Research Description
In recent years, the food industry has supplied consumers with low-calorie versions of foods and beverages by using non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) in place of sugars. Marketing claims include how consuming these foods and beverages can contribute to diet healthfulness by delivering a pleasant sweet taste with few or no calories. However, despite these claims, data from several studies show that consuming a diet high in NNS, mainly in diet sodas, is linked to the same metabolic disorders as consuming a diet high in added sugars, including an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Sweet taste receptors, once thought to be unique to the mouth, have now been discovered in other parts of the body, including the intestine and the pancreas, where they play a role in blood sugar control. These newly identified receptors provide new avenues to explore how NNS may affect metabolism and health. This project is designed to examine the role of sweet taste signaling, both in the mouth and in the gut, on blood sugar control and how habitual consumption of NNS may affect sweet taste signaling and metabolism in people with obesity. The results of this study could help guide clinical and public health recommendations for use of these common food additives.Research Profile
What area of diabetes research does your project cover? What role will this particular project play in preventing, treating and/or curing diabetes?The consumption of low-calorie sweeteners (like sucralose in “Splenda” or aspartame in "Equal") is globally increasing. While these sweeteners are safe for human consumption, we don't know whether low-calorie sweeteners (LCS) may affect metabolism. This research is being done to better understand how sweet taste and high consumption of LCS may affect the way our body control blood sugar. Therefore, results from this project have the potential to significantly impact patient care.
If a person with diabetes were to ask you how your project will help them in the future, how would you respond?Until recently, we thought that the replacement of sugars with low-calorie sweeteners (LCS) could promote diet healthfulness, by delivering a pleasant sweet taste without calories or blood sugar effects. For example, most patients with diabetes or obesity are advised to sweetened their meals and drinks with LCS. However, several studies found that high consumption of LCS is associated with the same detrimental health effects as is high consumption of added sugars, including an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Our study will increase the knowledge on ways by which LCS may be affecting glucose control. The results of our study will be be important to patients and to health care providers who advise patients with diabetes, prediabetes or obesity on dietary recommendations.
Why important for you, personally, to become involved in diabetes research? What role will this award play?I am motivated to become involved in diabetes research because diabetes is a serious chronic disease with major public health problems that has reached pandemic proportion. Over 400 million people in the world, of which ~ 30 million are American, leave with diabetes. On a more personal note, my father is one of the many people living with diabetes today. I hope that my scientific efforts will contribute to the knowledge on how to decrease the risk to develop diabetes or delay the burden of this disease. I am very thankful to the ADA for this award. This support will help me to carry out this research and collect data that will be instrumental for the design of larger studies required to define appropriate public health recommendations for LCS use. In addition, by working with graduate students, I hope to train and inspire the next generation of scientists who could continue advancing the Association's mission "to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes".
In what direction do you see the future of diabetes research going?One of the motto in my lab comes from an outstanding French physiologist, Jaques Le Magnen, who admonished "It is unacceptable to study either a bodiless psychology or a decapitated physiology". Traditionally, with few exceptions, diabetes research had centered on the pancreas and the liver, i.e. the periphery (or a decapitated physiology). I see that diabetes research today is more interdisciplinary and inclusive and is further exploring the important role of the central nervous system and the gut-brain connection on glucose control. A better understanding on the role of the gut-brain connection and of the mind on glucose control could provide new ways to prevent and treat diabetes.