as reducing costs, improving taste, and reducing sugar content are all things we can think of, and food processing companies cannot let go.
Sugar-free food/beverages are the main battlefield of NNS.
Like all overnight popular people and things, NNS has been found by the nutrition community for a period of time to have shortcomings and even drawbacks: although they do not produce heat, they do not bring natural sugar to the human body's satisfaction, and even increase the brain's preference threshold (or threshold) for sweeteners, reducing the body's sensitivity to sweetness. Therefore, NNS does not reduce our love and obsession with sweetness, on the contrary, it will stimulate our appetite, make us eat more, and make us more likely to gain weight. This 0 calorie "zero sugar" in the old text may be quietly helping you get fat... The studies mentioned have been confirmed (sucralose, one of the members of the NNS, helps us gain weight).
In 2019, in response to the needs of the World Health Organization, scholars screened, compared, and analyzed 13,941 studies involving non-added sugar sweeteners (including NNS and sugar alcohols mentioned in the previous tweet), and finally concluded that non-added sugar sweeteners cannot fulfill your dream of "eating sweets and not gaining weight"... Specifically, you can click on the old article to understand: is zero/low-calorie sugar substitute really a black weapon for you to eat sweet and not fat?.
And today's study added several exclamation points to the previous conclusion that "the health meaning of sweeteners may just be a bubble"! After all, it is already very disappointing not to be able to stop gaining weight, and if it will cause cancer, it is simply desperate in the world!
Let's take a closer look.
Research background (those who are not interested can be skipped)
Investigators: Researchers from the University of Paris in France and the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization, IARC;
Source: French large nutritional health study French NutriNet-Santé study data;
Participants: 102865 participants, with an average age of 42.2 years, 78.5% of whom were female;
Follow-up period: more than 7 years;
Information collection: participants' age, gender, height, weight, physical activity, smoking status, family history of diseases such as diabetes and cancer, review of dietary information within 24 hours, etc.;
Assessment: Participants' energy, alcohol, sodium, dietary fiber, added sugars, total NNS intake, intake of different types of artificial sweeteners, etc.
▍ Research findings
Of the 100,000 participants, 36.92% had ingested NNS, with higher and lower intakes accounting for 50% each;
The most commonly chosen sugar substitute is aspartame, which accounts for 58% of total sugar substitute intake, acesulfame potassium accounts for 29%, and sucralose accounts for 10%;
The main source of sugar substitutes is sugar-free/sugar substitute beverages, which account for 53%. This is followed by snacks, biscuits, cakes, oatmeal, etc., as well as yogurt or cheese, which account for 29% and 8% of total sugar substitute intake, respectively;
In the average follow-up period of more than 7 years, there were 3358 new cancers, including 982 breast cancers, 403 prostate cancers and 2023 obesity-related cancers (such as colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, oral cancer, pharyngeal cancer, laryngeal cancer, esophageal cancer, ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer, etc.);
People with higher sugar substitute intakes, mostly women, young people, and people with less physical activity, have a higher chance of developing diabetes and have higher sodium intake.
▍ Relationship of NNS to various cancers
Compared to people who don't eat sugar substitutes:
People with high total sugar substitute intake, as well as those with high intake of aspartame or acesulfame potassium, increased their overall risk of developing cancer by 13%, 15%, and 13%, respectively;
People with high sugar substitute intakes (regardless of what they eat) are more likely to gain weight, and the risk of obesity-related cancers increases with increased intake.
Among women:
High total sugar substitute intakes, as well as high intakes of aspartame or acesulfame potassium, increased the risk of breast cancer by 16%, 22%, and 17%.
Among men:
High total sugar substitute intake, as well as high intake of aspartame or acesulfame potassium, increased the risk of prostate cancer by 26%, 28%, and 18%.
Aren't the above results amazing? You who often eat aspartame sugar substitute foods/ drink aspartame small sweet water, do you feel a tightness somewhere in the body at the moment...
Seeing this, it is estimated that there will be a small partner raising his hand and asking: Since the non-nutritional sugar substitute is so uneasy, then, should we return to added sugar? Sucrose or fructose, good evil is extracted from natural food, is it still safer than artificial sweeteners or a few points?
That's a great question!
The research team has already thought of it for us! They made a set of comparisons specifically with sugar substitutes and added sugars, which was very meticulous and thoughtful. The data of zero-generation sugar/low added sugar, low-sugar/low added sugar, low-sugar/high-added sugar, high-sugar/low-added sugar, high-sugar/high-added sugar, high-sugar/high-added sugar, and zero-generation sugar/high added sugar were analyzed in two or two directions. The results were heartbreaking:
Both sugar substitutes and added sugars increase the risk of cancer, obesity, and obesity-related cancers, and intake is positively correlated with the degree of cancer risk — the more you consume, the higher the risk of cancer. And the contribution of sugar substitutes and added sugars in "pro-cancer" is not much different. In other words, which type of intake increases the risk by a similar degree.
