A new piece in the debate on the possible association between consumption of sweeteners and increased risk of cancer. This is provided by a large French study published in ‘Plos Medicine’, the results of which lean towards risk and which aims to offer new insights into the ongoing re-evaluation of sweeteners by the European Food Safety Authority and other health agencies. global level.
The food industry – the researchers recall – uses artificial sweeteners in a wide range of foods and beverages, as alternatives to added sugars, for which the effects on various chronic diseases are now well established. The safety of these food additives is debated, with conflicting results regarding their role in the etiology of various diseases. In particular, their carcinogenicity has been suggested by various experimental studies which, however, have not yielded definitive results. Hence the start of the study which, overall, included 102,865 adults from the French NutriNet-Santé cohort (2009-2021, median follow-up time 7.8 years).
The work was attended by researchers from various French institutions – Inserm, Inrae, Sorbonne University Paris Nord, Cnam – who collected the information and statistically evaluated the association between the consumption of sweeteners and the risk of cancer, taking into account the various potentially confounding factors. – age, gender, level of education, physical activity, body mass index, diabetes, weight, family history of cancer, alcohol consumption, consumption of salt and junk foods – concluding that, compared with those who do not consume them, the subjects who take more sweeteners would have a higher risk of developing cancer. “This study suggests – says Charlotte Debras, first author of the research – that artificial sweeteners, used in numerous foods, could represent an important risk factor for cancer, even if Further large-scale data will be needed to confirm the results“.