United States – It is worth noting that there is further evidence that such a substance as erythritol, widely used as an artificial sweetener, is dangerous for the hearts of consumers.
The new study, involving 20 healthy adult volunteers, showed that at levels normally consumed through an erythritol-sweetened soda or muffin, the substance increased the activity of blood platelets and potentially increased clotting, as reported by HealthDay.
Implications for High-Risk Individuals
Signs of such an impact were not identified with sugar, as researchers led by Dr. Stanley Hazen, chair of cardiovascular and metabolic sciences at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, pointed out.
“Many professional societies and clinicians routinely recommend that people at high cardiovascular risk — those with obesity, diabetes or metabolic syndrome — consume foods that contain sugar substitutes rather than sugar,” Kazen explained in a clinic news release.
However, his team’s findings “underscore the importance of further long-term clinical studies to assess the cardiovascular safety of erythritol and other sugar substitutes,” Kazen said.
Previous Findings and Growing Concerns
The new study was published more than a year after Hazen and his team had first published similar findings in Nature Medicine. Earlier last year, HealthDay revealed another study carried out on nearly 1,200 participants, which revealed that those with high levels of erythritol in their bloodstream have at least twice the chance of experiencing a heart attack or stroke as those with the lowest levels.
At the time, a laboratory study had suggested that erythritol caused this adverse impact on the heart through the activation of clot-producing platelets.
Erythritol has approximately 70% of the sweetening power of sugar and is manufactured industrially by fermenting corn. This chemical is present in many ketogenic foods and zero sugar foods according to Hazen and is contained in some of the Splenda stevia sweeteners and Truvia.
“It’s literally one of the fastest-growing artificial sweeteners in processed foods,” Hazen said when the Nature Medicine study was published. “We make it ourselves in our body, but at an amount that is a thousand to a million-fold less than what it is when we eat it in an artificially sugary substances that has it.”
In the new study, 20 healthy volunteers agreed to consume a dose of erythritol – present in similar levels to a sugarless muffin or a can of diet soda.
The scientists explained that blood levels of erythritol spiked 1,000-fold shortly after the consumption of the drink, and a significant increase in blood clot formation was also observed among the participants.
“This research raises some concerns that a standard serving of an erythritol-sweetened food or beverage may acutely stimulate a direct clot-forming effect,” said study co-author Dr. W. H. Wilson Tang, research director for Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. “Erythritol and other sugar alcohols that are commonly used as sugar substitutes should be evaluated for potential long-term health effects, especially when such effects are not seen with glucose itself.”
Erythritol is approved by the U. S Food and Drug Administration as it falls under the ‘generally recognized as a safe product. Based on the information gathered from Hazen’s group, this can be attributed to the fact that erythritol is a naturally occurring sugar alcohol in fruits and vegetables, and also in minimal amounts a metabolizing product of glucose in human tissues.”
But combined data from all his team’s research, Hazen said, at least those caring about their weight should stop and think.
“I feel that choosing sugar-sweetened treats occasionally and in small amounts would be preferable to consuming drinks and foods sweetened with these sugar alcohols, especially for people at elevated risk of thrombosis such as those with heart disease, diabetes or metabolic syndrome,” Hazen advised. “Heart disease builds over time and is the leading cause of demises globally. We need to make sure the foods we ingest are not hidden helpers to the same.”
The work was done under the grant of the United States National Institutes of Health and the Office of Dietary Supplements.
Subsequently, a group acting for the sweetener industry challenged most of the research approaches used in the study, as reported by HealthDay.
The research should be interpreted with “extreme caution,” Calorie Control Council President Carla Saunders to CBS news.
She protested an excessively small sample of participants and an “excessive amount of erythritol,” which the author mentioned was “almost twice to three times more than the maximum allowed per serving of a drink in the United States. ”
Industry Response and Criticism
“Importantly, erythritol levels were only measured once after consumption, and the pilot lacked control over lifestyle factors that may affect the outcome, which could introduce confounding variables and impact the reliability of the findings,” the statement continued. “Further, as erythritol levels were only measured at baseline and 30 minutes after consumption, there is no way to demonstrate any lasting effect of excessive consumption on any health outcome. Consumers need to rely on science, and for 30 years, science has shown that erythritol is a proven to be 100% safe and effective choice for sugar and calorie reduction.”