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The Sucralose News: Scaremongering Or Serious?

Plus: how slow reading can change your brain

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The 10almonds Team
June 07, 2023

 

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

Loading Screen Tip: we need diversity in our lives in order to thrive, so do something different today. This goes for our physical and mental health, which are very intertwined anyway.

So, wear an outfit that hasn’t been in rotation for a bit, take a different route to the grocery store, buy something you’ve never tried before (or at least haven’t had for a long while), cook a new recipe.

Then keep going; seek out novelty and see how far it takes you! You may be surprised at what you discover.

One almond
⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • Going through things slowly may benefit our brains in some ways that speeding through texts does not

    • See today’s video for more on that!

  • There’s a new study out, much-reported in the popular press, who say sucralose breaks down DNA and puts holes in our gut

    • It’s not actually the sucralose that breaks down DNA, it’s sucralose-6-acetate, but this may be a problem anyway

      • Sucralose products may contain enough of sucralose-6-acetate to have this effect

      • Our own gut might convert sucralose into sucralose-6-acetate

    • We don’t know a lot for sure, but the results do point to what the headlines are concluding

      • The science so far has been done on rats or in vitro (ie, petri dishes etc) and a lot more research is needed to be able to say much for sure that’s actually useful to us

      • Meanwhile, it may be reasonable to avoid sucralose as a precaution

  • As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily

    • Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints

      • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How slow reading can change your brain

How does a world of speed and information impact our brains, our culture, and the architecture that supports learning?

🧬 MAIN FEATURE

What’s the news on sucralose?

These past days the press has been abuzz with frightening tales:

How true and/or serious is this?

Firstly, let’s manage expectations. Pineapple juice also breaks down DNA, but is not generally considered a health risk. So let’s keep that in mind, while we look into the science.

Is sucralose as scary as pineapple juice, or is it something actually dangerous?

The new study (that sparked off these headlines)

The much-referenced study is publicly available to read in full—here it is:

You may notice that this doesn’t have quite the snappy punchiness of some of the headlines, but let’s break this down, if you’ll pardon the turn of phrase:

  • Toxicological: pertaining to whether or not it has toxic qualities

  • Pharmacokinetic: the science of asking, of chemicals in bodies, “where did it come from; where did it go; what could it do there; what can we know?”

  • Sucralose-6-acetate: an impurity that can be found in sucralose. For perspective, the study found that the sucralose in Splenda contained “up to” 0.67% sucralose-6-acetate.

  • Sucralose: a modified form of sucrose, that makes it hundreds of times sweeter, and non-caloric because the body cannot break it down so it’s treated as a dietary fiber and just passes through

  • In vitro: things are happening in petri dishes, not in animals (human or otherwise), which would be called “in vivo”

  • Screening assays: “we set up a very closed-parameters chemical test, to see what happens when we add this to this” ⇽ oversimplification, but this is the basic format of a screening assay

Great, now we understand the title, but what about the study?

Researchers looked primarily at the effects of sucralose-6-acetate and sucralose (together and separately) on epithelial cells (these are very simple cells that are easy to study; conveniently, they are also most of what makes up our intestinal walls). For this, they used a fancy way of replicating human intestinal walls, that’s actually quite fascinating but beyond the scope of today’s newsletter. Suffice it to say: it’s quite good, and/but has its limitations too. They also looked at some in vivo rat studies.

What they found was…

Based on samples from the rat feces (somehow this didn’t make it into the headlines), it appears that sucralose may be acetylated in the intestines. What that means is that we, if we are like the rats (definitely not a given, but a reasonable hypothesis), might convert up to 10% of sucralose into sucralose-6-acetate inside us. Iff we do, the next part of the findings become more serious.

Based on the in vitro simulations, both sucralose and sucralose-6-acetate reduced intestinal barrier integrity at least a little, but sucralose-6-acetate was the kicker when it came to most of the effects—at least, so we (reasonably!) suppose.

Basically, there’s a lot of supposition going on here but the suppositions are reasonable. That’s how science works; there’s usually little we can know for sure from a single study; it’s when more studies roll in that we start to get a more complete picture.

What was sucralose-6-acetate found to do? It increased the expression of genes associated with inflammation, oxidative stress, and cancer (granted those three things generally go together). So that’s a “this probably has this end result” supposition.

More concretely, and which most of the headlines latched onto, it was found (in vitro) to induce cytogenic damage, specifically, of the clastogenic variety (produces DNA strand breaks—so this is different than pineapple’s bromelain and DNA-helicase’s relatively harmless unzipping of genes).

The dose makes the poison

So, how much is too much and is that 0.67% something to worry about?

  • Remembering the rat study, it may be more like 10% once our intestines have done their thing. Iff we’re like rats.

  • But, even if it’s only 0.67%, this will still be above the “threshold of toxicological concern for genotoxicity”, of 0.15µg/person/day.

  • On the other hand, the fact that these were in vitro studies is a serious limitation.

  • Sometimes something is very dangerous in vitro, because it’s being put directly onto cells, whereas in vivo we may have mechanisms for dealing with that.

We won’t know for sure until we get in vivo studies in human subjects, and that may not happen any time soon, if ever, depending on the technical limitations and ethical considerations that sometimes preclude doing certain studies in humans.

Bottom line:

  • The headlines are written to be scary, but aren’t wrong; their claims are fundamentally true

  • What that means for us as actual humans may not be the same, however; we don’t know yet

  • For now, it is probably reasonable to avoid sucralose just in case

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition - The New York Times Bestseller - by Dr. T. Colin Campbell

Most of us have at least a broad idea of what we're supposed to be eating, what nutrients we should be getting. Many of us look at labels, and try to get our daily dose of this and that and the other.

And what we don't get from food? There are supplements.

Dr. Campbell thinks we can do better:

Perhaps most critical in this book, where it stands out from others (we may already know, for example, that we should try to eat diverse plants and whole foods) is its treatment of why many supplements aren't helpful.

We tend to hear "supplements are a waste of money" and sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. How to know the difference?

Key: things directly made from whole food sources will tend to be better. Seems reasonable, but... why? The answer lies in what else those foods contain. An apple may contain a small amount of vitamin C, less than a vitamin C tablet, but also contains a whole host of other things—tiny phytonutrients, whose machinations are mostly still mysteries to us—that go with that vitamin C and help it work much better. Lab-made supplements won't have those.

There's a lot more to the book... A chunk of which is a damning critique of the US healthcare system (the author argues it would be better named a sicknesscare system). We also learn about getting a good balance of macro- and micronutrients from our diet rather than having to supplement so much.

The style is conversational, while not skimping on the science. The author has had more than 150 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and is no stranger to the relevant academia. Here, however, he focuses on making things easily comprehensible to the lay reader.

In short: if you've ever wondered how you're doing at getting a good nutritional profile, and how you could do better, this is definitely the book for you.

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Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday,

The 10almonds Team