"Aspartame, monk fruit, stevia, and more can be found in our favorite staples. But are they actually safe to eat?"

Do Artificial Sweeteners Really Help People With Diabetes?

On: Medscape, Marilynn Larkin

“In this episode, I speak with Dr. Jotham Suez who has conducted some ground-breaking research on the effect of non-caloric sweeteners on the gut microbiome and the potential detrimental effects this may have on metabolic health.”

On: Biomes Podcast - Dr. Ruairi Robertson

A new study has found that a neotame may be toxic to cells in the intestine. Here’s how other popular sweeteners could impact your health.

On: The Telegraph, David Cox

Sugar is often among the first things people ditch in the New Year, and the most common replacement? Artificial sweeteners. But what if replacing sugar with its calorie-free counterpart is actually doing more harm than good? Dr. Suez on a podcast interview.

On: Food, we need to talk - Juna Gjata and Dr. Eddie Phillips

Low-calorie sugar substitutes are so ubiquitous that you probably consume them without realising. But with controversies over their impact on our health, is there a better way to get a sweet hit?

On: New Scientist, David Cox and Alison George

Recent warnings are the latest in a series of scares, but the industry says sugar substitutes remain a vital weapon against obesity and diabetes.

On: Financial Times, Sarah Neville and Madeleine Speed

On July 2023, the World Health Organization @who declared the artificial sweetener aspartame a "potential carcinogen" but did not recommend any changes to the dose designated as safe. What should we make of it?

Dr. Jotham Suez interviews on the "The Context" (BBC News).

On: BBC News

It’s not clear how aspartame could potentially cause cancer.

Jotham Suez, a molecular microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said that there are no definitive answers yet on possible mechanisms for how the sweetener is carcinogenic.

On: NBC News, Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

With the widespread presence of artificial sweeteners in the food system, scientists and consumers want to know about their safety. Safety concerns have been expressed for years, and lots of research has been done, but relatively new on the scene is work examining the effect of sweeteners on the microbiome. This interview is part of a series on the impact of artificial sweeteners.

On: The Leading Voices in Food (Sanford-Duke World Food Policy Center), Kelly Brownell

For years, sugar has been positioned as public health enemy number one. So it's no surprise that sugar substitutes have become increasingly appealing. But are these sweeteners actually healthier?

A randomized, controlled clinical trial is the only way to prove how dangerous these compounds are (or aren't), and they’ve landed “all over the place,” said Jotham Suez, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has studied sugar substitutes.

On: TheSkimm, Serena McNiff and Hannah Parker

A recent study by the Hazen group supports our findings linking artificial sweeteners to detrimental impacts on metabolic health.

The findings recently published in Nature Medicine result from more than a decade of research. Initially, researchers were looking for compounds in the blood that might predict development of heart disease and strokes. After analyzing blood from more than 1,000 people, the chemical that seemed to predict risk the most was erythritol.

On: The Wall Street Journal, Sumathi Reddy

Many people are cutting back on their sugar intake for health reasons. But the food industry has found another way to give consumers their sweet fix. It is quietly replacing the sugar in many packaged foods with sucralose, stevia, allulose, erythritol and a wide variety of other artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes.

But Suez and his colleagues found that artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes can alter your microbiome in ways that are detrimental to your metabolic health.

On: The Washington Post, Anahad O’Connor

“We’re studying the whole complexity of the human body. We’re also studying the whole complexity of billions of microbes of hundreds of different species—each one of them with their own genes and their own proteins,” says Jotham Suez, PhD, MSc, an assistant professor in the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.

Teasing meaning from that complexity, researchers are already overturning assumptions about disease susceptibility, drug effectiveness, and other issues. One example: Suez found that probiotics can have positive, negative, or no effects on an individual, depending on how their microbiome responds to the probiotics.

On: Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Magazine, Brian W. Simpson

Are low-calorie sweeteners bad for our health? Dr. Suez is interviewed by Channel Q, the nation’s first and largest nationally-syndicated LGBTQ+ talk radio network.

On: The Morning Beat (starting after 20:00 minutes), AJ Gibson and MIkalah Gordon

Why study the bugs in our gut, on our skin, behind our ears? Because science is increasingly revealing the massive influence they have on our health.

Here are six things you need to know about the microbiome.

On: Bloomberg School Articles, Brian W. Simpson

When consumed for as little as two weeks, common alternatives to sugar affect intestinal bacterial communities, with some reducing the body’s ability to regulate blood glucose levels, a study finds.

On: The Scientist, Shafaq Zia

In an ironic twist, a trial has found some healthy adults had less control over their blood sugar levels after two weeks of consuming sugar substitutes in amounts below the recommended daily allowance.

On: ABC Science, Belinda Smith

Two artificial sweeteners, saccharin and sucralose, may impede the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar levels after eating, potentially due to associated changes in the microbiome.

On: New Scientist, Grace Wade

What is a microbiome? Are they helpful or are they harmful? Do they cause disease or can they cure disease? And what does diet soda have to do with them? In this episode, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein speaks to Dr. Jotham Suez from the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology about the trillions of microorganisms that live inside us and all over our skin.

On: Public Health on Call, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein