Sweeteners and cancer: a study points to the harmful effects of "substitute sugars"

For three decades, they have conquered most of the shelves of our supermarkets. Sweeteners, also called “substitute sugars”, are found in prepared meals, compotes, yogurts, ice creams, sweets, crisps and especially “light” drinks (sodas of all kinds) whose market is n stopped growing – their consumption more than doubled in the United States between 2000 and 2008. With one objective: to reduce the number of calories while maintaining the sweet taste of these products. The most used with often barbaric names are even beginning to be familiar to the general public: aspartame, Acesulfame-K or even sucralose (the three main ones).

No proven beneficial effect on weight

While they are becoming widespread, scientific studies are accumulating to show that the remedy can be worse than the disease: sweeteners do not necessarily show a beneficial effect on weight and maintain a kind of appetite for sweet taste. Worse, they have harmful effects on health by causing certain diseases. French scientists from Inserm, INRAE, Cnam and Sorbonne Paris Nord University, within the nutritional epidemiology research team (EREN), suggest an association between the consumption of sweeteners and a risk increase in cancers in an article published this Thursday, March 24 in the journal PLOS Medicine.

For this, they rely on a cohort of 102,865 adults participating in the NutriNet-Santé study started in 2009. “Our work is the first on a large scale to quantify exposure to sweeteners and their effects on health”, summarizes Mathilde Touvier, research director at Inserm who is coordinating the study with a doctoral student, Charlotte Debras. This link is often debated. Firstly, because many studies are funded by the food manufacturers themselves, which leads to conflicts of interest as long as the arm with certain researchers and whose conclusions would minimize the deleterious effects. Then, because most of them are done in the laboratory on cells or animals and would be difficult to extend to humans.

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science progresses

However, research is progressing. She highlighted, for example, a greater probability of developing type-2 diabetes with “light” soda than with classic soda. Similarly, recently, the role of artificial sweeteners in disrupting the gut microbiota has been highlighted. So much so that in France, the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Anses) finally estimated that one of them, in the form of titanium dioxide, used as an additive food was not safe for health.

A cohort followed for more than a decade

The large population-based NutriNet-Santé study therefore made it possible to examine the associations between the consumption of sweeteners (the most frequently consumed) and the risk of cancer (overall and by the most frequent types of cancer). “For years we have been working with volunteers who started by filling out detailed questionnaires to find out their medical history, their socio-demographic data, their physical activity, as well as indications on their lifestyle and their state of health, explains Mathilde Touvier. Then, they are meticulously monitored, most often via the Internet to give us the details of their food consumption and therefore allow us to assess their exposure to additives”.

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Finally, the evolution of their state of health over more than a decade was followed, in particular those who developed certain cancers. “And we found that, compared to those who don’t, people who ingest more sweeteners have a greater risk of developing cancer. For women, breast cancer risks have been observed and for men, it is first of all prostate cancer”, assures the Inserm researcher. Before specifying: “It will take other large-scale statistical studies to confirm our results, but they show that the use of sweeteners as an alternative to sugar is far from obvious.” In the meantime, addicts to “light” sodas have every interest in reducing their consumption and remembering that the surest way not to swallow too much sugar is to stay… with plain water.