Sweetener in DOZENS of 'healthy' low-calorie foods spikes risk of stroke, experts discover - as cases soar in young people
Erythritol, which is also commonly found in flavoured waters and popular diet products like Halo Top ice cream—has already been linked to digestive issues and heart problems.
Now, scientists at the University of Colorado say even small amounts of the substance may promote blood clotting and inflammation, potentially raising the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes.
Experts warned the findings could help explain the sharp rise in premature deaths from cardiovascular disease seen over the past decade.
The study, led by vascular health specialist Professor Christopher DeSouza, involved exposing human brain cells to erythritol at levels equivalent to those found in a standard sugar-free drink such as Vitaminwater and Monster.
Within three hours, the cells showed signs of inflammation and an increased tendency to clot.
'Our study adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that so-called "safe" non-nutritive sweeteners may come with hidden health risks,' said Prof DeSouza.
'Not only that, it demonstrates how erythritol in particular may raise stroke risk.'
A previous study involving more than 4,000 people found that those with the highest levels of erythritol in their blood were significantly more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke within three years.
In the new study, Professor Christopher DeSouza and colleagues at the University of Colorado exposed human brain cells to erythritol at concentrations similar to those found in a standard sugar-free drink such as Vitaminwater.
Within three hours, the cells showed clear signs of inflammation and clotting. They also produced significantly less nitric oxide—a molecule that helps relax blood vessels—and more proteins that cause blood vessels to constrict.
'Big picture, if your vessels are more constricted and your ability to break down blood clots is lowered, your risk of stroke goes up,' said study co-author Auburn Berry.
Professor DeSouza added: 'Our study adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that so-called "safe" non-nutritive sweeteners may come with hidden health risks.
'Not only that, it demonstrates how erythritol in particular may raise stroke risk.'
The erythritol-treated cells also produced more free radicals—unstable molecules which are known to cause damage to the DNA inside cells if they build up.
This in turn can cause oxidative stress which has been linked with heart disease, dementia and even cancer.
While the researchers only tested brain cells in a lab and used a dose equivalent to a single serving of erythritol, Professor DeSouza warned that people who consume multiple servings a day—via diet drinks, protein bars or low-calorie desserts—could face a higher risk.
He urged the public to be mindful of their intake, warning: 'These sweeteners come with a plethora of negative health consequences.'
However, the team acknowledged this was a key limitation of the study, and further research is needed to confirm whether erythritol has similar effects in the human body.
Erythritol was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2001.
It is typically made by fermenting corn and is found in hundreds of products as a low-calorie sugar substitute.
It mimics the taste of sugar but isn't metabolised in the same way—meaning it contains virtually no calories.
For that reason, it has become a popular choice among dieters and people with diabetes trying to control blood sugar levels.
But erythritol is also naturally produced in small amounts by the body.
Experts say that consuming it in high levels—through both processed products and natural sources like fruit and vegetables—could potentially push levels into the danger zone.
Concerns about artificial sweeteners, widely added to everything from fizzy drinks to 'healthy' snacks, have been building for years amid mounting evidence they may not be as harmless as once believed.
But critics highlight such studies are only observational, meaning they are unable to prove artificial sweeteners are the culprit and cannot rule out other external factors being to blame.
Worries were heightened in 2023 after the World Health Organisation controversially classified the artificial sweetener aspartame, found in drinks like Diet Coke, as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans'.
However, the UN agency ruled it only posed a risk to those who consumed massive amounts and that an 11 stone (70kg) adult could safely drink about 14 cans a day.
But now, Taiwanese researchers have warned that children who consume a diet packed with sweeteners may be at higher risk of reaching puberty earlier.
They found that high levels of the additives could trigger central precocious puberty—where the first signs of puberty typically emerge before the age of eight in girls and nine in boys.
Higher consumption of 'added sugars', meaning those above the natural content of a food or drink item, was also linked with an earlier puberty—increasing the risk of depression, diabetes and even cancer.
MailOnline has previously reported that the number of under-40s treated by the NHS for heart attacks is also climbing, with soaring obesity rates and related health issues believed to be key drivers.
In the UK, around 420 people of working age die of as a result of heart disease each week, totalling an alarming 21,975 a year.