As for how sugar substitutes harm human health, researchers analyze that they may be related to a variety of mechanisms, such as sugar substitutes may cause overweight or obesity, lead to metabolic disorders, promote inflammation, angiogenesis and DNA damage, inhibit apoptosis, change the richness of intestinal microorganisms, and cause imbalances in the gut microbiome. Of course, these need to be explored by more research.
Alas, can you still enjoy sweet happiness happily? Even the owner of the house himself has sprouted an emo that is not easy in the social world and the only happiness is deprived... Too southern!
▍ Summary
There is an association between non-nutritive artificial sweeteners, particularly aspartame and acesulfame potassium, and cancer and obesity risk (although no conclusive causal relationship has been proven). This means that artificial sweeteners are not a healthy, safe alternative to sugar.
To reduce the risk of cancer, we not only need not to eat/drink foods/beverages that contain added sugar, but also to reduce the intake of artificial sweeteners.
▍ Afterword
While pleasure is important, health cannot be ignored. The long-term health effects of excessive sugar consumption have been widely confirmed by various high-quality studies: not only will people become round (half a month), but also increase the risk of various chronic non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, diabetes, osteoarthritis and so on. This knowledge, I believe that readers who often read popular science are not unfamiliar.
With the unremitting efforts of major official organizations such as the World Health Organization, the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and professional groups such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases/diabetes in various countries, the public's understanding of added sugars has changed significantly compared with before. Some celebrity Internet celebrities even set off an "anti-sugar" fashion. Friends who are afraid of being fat and have requirements for their own image are rushing to the "zero sugar" market: zero card drinks, zero added sugar foods, and even zero sugar candies have sprung up. In the past two years, the number of zero-calorie beverages launched by major established beverage companies alone has been innumerable, coupled with a large number of new brands. It seems that the beverage market is forming a polarized "breaking head" scene: one end is milk tea with a lot of added sugar, and the other end is a zero-sugar beverage with a lot of sugar substitutes.
On shelves outside of beverages, from pastries to dairy products to a variety of processed snacks, they are opening up their own "zero added sugar" categories. Chinese is entering the era of "zero sugar".
For emerging things, should we actively try to be early adopters, or should we be conservative and wait-and-see? My personal attitude has always been: sit back and watch, not to hinder attempts, but also not to encourage. The reason is simple: everything that emerges takes time to test its reliability and sustainability.
To take a very classic case: the processed food industry was invigorated, thinking that it could both highly simulate the taste of natural animal fats and avoid trans fatty acids that harm the human body - after 20 years of extensive practice and data collection, it was found that the top stream that was originally considered to be healthy and delicious was actually the "slag fat" that should be put into prison.
And today's story about aspartame, cyclamate, and sucralose gives us a similar wake-up call. Although there have been various warnings about NNS in the past, in terms of carcinogenicity, this article can be described as the loudest blow, and it is absolutely impossible to ignore!
There will definitely be more similar stories in the future. Friends who really want to maintain health, please remember:
The nutrients that natural foods can provide are complex and "smart," and the human body is complex and smart. If it can be natural, it is natural, and if it is natural, a small amount can be stopped.
Personal opinion, for reference only.
Love tips at the end of the article
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the daily intake of free sugars (i.e., what we often call added sugars, such as sucrose, fructose, maltose, etc.) is limited to less than 10% of the total energy intake throughout the day (about 50 grams if the calorie intake is 2000 kcal), and it is best to further reduce it to less than 5%, or about 25 grams per day (equivalent to 6 teaspoons).
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(The picture used in the text comes from the network)
So humble and broken thoughts
Not only to reduce sugar, but also to reduce sugar substitutes
Cottage owner profile
Liu Suiqian: Australian DAA certified registered practicing dietitian (APD), Certified Registered Dietitian of the Chinese Nutrition Society, member of the Australian DAA and Chinese Nutrition Society, Master of Clinical Nutrition (MND) of the University of Sydney, and holds the Postgraduate Certificate of Pediatric Nutrition at Boston University School of Medicine, clinical nutritionist, science popularizer, member of the Expert Group of China Health Promotion Foundation Caring for Maternal Health Public Welfare Activities, member of the Nutrition Management Expert Committee of Beijing Health Management Association, He is an expert member of the Infant SupplementAry Food Professional Committee of the China Nutrition and Health Food Association. He is a member of the translation committee of Krause Nutrition Diagnosis and Treatment, a nutrition columnist of many magazines and media, and has edited five sets of maternal and infant books, and is the author of the book "Baby Feeding 7 Lessons, Farewell Anxiety Begins with Food Education". Ten years in the face of clinical old and young pregnant patients, it is determined that the prevention and treatment of non-disease and psychological support are the direction of medical help and healing - the road of science popularization, and we work together.
Personal WeChat public account platform: Liu_suiqian
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