United States: A new study suggests that the common artificial sweetener erythritol may be harmful to the heart.
In research involving 20 healthy adults, the sweetener was linked to increased blood platelet activity, which could ultimately lead to a very high risk of blood clots in the blood. The study, led by Dr. Stanley Hazen from the Cleveland Clinic, found no similar effect with sugar.
Concerns for High-Risk Individuals
“Many professional societies and clinicians routinely recommend that people at high cardiovascular risk — those with obesity, diabetes or metabolic syndrome — consume foods that contain sugar substitutes rather than sugar,” Kazen explained in a clinic news release.
As reported by HealthDay, Although the team’s findings “underscores the vitality of the further long term clinical studies to assess the issues related to heart safety of erythritol and other sugar substitutes said Kazen.
Previous Research Supports Findings
The new study comes after a year when Hazen’s team published almost similar results in the journal Nature medicine and as reported by the HealthDay that particular study of nearly 1.200 people found those who had very large amount of the erythritol found in their blood and were up to twice as likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke compared to those with the latest amounts.
Erythritol in Processed Foods
At that particular point of time a lab investigation had hinted that erythritol produced this harmful effect on the human heart by stimulating clot-forming platelets and will keep the blood in liquid as much possible it can.
Though this erythritol is about 70 percent as sweet and melodious as sugar and is produced commercially by fermenting corn and it’s found in many of the keto foods and diets and zero-sugar foods also, Hazen said and is an ingredient in some of the Splenda stevia sweetener products an Truvia.
“It’s literally one of the fastest-growing artificial sweeteners in processed foods,” Hazen said when the Nature Medicine study was published. “We make it ourselves in our body, but hereby at an amount that is a thousand to a million-fold less than or even in very less amount what it is when we ingest it in a very artificially sweetened product that has it.”