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A Popular Sweetener Was Linked to Increased Anxiety in Generations of Mice

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-popular-sweetener-was-linked-to-increased-anxiety-in-generations-of-mice

Could the sweetened drinks we're consuming be making us feel a little more anxious? A 2022 study looking at the effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame on mice suggests that it's a possibility that's worth investigating further.

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Sporky

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It's not astroturfing it's people sick of these studies where they pump ungodly amounts of aspartame into mice until they get a reaction. Aspartame doesn't do anything at the levels humans consume it, it's one of the most studied compounds in food.

Blackmist

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It still tastes shit though.

Worse are the drinks that took half the sugar out, but pumped sweeteners in as well, so you still get fat and now it tastes crap too.

JustZ

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It said it was like 15% of human recommended intake.

Ookami38

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Sorry legit haven't read the article but sounds like you have, so I'll ask for clarity

Would that be the equivalent of a 15% daily recommended dose, as adjusted by weight for a rat, or is it literally 15% of the daily allowance of a human, pumped into the rat? Because the latter is definitely more of what vibe I get from the previous poster.

CO_Chewie

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When a sample of mice were given free access to water dosed with aspartame equivalent to 15 percent of the FDA's recommended maximum daily amount for humans, they generally displayed more anxious behavior in specially designed mood tests.

Ookami38

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Cool, so it's 15% of the RDA for humans, divided by whatever the avg weight difference between a rat and a human is, right? Or similar? That's the best interpretation of that quote, though it is still a bit ambiguous lol

JustZ

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I read it as the rat equivalent of 15% for humans.

Ookami38

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Yeah, that's what I get now. I would like if they had a more specific rundown of how that number was calculated, and how much water it was in / the rats consumed. May be in the article or study, still haven't actually read it and don't have the time ATM.

Cavemanfreak

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That quote makes it sound like it's not adjusted by weight. But it also doesn't mention the aspartame to water ratio, or how much of the water that the rats drank.

papertowels

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Here's the relevant sentence in the study:

The FDA recommended maximum DIV for aspartame for humans is 50 mg/kg (33). Based on allometric conversion utilizing pharmacokinetic and body surface area parameters (43), the mouse equivalent of the human DIV is 615 mg/kg/d. Therefore, the male mice received a daily aspartame dose equivalent to 14.0%, 7.0%, and 3.5% of the FDA recommended human DIV, and the females received a dose equivalent to 15.5%, 7.7%, and 3.9% of the human DIV.

It's a lot to unpack, but my interpretation is that it's been adjusted for a rat

Pipoca

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To translate that into something sensible, the RDA in the US is 50 mg/kg = 110.25 mg/lb. 15% of that is 16.5 mg/lb. So 1653 mg per 100 lbs of bodyweight.

A can of diet coke is about 200 mg of aspartame. So that's a bit over 8 cans of coke per 100 lbs of body weight. Or 1.5 2-liter bottles per 100 lbs.

That's... kinda a lot.

Sporky

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Illuminostro

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And cigarettes don't cause cancer, and burning fossil fuels doesn't cause global warming, and...

Ookami38

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Ultimately life causes cancer. All of these things accelerate the speed that cancer tends to develop but, well... I doubt a cigarette a day will significantly impact your life expectancy. The dose makes the poison, after all.

vidumec

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cigarettes don’t cause cancer

they don't

smoking a pack a day raises the possibility of cancer

drinking 20l of diet coke a day would probably also cause anxiety

and burning fossil fuels doesn’t cause global warming

climate change is natural. Ice age didn't end because of fossil fuels

Caradoc879

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

NikkiDimes

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By all means, the Earth goes through cyclical changes. The current change is completely out of line with natural cycles, however. With the amount of data we've collected on the subject, you'd have to be an absolute braindead moron to disagree with that at this point.

prole

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