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posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 01 2021, @10:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-are-what-you-eat dept.

Ubiquitous food additive alters human microbiota and intestinal environment:

Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) is a synthetic member of a widely used class of food additives, termed emulsifiers, which are added to many processed foods to enhance texture and promote shelf life. CMC has not been extensively tested in humans but has been increasingly used in processed foods since the 1960s. It had long been assumed that CMC was safe to ingest because it is eliminated in the feces without being absorbed. However, increasing appreciation of the health benefits provided by bacteria that normally live in the colon, and thus would interact with non-absorbed additives, has led scientists to challenge this assumption. Experiments in mice found that CMC, and some other emulsifiers, altered gut bacteria resulting in more severe disease in a range of chronic inflammatory conditions, including colitis, metabolic syndrome and colon cancer. However, the extent to which such results are applicable to humans had not been previously investigated.

The team performed a randomized controlled-feeding study in healthy volunteers. Participants, housed at the study site, consumed an additive-free diet or an identical diet supplemented with carboxymethylcellulose (CMC). Because the diseases CMC promotes in mice take years to arise in humans, the researchers focused here on intestinal bacteria and metabolites. They found that CMC consumption changed the make-up of bacteria populating the colon, reducing select species. Furthermore, fecal samples from CMC-treated participants displayed a stark depletion of beneficial metabolites that are thought to normally maintain a healthy colon.

Lastly, the researchers performed colonoscopies on subjects at the beginning and end of the study and noticed that a subset of subjects consuming CMC displayed gut bacteria encroaching into the mucus, which has previously been observed to be a feature of inflammatory bowel diseases and type 2 diabetes. Thus, while CMC consumption did not result in any disease per se in this two week study, collectively the results support the conclusions of animal studies that long-term consumption of this additive might promote chronic inflammatory diseases. Therefore, further studies of this additive are warranted.

Journal Reference:
Benoit Chassaing, et. al. Randomized controlled-feeding study of dietary emulsifier carboxymethylcellulose reveals detrimental impacts on the gut microbiota and metabolome. Gastroenterology, 2021; (DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2021.11.006)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 02 2021, @03:14AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 02 2021, @03:14AM (#1201347)

    Old news, and still somehow incomprehensible to surgeons who "treat" colitis by removal of intestinal segments.

    I forget the author, but round-about 20 years ago I read a science fiction novel in which two clandestine agencies were "playing chess with oven mitts" by manipulating unwitting agents in the field by things like manipulating their gut biome, making them more or less irritable and/or prone to violence when needed. This book was the first place I read about the cordyceps fungus and how it caused ants to suicide by feeding themselves to birds so the fungus could continue its lifecycle in the bird guts. I believe it was also the book that had a company "mining" the deep ocean for organic compounds of various fantastical abilities. It's one of the few fictional novels I have felt compelled to read twice within a year.

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