How safe are fourth-generation sweeteners, such as the rare sugar allulose?

First, there was sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, the original industrial sweeteners. They were cheap, but they had lots of empty calories and contributed to diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cavities, and metabolic syndrome. Then came the second-generation sweeteners, the artificial sweeteners in the colored pastel packets: NutraSweet, Splenda, and Sweet’N Low. They have practically zero calories, but there have been reports of adverse effects, prompting caution. For example, artificial sweeteners were found to induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiome, thereby producing “the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements.” (They also taste kind of funny.) Enter the third-generation sweeteners: sugar alcohols, such as sorbitol, xylitol, and erythritol. They’re low-calorie sweeteners; however, their laxative effects can create difficulties. That brings us to rare sugars like allulose, which are natural sweeteners with a sugar-like taste and low or zero calories.

For those who haven’t heard of allulose, it’s been through a bit of a rebranding—kind of like the morphing of rapeseed oil into canola oil, which forced a Canadian community to update its town slogan, as you can see below and at 1:29 in my video Does the Sweetener Allulose Have Side Effects?.

Allulose used to be called psicose, derived from the antibiotic from which it was isolated, a strange origin story for a sweetener. In the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, emphasis is placed on the fact that allulose is “a real and natural sugar rather than an artificial sweetener,” but, ironically, if you look at the reference it cites, it talks about how allulose is made via “functionalized polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) nano-beads decorated with D-tagatose 3-epimerase (DTE)” and “produced in recombinant endotoxin-free” branded bacteria.

Now, technically, allulose is a natural sugar—a so-called rare sugar, which the International Society of Rare Sugars defined as sugar that is “present in limited quantities in nature.” However, recent advances in technology, such as enzymatic engineering using genetically modified microorganisms, now let manufacturers produce otherwise rare sugars like allulose in substantial quantities. But small amounts have pre-existed in the food supply, so the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted it “generally recognized as safe” status. However, that designation refers to really small amounts, like a few dozen milligrams, or a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a teaspoon. You can see the allulose content in different foods below and at 2:51 in my video.

See, allulose is generated when fructose is heated. That’s why one unlucky patient kept breaking out in hives when eating foods like spaghetti, hamburgers, or cakes—he happened to be allergic to allulose, and allulose is created incidentally in the process by which high fructose corn syrup is made. So, basing the safety of allulose on the fact that it’s already been present in our food supply isn’t very convincing. You don’t know if it’s safe until you put it to the test.

Unlike table sugar, allulose is safe for the teeth—it isn’t apparently metabolized by cavity-causing bacteria to make acid and build up plaque. It doesn’t raise blood sugars, even in people with diabetes. It can be labeled as having zero calories, though technically it may have about one and a half calories per teaspoon, similar to erythritol. Also like erythritol, it is only about 70% as sweet as table sugar but has almost the same taste, texture, and performance as regular sugar. Are there any toxicities?

Allulose is considered a “relatively nontoxic” sugar. What does that mean? Well, we know a sweetener called xylitol can be extremely dangerous to dogs. As little as a half teaspoon in a 30-pound dog can be life-threatening, whereas a similar dose of allulose apparently wouldn’t be a problem, though more than half a cup at a time could make them sick. This was a single-dose study, though. The long-term safety of allulose was tested over a period of a few months and didn’t seem to cause any harmful effects at a dose of about one and a half teaspoons a day for healthy 30-pound dogs. In fact, their cholesterol actually went down, leading the investigators to suggest clinical studies to see if it’s something veterinarians should start prescribing for overweight pooches.

What happens when people consume allulose? When the dose was gradually increased to identify the maximum single dose that could be consumed occasionally, no severe gastrointestinal symptoms were noted until a dose of 0.4 g/kg of bodyweight was reached, which may be about 7 teaspoons, with severe symptoms of diarrhea occurring at around 9 teaspoons. One might wonder who could eat that much sugar at a time, anyway? A single can of Coke has 10 teaspoons, and a bottle of Mountain Dew has nearly twice that, as you can see below and at 5:19 in my video.

So, allulose is clearly not suitable as a standalone sweetener for sugary beverages.

