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.
  • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
    31·
    1 year ago

    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@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      1 year ago

      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@sh.itjust.works
        41·
        1 year ago

        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

          • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
            22·
            1 year ago

            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@lemm.ee
          1·
          1 year ago

          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@programming.dev
      3·
      1 year ago

      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