Cardiovascular disease is America's number one killer and nearly 1million people die of it every year.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Edinburgh University's ‘skull room' highlights its complicated history with racist science
Hundreds of skulls are neatly and closely placed, cheekbone to cheekbone, in tall, mahogany-framed glass cabinets. Most carry faded, peeling labels, some bear painted catalogue numbers; one has gold teeth; and the occasional one still carries its skin tissue. This is the University of Edinburgh's 'skull room'. Many were voluntarily donated to the university; others came from executed Scottish murderers; some Indigenous people's skulls were brought to Scotland by military officers on expeditions or conquest missions. Several hundred were collected by supporters of the racist science of phrenology – the discredited belief that skull shape denoted intelligence and character. Among them are the skulls of two brothers who died while studying at Edinburgh. Their names are not recorded in the skull room catalogue, but cross-referencing of matriculation and death records suggests they were George Richards, a 21-year-old medic who died of smallpox in 1832, and his younger brother, Robert Bruce, 18, a divinity scholar who died of typhoid fever in 1833. Exactly how the Richards brothers' skulls came to be separated from their bodies, recorded as interned in the South Leith parish church cemetery, is unknown. But they were almost certainly acquired by the Edinburgh Phrenological Society to study supposed racial difference. Researchers believe their case exemplifies the challenging questions facing the university, which, it has now emerged, played a pivotal role in the creation and perpetuation of racist ideas about white superiority and racial difference from the late 1700s onwards – ideas taught to thousands of Edinburgh students who dispersed across the British empire. University records studied by Dr Simon Buck suggest the brothers were of mixed African and European descent, born in Barbados to George Richards, an Edinburgh-educated doctor who practised medicine on sugar plantations and who owned enslaved people – possibly including George and Robert Bruce's mother. Edinburgh Phrenological Society's 1858 catalogue records the skulls (listed as No 1 and No 2) as having belonged to 'mulatto' students of divinity and medicine. 'It can be assumed that the racialisation of these two individuals as 'mulatto' – a hybrid racial category that both fascinated and bewildered phrenologists – is what aroused interest among members of the society in the skulls of these two students,' Edinburgh's decolonisation report concludes. The brothers' skulls are among the roughly 400 amassed by the society and later absorbed into the anatomical museum's collection, which now contains about 1,500 skulls. These are held in the Skull Room, to which The Guardian was granted rare access. Many of these ancestral remains, the report states, 'were taken, without consent, from prisons, asylums, hospitals, archaeological sites and battlefields', with others 'having been stolen and exported from the British empire's colonies', often gifted by a global network of Edinburgh alumni. 'We can't escape the fact that some of [the skulls] will have been collected with the absolute express purpose of saying, 'This is a person from a specific race, and aren't they inferior to the white man',' said Prof Tom Gillingwater, the chair of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, who now oversees the anatomical collection. 'We can't get away from that.' The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded by George Combe, a lawyer, and his younger brother, Andrew, a doctor, with roughly a third of its early members being physicians. Both were students at the university, and some Edinburgh professors were active members. Through its acquisition of skulls from across the globe, the society played a central role in turning the 'science' of phrenology, which claimed to decode an individual's intellect and moral character from bumps and grooves on the skull, into a tool of racial categorisation that placed the white European man at the top of a supposed hierarchy. George Combe's book, The Constitution of Man, was a 19th-century international bestseller and the Combe Trust (founded with money made from books and lecture tours promoting phrenology) endowed Edinburgh's first professorship in psychology in 1906 and continues to fund annual Combe Trust fellowships in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Phrenology was criticised by some of Edinburgh's medical elite for its unscientific approach. 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Among its reparatory justice recommendations of Edinburgh's investigation is that the university provide more support for the repatriation of ancestral remains to their original communities. This, Gillingwater suggested, possibly underplays the complexities involved – even for cases such as the Richards brothers. He regards the circumstantial evidence in their case as 'strong' but says it does not meet the forensic threshold required for conclusive identification. 'From a legal perspective, it wouldn't be watertight,' said Gillingwater. 'I would never dream of returning remains to a family when I didn't know who they definitely were.' Active engagement surrounding repatriation is taking place in relation to several of the skulls from the phrenology collection; more than 100 have already been repatriated to their places of origin. But each case takes time building trust with communities and in some cases navigating geopolitical tensions over which descendent community has the strongest claim to the remains. 'To look at perhaps repatriation, burials, or whatever, it's literally years of work almost for each individual case,' said Gillingwater. 'And what I found is that every individual culture you deal with wants things done completely differently.' Many of the skulls will never be identified and their provenance is likely to remain unknown. 'That is something that keeps me awake at night,' said Gillingwater. 'For some of our skulls, I know that whatever we do, we're never going to end up with an answer.' 'All I can offer at the minute is that we just continue to care for them,' he added. 'They've been with us, many of them, for a couple of hundred years. So we can look after them. We can care for them. We can treat them with that dignity and respect they all deserve individually.'
BBC News
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