I find the article to be too low in details to make a decision with. The only thing it seems to say is that sucralose-6-acetate is dangerous and it’s associated with sucralose. It says
- “trace amounts of sucralose-6-acetate can be found in off-the-shelf sucralose, even before it is consumed and metabolized”
- trace amounts of sucralose-6-acetate in a single, daily sucralose-sweetened drink exceed (the safety threshold from the European Food Safety Authority)
- "When we exposed sucralose and sucralose-6-acetate to gut epithelial tissues – the tissue that lines your gut wall – we found that both chemicals cause ‘leaky gut.’ "
This is clearly an in vitro experiment, that is, in a petri dish or test tube, not in a living critter, an in vivo experiment.
I’m a staunch believer in the “First Law of Toxicology” (hold your hand over your heart) The Dose Makes the Poison. The overused example is that both oxygen and water are toxic if you get too much.
So exactly how much sucralose are they talking about? I don’t know of any sucralose-sweetened drinks so I have no idea how much they’re talking about.
If I had to guess, I’d say my daily consumption of sucralose - in the Splenda mixture - is two tablespoons. One spread across two cups of coffee and a cup of hot tea and the other is in some ice cream I make (and seriously, I think I make the ice cream for my cat - he’s the master, after all) Is that more or less than in their “one sucralose-sweetened drink”?
The other thing, and this comes back to it being an in vitro experiment, they don’t mention is if there’s any supporting evidence for impact in people. Our bodies are full of systems that correct damage and reduce harm. Does this do anything in real people? That requires the real hard (and really expensive) kind of experiments, Randomized Controlled Trials, or RCTs.
Personally, I’ll keep that in the “keep an eye out for more info” folder.