In terms of a daily upper limit given in smaller doses throughout the day, once intake reaches around 17 teaspoons a day, depending on body weight, people start getting severe nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and headaches. So, people should probably stay under single doses of about 7 teaspoons and not exceed about 15 teaspoons for the whole day. The average American may be getting 17 teaspoons of added sugars a day, so it’s certainly not something the food industry can completely switch over to.

In this way, allulose is close to xylitol in terms of maximum single dose, whereas an average-weight man in the United States could get away with 14 teaspoons of erythritol at a time, and an average-weight woman, 15 teaspoons. That’s still not enough to sweeten a bottle of Coke, but it offers a little more leeway for sweetening tea or sprinkling on a grapefruit.

Allulose is claimed to provide health benefits, though, compared to erythritol. Fourth-generation sweeteners like allulose are said to have an advantage: “additional functions,” which you can see below and at 6:28 in my video.

We’ll find out if that’s true in the next blog.

Doctor’s Note

Are Rare Sugars Like Allulose Actually Healthy? That’s the next blog.

I’ve covered a range of other sweeteners before in these videos:

• Aspartame and the Brain
• Erythritol May Be a Sweet Antioxidant
• Aspartame-Induced Fibromyalgia
• Effect of Sucralose (Splenda) on the Microbiome
• Does Aspartame Cause Cancer?
• Is Monk Fruit Sweetener Safe?

from NutritionFacts.org https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/can-allulose-replace-sugar/
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Swapping just 1% of plant protein in place of animal protein was associated with significantly less age-related deficit accumulation.

Based on a study of more than 400,000 people, replacing just 3% of calories of animal protein with plant protein was associated with a 10% reduction in overall mortality risk. That simple swap could translate to about an extra year of life. Egg protein—mostly found in egg whites—appeared to be the biggest offender when it came to mortality risk. Swapping 3% of calories from egg protein for plant protein was associated with more than a 20% reduction in overall mortality—greater than the reduction seen when replacing red meat with plant protein. However, it’s not just about adding years to your life, but life to your years. How do changes in dietary intake of animal versus vegetable protein affect unhealthy aging?

Healthy aging is defined as “the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age.” No one wants to be vegetative, and you may be able to avoid that by eating more vegetables. A higher intake of vegetable protein was associated with less accumulation of deficits, based on functional impairments, mental health and diseases, self-reported health and vitality, and the use of health services.

Swapping in just 1% of vegetable protein calories for animal protein “led to significantly less deficit accumulation.” Don’t animal protein and animal fat travel alongside each other in the same foods? Is this just a saturated fat effect? No—even after accounting for fat, there still seemed to be something about whether the protein came from animal or plant sources, but it’s still not clear whether the beneficial health effects are due to avoiding the deleterious effects associated with animal foods or from the beneficial effects of plants, though it may be a bit of both.

A recent review in a dermatology journal on the role of a whole food, plant-based diet in preventing and reversing skin aging emphasized this point. A whole food, plant-based diet is not the same as a vegan diet. It’s possible to have a terribly unhealthy vegan diet, filled with sugar, processed oils, and white flour and no fresh fruits or vegetables. As a physician, “vegan” just tells me what a person doesn’t eat, but they actually have to, you know, eat vegetables, too. And when they do, “a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet can aid in the prevention, and in some cases reversal, of some of the leading chronic diseases in the United States,” as well as potentially contributing to younger-looking skin, due to telomere lengthening, maximizing our cells’ antioxidant potential, and eliminating harmful carcinogens and aging toxins, known as gerontotoxins, from entering our bloodstream.

It is no wonder “the highest life expectancy of any formally described population” in the world may be the Adventist vegetarians in Loma Linda, California, one of the world’s five original “blue zones.” The average life expectancy of Adventist vegetarian men and women is about 83 and 86 years, respectively, about 10 and 6 years longer than the general population in California. Those who eat a vegetarian diet with nuts, exercise, have a lower weight, and never smoke live about 9 to 11 years longer than people lacking these habits, as you can see below and at 3:22 in my video The Best Diet for Healthy Aging.

That’s like having 10 years of life up for grabs.

