Which Artificial Sweeteners Are Linked To Brain Aging?

Sugar is famously not great for the health. See for example: Is Sugar The New Smoking? ← the answer is “no, but it’s still very bad, just not in the same league of badness as smoking”!

Of course, there are some important circumstantial things to bear in mind, such as: From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

When it comes to sweeteners and general health, the prevailing scientific consensus is “don’t”. You can read in more detail what the WHO had to say about that (and why), here: The Problem With Sweeteners ← the main issue is for metabolic reasons

The WHO recommendation (avoid sweeteners) applies to artificial and naturally-occurring non-sugar sweeteners, such as:

• Acesulfame K
• Advantame
• Aspartame
• Cyclamates
• Neotame
• Saccharin
• Stevia

Erythritol (and sucralose, for that matter) didn’t make the list, because as they are technically sugars, they don’t go on a list of non-sugar sweeteners.

Nevertheless, we talked recently about erythritol and brain damage, here: Erythritol & Brain Damage: Is The Science As Scary As It Sounds?

So what’s this about artificial sweeteners and brain aging?

The usual suspects

Researchers (Natalia Gomes Gonçalves et al.) followed 12,772 adults (average age 52) for about eight years to examine whether intake of low- and no-calorie sweeteners was associated with changes in memory and thinking skills. Specifically, they measured verbal fluency, working memory, word recall, processing speed, and overall cognitive performance at the beginning, middle, and end of the study.

The sweeteners they looked at: aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, and tagatose.

What they found, in few words: participants with the highest total sweetener intake experienced a 62% faster decline in overall cognitive function than those with the lowest intake, a difference comparable to about 1.6 additional years of brain aging.

However, there was a dose-response relationship, as participants in the middle intake group showed a 35% faster cognitive decline than the lowest-using group, roughly equivalent to 1.3 additional years of aging.

For perspective, we’ll mention that the highest intake group averaged 191mg of sweeteners per day, while the lowest averaged 20mg per day. For aspartame, the highest intake was roughly equivalent to the amount in one can of diet soda.

One thing we’d be irresponsible not to point out here is that this was an observational study, so cannot outright prove causality. It could be that the people with higher intakes of sweeteners also had unhealthy habits in other areas of their lives that weren’t adequately controlled for (i.e. the researchers did try to control for confounding variables, but in a study with 12,772 participants, it’s never going to be perfect). In all likelihood, it’s a combination of factors including the sweeteners and other lifestyle aspects.

You can find this paper in full, here: Association Between Consumption of Low- and No-Calorie Artificial Sweeteners and Cognitive Decline

Still want to use a sweetener, but want to find the healthiest option out of them?

If, perchance, you have decided that for you, artificial sweeteners are still the “lesser evil” (and indeed there may be reasons this could be appropriate for some), then you might want to check out:

What’s The Healthiest Sweetener?

Enjoy!