On the 222nd Peter Attia Drive Podcast, Attia admits that as time goes on, he views fewer and fewer notions about nutrition with certainty. Hearing that made me recall one of the reasons why I feel the same way too.

The rise and fall of olestra.

Approved by the FDA in 1996, olestra was touted as a fake fat possessing all the flavor and texture of the real thing while being calorie-free. Soon, seemingly every potato chip producer offered a fat-free, reduced-calorie version.

And soon I was snacking on large quantities of them with regularity. Unlike many others, though, I didn’t experience what Proctor & Gamble euphemistically called “intestinal rumblings” and “occasional soiling.”

A potential problem with olestra, you see, is that its nonpolar molecules are so large that they do more than lessen the assimilation of fat-soluble vitamins and sometimes create a vitamin deficiency. It can also produce what a buddy of mine dysphemistically called “day-long diarrhea.”

Now maybe my ultrahigh-fiber diet protected me from that, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Because of my buddy’s experience - and maybe in homage to Hunter S. Thompson’s school of gonzo journalism - I kept increasing the amount I’d eat at one sitting. I wanted to reach the point where my intestinal floodgates fully opened to write a cautionary, albeit bizarre, tale.

Eventually, I ate an entire bag with no ill effects.

That killed the concept of the article and convinced me olestra was here to stay. That there were enough people like me and that further research and development would lessen the laxative effect for others.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

In 2010, Time magazine listed olestra as one of the 50 worst inventions of all time. By 2023, not a single product sold in the U.S. contained it.

So you can see why I feel as Attia does and stress the never-ending need for eating experimentation. And why I cite the rise and fall of olestra before giving you seemingly good news about the artificial sweetener used in more products in the U.S. than any other according to the Washington Post, sucralose.

Because a lot of bad news about what’s sold as Splenda preceded it. Enough that I’d be negligent not to note a bit of it.

In 1999, the FDA approved the use of sucralose after reviewing more than 110 studies in human beings and animals and ultimately deciding it did not pose a carcinogenic, reproductive, or neurologic risk. As a result, a well-known nonprofit food safety and nutrition watchdog group, The Center for Science in the Public Interest, rated sucralose as “safe.”

That rating remained in effect until 2013 when a then-unpublished study presented at a conference - but based on work performed at the highly respected Ramazzini Institute in Italy - caused the CSPI to change its rating to “caution.” When the full study was published three years later in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, it contradicted prior safety claims made about sucralose and stressed “follow-up studies are urgent.”

Consequently, the CSPI downgraded its rating again. The public was now advised to “avoid” it.

Although seven years later may not qualify as urgent, that word is suitable for the dissemination of the results from a University of Vienna study published by Nutrients on Sept. 18. It compares sucralose to sugar specifically in how both affect bacterial endotoxin levels in your gut.

While you may have little knowledge about bacterial endotoxins, that shouldn’t be the case with inflammation. And you certainly know consuming the amount of sugar found in the typical American diet creates the sort that can lead to the development of heart disease, liver disease, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease.

So to follow what comes next, just know having high bacterial endotoxin levels causes inflammation.

In the aforementioned study, researchers had 11 healthy nonsmokers abstain from eating intensely sweet foods for three weeks prior to it. Then as part of a light breakfast (a bread roll with a bit of butter) once a week for three weeks, they consumed a one-liter drink containing sucralose, a sucralose-maltodextrin mix, or sucrose.

Blood work performed before and after the breakfasts showed that on the days the 11 did not consume the sucralose or the sucralose-maltodextrin mix drink, they had significantly higher bacterial endotoxins levels in their blood.

On the average, it was 45% higher two hours later.

Once all the numbers had been crunched, the researchers concluded that while the intake of a sucralose-sweetened beverage “has no effect on intestinal barrier function in healthy young adults” the use of sucrose does.

Equally as important is that their results “add further weight to the hypothesis that dietary sugars like sucrose may be critical in the development of intestinal barrier dysfunction suggested to contribute to the development of various metabolic diseases.” Like type 2 diabetes and what you might know as NAFLD, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, what the medical world began calling MASLD about a week ago.