A Popular Sweetener Was Linked to Increased Anxiety in Generations of Mice

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to News@lemmy.world – 274 points –
A Popular Sweetener Was Linked to Increased Anxiety in Generations of Mice
sciencealert.com
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1, it's aspartame

2, Mice aren't humans, and routinely, things that happen in mice do not happen in humans. It is not at all indicative of anything and can really only be used as a hint better than nothing for looking into similar effects in humans.

You don't need to change your diet, and you certainly don't need to replace it with sugar.

Comment paid for Big Aspartame.

Considering the patent was held by Monsanto, and all the decades of concerns have been raised by independent researchers but shut down by lobbying...

Well, I mean, who can you trust to not hide that they're making poison if not Monsanto?

Not to mention that the gene pool of these lab mice is super small. Source: my brother is a PhD biochemist and lectured me often on this shit when I said, "hey, look at this study!"

Such a small groups are fine for initial investigation, they have enough of a size to be acceptable statistically for most of the performed studies. I don't think they'd get approval from ethical committee overseeing animal experiments without initial study like this to conduct something on very high groups.

I am a relatively recent transplant from the red place, I can tell I ain't in Kansas anymore, actual good information being up voted so cool.

Aspartame is, because of all the claims against it, the single most studied food substance known, and it seems to somehow keep coming okay. There are a lot of studies with really bad methods that were a smear job attempt but science doing what it does they were labeled for what they are and disregarded. Is it possible to be allergic and a reaction to be anxiety sure, but that is not on the food.

Guarantee the study also states that you have to consume an ungodly amount of it too...

News reports grab on to stuff like this all the time. Like what they did with safrole.

The article actually states how much. 15% of the daily recommended amount.

There's a daily recommended amount for mice? Or was that 15% of the recommended amount for humans, which would be massive for mice?

It's the equivalent of the human daily dose. So adjusted for body weight. Loosely translated, it would be 15% of the daily recommended dose for mice.

15% of humans recommended amount. It's in the article.

So 15% for a 60 kilogram human, on the lower end, would be the daily recommended amount for a 9 kilogram creature. A mouse weighs around 0.025 kilograms. So, that amount for the mice is for something 360 times larger.

Obviously it's more complicated than that with differing metabolisms and the like, but as a rough estimate, wow. That's a lot.

I'm baffled by your willingness to elaborate at length about this, but not read the article where this is explained. Misinforming everyone in the process.

When a sample of mice were given free access to water dosed with aspartame equivalent to 15 percent of the FDA's recommended maximum daily amount for humans, they generally displayed more anxious behavior in specially designed mood tests.

I stand corrected! That's a ridiculously small amount!

Just in case you missed it, we discussed below that that's the 15% daily recommended amount for a human. That they gave to the mice. A creature several hundred times smaller.

So you were right in the first place.

No, it's the equivalent dose.

When a sample of mice were given free access to water dosed with aspartame equivalent to 15 percent of the FDA's recommended maximum daily amount for humans, they generally displayed more anxious behavior in specially designed mood tests.

Can you cite your sources? This excerpt from the published article suggests you're wrong:

The FDA recommended maximum DIV for aspartame for humans is 50 mg/kg (33). Based on allometric conversion utilizing pharmacokinetic and body surface area parameters (43), the mouse equivalent of the human DIV is 615 mg/kg/d. Therefore, the male mice received a daily aspartame dose equivalent to 14.0%, 7.0%, and 3.5% of the FDA recommended human DIV, and the females received a dose equivalent to 15.5%, 7.7%, and 3.9% of the human DIV.