This is your brain on artificial sweeteners.
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I generally avoid artificial sweeteners. Partly it’s the taste, partly an intuition that sweetness without the calories has to come at a cost. My one indulgence is stevia, which I shake into my tea and coffee every morning, but given the choice, I’ll pass on anything sweetened with aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, or acesulfame‑K in favor of one that uses steviol glycosides.
A new study out of Brazil appears to support my hunch that sweeteners are doing hidden damage by linking some common sweeteners to faster memory decline. Below, I get into what the researchers found, who it hit hardest, and whether my fussiness is justified. |
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Let’s take a bite,
Tim Snaith
Newsletter Editor, Healthline |
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Written by Tim Snaith
July 28, 2026 • 3 min read |
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| The sweeteners linked to faster memory decline |
| The study followed nearly 13,000 adults in Brazil for about 8 years and tracked 7 sweeteners: |
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| The people who consumed the most saw their memory and thinking decline 62% faster than those who consumed the least, a gap the researchers compare to about 1.6 extra years of brain aging. |
| This effect only held for people under age 60, and was strongest in those with diabetes, the group most often steered toward artificial sweeteners to manage their blood sugar level. |
| Because cognitive decline can begin decades before it shows, the researchers suspect midlife is a critical window. However, they did not measure what the sweeteners do inside the brain, so what actually drives the observed decline remains an open question. |
| 3 of the 4 sweeteners I avoid, aspartame, saccharin, and acesulfame‑K, were among those flagged. One sweetener, tagatose, showed no link at all. Sucralose was not included in the study, and neither was stevia. The findings appear to back up my instinct to avoid the older synthetics, but say nothing about the one I actually use. |
| So, we have evidence for a link, not a cause, and the whole study relied on a single diet questionnaire, so other habits or environmental factors may account for some of the effect. |
| The Calorie Control Council, which represents the sweetener industry, cautioned against alarming people who rely on sweeteners for good reason. Personally, I’ll keep the stevia and carry on being skeptical about the rest. |
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| Want to learn more about food, diets, cooking, or some other nutrition subject? Let us know at nutritionedition@healthline.com and we’ll look into it for you! (Heads up, we may use your response in an upcoming newsletter.) |
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| Until next time, |
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Take care of yourself, and we’ll see
you again soon! |
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