If you’re holding a drink on the go, unless you’re specifically looking for organic or all-natural optionschances are you’ll end up drinking something with at least something ingredients you do not recognize Some of these substances, however, could be putting your health at risk.
Now, A new study suggests that ingesting artificial sweeteners, often found in beverages such as soda and energy drinks, may increase the risk of cancer.
In the study, published at the end of March in the journal PLOS Medicine, the researchers examined information from a questionnaire on nutrition and health from more than 100,000 French adults. Following a median follow-up of about eight years, they compared how people’s consumption of different artificial sweeteners affected their risk of various types of cancer and cancer in general.
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“To our knowledge, no previous cohort study had directly investigated associations between quantitative intake of artificial sweeteners per se, distinguishing between different types of sweeteners, and cancer risk,” said study authors Charlotte Debras and Dr. Mathilde Touvier, from the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN). ) at the French Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) at Sorbonne University Paris Nord Eat this, not that!. “In this large population-based study…artificial sweeteners (especially aspartame and acesulfame-K), which are used in many brands of food and beverages around the world, were associated with an increased risk of cancer” .
In addition, previous studies have linked aspartame with an increase blood sugar and inflammation as well as increasing your risk of insulin insensitivity. Acesulfame-K, meanwhile, has previously been linked with cancer as well as glucose intolerance. According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), aspartame is found in chewing gum, cereals, certain beverages, and more, while acesulfame-K can be found in frozen treats, candies, beverages and baked goods.
That said, the study authors noted that this study doesn’t tell us for sure that there is a cause-and-effect relationship. That is, the increased chance of getting cancer might not be a direct result of consuming these artificial sweeteners.
“These results need to be replicated in other large-scale cohorts and the underlying mechanisms need to be clarified by further experimental studies,” Debras and Touvier say. “Furthermore, they should not be construed as [a suggestion] to consume sugar instead of artificial sweeteners! Excessive sugar consumption is definitely causing a lot of chronic disease…and that needs to be limited as well.”
To learn more about how artificial sweeteners can affect your body, What are artificial sweeteners? and why are they in your food.
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