How the artificial sweeteners you eat can change your future grandchildren
That sense of security that you won’t gain so much as an ounce from drinking soda or putting a little artificial sweetener in your coffee can come at a price. Artificial sweeteners can leave a mark on your DNA that can ripple through future generations of your family’s lineage, affecting them in ways we don’t yet understand.
A study published in Limits in nutrition by researchers at the University of Chile gave mice sucralose, a common zero-calorie artificial sweetener found in many grocery stores. Think diet soda, popsicles, barbecue sauces, syrups, cereals and much more. They found that these sucralose mice developed changes in their gut bacteria and that genes closely associated with inflammation were affected. They also noted noticeable changes in metabolic function.
But these changes did not stop with those mice. They continued in successive generations. Their offspring, and even their grandchildren, showed similar biological changes despite never having been given sucralose themselves.
Artificial sweeteners can affect your DNA for generations, studies show
The study tracked three generations of mice. The first group had either plain water, sucralose or stevia for 16 weeks. Their descendants were like that kid you knew in school who didn’t eat so much as a single bowl of sugary cereal until college. They were raised without any exposure to sweeteners so the researchers could more clearly see what, if anything, was being passed on biologically.
It immediately became clear that the effects of sucralose were passed on. It affected the gut bacteria of future generations of mice that had never been exposed to sucralose, disrupting their core bacterial community and reducing levels of short-chain fatty acids, which are compounds associated with healthy metabolism and lower inflammation. The effects of sucralose also activated genes associated with gut inflammation and suppressed a liver gene involved in fat and blood sugar regulation.
Stevia, another artificial sweetener, was also tested. It showed similar effects, but they were milder. The researchers believe that the difference comes down to how the body processes sweeteners. Sucralose has to pass through the entire digestive system, and it does so largely unchanged, lingering in your gut and messing with your gut bacteria all the time. Stevia, on the other hand, breaks down faster. It doesn’t have as much time to mess with your stomach.
Obviously, this is a mouse study and anything about this will be difficult to replicate in humans and may take decades under strictly controlled conditions before we see clear results, but so far the results are a bit unsettling. The negative effects of the diet soda you have today will show up in your children and your grandchildren. At this rate, all we can do is hope the effects aren’t too bad.
