[colordrops]

The study appears to focus on aspartame, sucrolose, and acesulfame-k, which to my mind (which is admittedly uneducated in this domain) seem heavily artificial, and the findings are not surprising.

What about plant-based sweeteners such as stevia, monkfruit etc, or sugar alcohols?

[bwestergard]

What makes the first three "more artificial", in your view?

[Melatonic]

They are made in a lab and not from an actual fruit or plant?

[anthonypasq]

well considering there's a million different plants or fruits that will kill you quite easily, im not exactly sure that is something worth caring about.

[ars]

That's not it. If it's made by a plant it's more likely your body has enzymes and pathways to metabolize the item (the chemical structure is "familiar" or "compatible" with yours if you will). This means it doesn't build up and cause low toxicity over time. i.e. it's pretty obvious if it's poisonous.

Not so with lab created stuff - your body may not have the ability to do anything with it, so it either sits and causes slow damage, or gets excreted very slowly, and can cause hard to detect damage.

For example acetone is not very toxic because the body can metabolize it.

[cheald]

Well, sucralose is made by replacing hydroxy groups in sucrose with chlorine, and does not exist independent of industrial production processes, while erythritol (for example) is made by fermenting glucose with yeast, and occurs in nature.

[cheald]

That's what I was looking for, too. With the proliferation of low-carb diets, sweeteners like erythritol, monk fruit, chicory, and allulose have seen significant increases in popularity. I'd really like to see some study that treats them as first-class subjects rather than just retreading the aspartame and acesulfame-k questions.

[kkfx]

stevia, monkfruit etc are not "artificial", are just different -ose sources. Sugar is C₆H₁₂O₆ the rest are just "impurity", there is no difference between sugar from sugar beet, sugar cane, fructose, ... they are the same C₆H₁₂O₆ + extras.

Artificial sweeteners are byproduct of petroleum refining, witch means they do not contain C₆H₁₂O₆ + something but completely different molecules that happen to taste like it for us.

[jimbob365]

Isn't this just the appeal to nature fallacy? Assuming that artificial things are bad and natural things are good.

[PlanckMeasure80]

There’s one sugar the FDA has allowed to stay off the total sugars list

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-brief/fda-brief-fda-allo...