Most of us know that sugar – especially when consumed in excess – is very harmful and can lead to overweight, obesity and metabolic syndromes including type-2 diabetes. 

As a result, many food products have substituted artificial sweeteners for sugar, and many consumers use such products to add to their coffee, tea and food that they prepare. 

But while artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar in many foods and beverages, their long-term health benefits have remained unclear. Now, a team of scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba – lead by Prof. Ariel Kushmaro and Dr. Karina Golberg – have tested six artificial sweeteners approved and described as “safe and beneficial” by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and found that they interfere with bacterial communication. 

While none of them actively destroys beneficial bacteria in the gut, three of the six were found to significantly impair communication, which, the scientists theorize, could lead to digestive diseases and discomfort. Their findings have just been published last month in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences under the title “Inhibitory Effects of Artificial Sweeteners on Bacterial Quorum Sensing.” 

Gut microorganisms (in the gastrointestinal tract) are vital for the normal metabolic functions of humans, as they communicate within their community and regulate group behaviors via a molecular system termed quorum sensing (QS). For many years, bacteria have been thought to act independently, but the discovery that they act collectively through QS, a sophisticated network of cell-cell communication has been a great leap in the understanding of bacterial biology, they wrote. 

“The fact that bacteria use quorum sensing to communicate with each other revolutionizes our understanding and enables us to provide clearer answers. Artificial sweeteners disrupt that communication, which indicates that artificial sweeteners may be problematic in the long run,” said Golberg, the lead researcher. 

The scientists suggested that sports supplements contain artificial sweeteners in sufficient quantities to provide a good basis for testing as athletes constantly monitor their intakes. They tested aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), advantame, and neotame. They did not test stevia, a sweetener made from a natural plant. Three of the six artificial sweeteners – aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin – were found to significantly inhibit bacterial communication. At least one of the three were found in all the sports supplements they tested.

To test the sweeteners, they used bioluminescent indicator bacteria whose luminescence was reduced if bacterial communication was disrupted.

“There is little accurate labeling of artificial sweeteners on products, which makes it difficult to know how much each product contains. Our research should push the food industry to reevaluate their use of artificial sweeteners,” says Prof. Ariel Kushmaro, head of BGU’s Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology in the Goldstein-Goren department of biotechnology engineering and a member of BGU’s Ilse Katz Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Golberg is a researcher in his lab.