Now, “[s]ubstantial gains in life expectancy would only be worthwhile if they were also accompanied by a longer period of good-quality life.” Although overall well-being has not been measured directly, vegetarian Adventists have been recorded taking fewer medications and logging fewer x-ray examinations, surgical procedures, and overnight hospital stays. Their reduced prevalence of several chronic diseases alone would presumably make life more worth living.

The most feared disease associated with getting older is likely Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia is one of the fastest-growing epidemics, affecting 1 in 10 people older than 65 years of age and half of all people older than 85. Alzheimer’s is the main type of dementia, and indeed the most feared. So, when we’re talking about “plant-based diets for healthy aging,” “[p]articularly intriguing is emerging evidence that diet plays a major role in the prevention of age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. It has been shown that a diet rich in fruits, grains, legumes [beans], vegetables, nuts, and seeds may cut the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by more than a half.”

This evidence comes from research on the “MIND diet,” which emphasizes natural plant foods, specifically including berries (the healthiest fruits) and greens (the healthiest vegetables), while limiting the intake of animal foods and high saturated fat foods like meat and dairy.

Strictly adhering to the MIND diet was associated with a 53% reduction in risk for Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, even moderate adherence appeared to cut risk by about a third. Overall, participants with high adherence to the diet had the cognitive function equivalent to someone 7.5 years younger.

No wonder people who ate meat, including poultry and fish, “were more than twice as likely to become demented as their vegetarian counterparts”—and that rises to three times the risk when taking past meat consumption into account. This may be because “[p]lant-based diets are known to preserve body tissues from oxidative stress and inflammation, both hallmarks of chronic-degenerative diseases.” That may be why berries are so protective, since they’re so rich in antioxidants, and in terms of inflammation, those who avoid meat have a higher abundance of anti-inflammatory compounds flowing through their systems and lower levels of proinflammatory indicators like C-reactive protein. “Dietary factors also influence the effect of stress on cognitive decline. Diets characterized by high intake of animal proteins, saturated fats, and refined sugar along with low intake of plant-based foods can increase secretion of corticosteroids,” stress hormones like cortisol from the adrenal glands, which may promote the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Then there are the gerontotoxins, like AGEs (advanced glycation end products), in our diet that may be a factor in the development of Alzheimer’s. Safe foods—foods that have low AGE content—include starches like whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables, whereas the main dietary sources of AGEs are broiled, grilled, fried, or roasted meats. The cooking process is important. Chicken breast has an AGE level of 1,000 KU when boiled in water (for chicken soup, for example), but that same chicken breast jumps up to 9,000 KU when broiled. Below and at 6:53 in my video is a list of the top 40 most AGE-contaminated foods tested, in terms of AGEs per serving.

As you can see, it’s almost all meat: chicken, bacon, hot dogs, and so on. I tell people to choose raw nuts and seeds to avoid AGEs, but even roasted, toasted nuts don’t come close to making the list.

Now, of course, diet is not the only factor when it comes to reducing the risk of cognitive decline. We also need to get adequate sleep, rest, and physical activity. For example, daily brisk walks were associated with a 40% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s later in life, and smoking may double the risk of developing dementia. But in terms of preventing Alzheimer’s with diet, the key takeaways are the following: reduce added sugars, added salt, saturated fat, animal products, and processed foods in general while eating more plants (especially greens and beans) and fruits (especially berries).

Doctor’s Note

Aging is the topic of my book How Not to Age. Check it out at your local public library.

Some of my popular videos on aging and longevity include:

• How to Counter the Inflammation of Aging
• Fruits, Veggies, and Longevity: How Many Minutes Per Mouthful?
• Do Flexitarians Live Longer?
• Methionine Restriction as a Life-Extension Strategy
• How to Slow Brain Aging by Two Years
• Turning the Clock Back 14 Years
• Longer Life Within Walking Distance
• Telomeres: Cap It All Off with Diet
• The Okinawa Diet: Living to 100
• Caloric Restriction vs. Animal-Protein Restriction
• Increased Lifespan from Beans
• The Benefits of Calorie Restriction for Longevity
• Does Intermittent Fasting Increase Human Life Expectancy?
• How to Increase Your Life Expectancy 12 to 14 Years
• How to Boost FGF21 with Diet for Longevity

from NutritionFacts.org https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/a-simple-protein-swap-for-healthy-aging/
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