{"id":502273,"date":"2026-06-20T09:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/502273\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:13:11","slug":"sugar-free-diets-may-have-a-hidden-side-effect-study-in-mice-suggests-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/502273\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar-Free Diets May Have a Hidden Side Effect, Study in Mice Suggests : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cutting down on sugar delivers a host of health benefits, from minimizing tooth decay to improving mental health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A new study in mice flies in the face of that research, suggesting that a sugar-free diet might have some unintended side effects.<\/p>\n

Most studies to date have examined the drawbacks of too much sugar<\/a>, which includes a long list of chronic diseases, such as diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sugar is a source of energy for us and the bacteria that live in our guts, but it’s not necessarily a good one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sugar added to many foods and drinks is highly processed<\/a>, so it’s absorbed into the bloodstream quickly \u2013 much faster than other, more complex carbohydrates \u2013 giving you a sugar hit that keeps you eating more.<\/p>\n

But what happens without it?<\/p>\n

In this latest study, 12 mice were put on low-fat diets \u2013 either with or without sucrose<\/a>, a common form of sugar (which might be in your kitchen cupboard).<\/p>\n

“Low-fat diets are widely promoted as health-protective,” the researchers from the Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait explain in their study abstract<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“However, the consequences of removing sucrose within a low-fat dietary framework remain unclear.”<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

In their study, the researchers found that the zero-sugar mice experienced numerous negative health effects across the course of 16 weeks, compared to the other group.<\/p>\n

A disruption of gut bacteria<\/a> was one of the changes observed in the zero-sugar mice; these animals had fewer helpful strains and more inflammatory ones at the end of the study.<\/p>\n

It’s well established that the foods we eat shape the vast communities of microbes that live inside our intestines, but the gut microbiome<\/a> is exactly that: vast and dynamic.<\/p>\n

So we can’t really say what these changes mean, especially not for humans and when we don’t even know<\/a> what a healthy gut microbiome looks like, from person to person.<\/p>\n

Until the work is published in a peer-reviewed journal, we also don’t know much about how the study was conducted, such as what the animals’ diets contained.<\/p>\n

However, the researchers say their findings<\/a> highlight the importance of maintaining a healthy gut microbiome through diet, rather than focusing only on sugar restriction.<\/p>\n

“The findings suggest that complete removal of sucrose from a low-fat diet may negatively affect gut microbiota and metabolic health,” says<\/a> immunologist Rasheed Ahmad from the Dasman Diabetes Institute.<\/p>\n

“The study highlights the importance of maintaining balanced dietary carbohydrates to support gut and immune homeostasis.”<\/p>\n

\"PileMany diets involve cutting out excess sugar. (Rod Long\/Unsplash<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Other negative health effects associated with consuming no sugar included impaired glucose control (meaning blood sugar was less well regulated) and signs of insulin resistance<\/a> (which results in excess sugar in the bloodstream), both of which are linked to type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n

The researchers also spotted fat building up in the livers<\/a> of the zero-sugar mice, even though their body weights were about the same as the sugar-eating group.<\/p>\n

We’re still at the early stages of analyzing these findings, but this delicate balance of gut bacteria and blood sugar levels seems to be impacted when sucrose isn’t available.<\/p>\n

Given that past studies<\/a> have shown how reducing added sugar can lead to numerous health benefits, the findings are surprising, even to experts<\/a> \u2013 but they should be taken with a grain of salt: It’s a small animal study that offers some context to common dietary approaches that should be explored further.<\/p>\n

“The study is intriguing because it challenges the oversimplified idea that removing sugar is automatically beneficial,” Nneoma Oparaji, a US-based physician, told Medical News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, “nutrition is more complex and nuanced than removing a single ingredient,” she added<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

These results still need to be replicated in humans, which may shed more light on how they might relate to treatments for conditions such as diabetes<\/a> \u2013 where blood sugar control is so important.<\/p>\n

For now, the study highlights the need to further investigate the effects of cutting out sugar entirely.<\/p>\n

We’ve previously seen with certain restrictive diets<\/a> that turning the dial too far towards a perceived ‘ultra-healthy’ level can be detrimental.<\/p>\n

While a 2024 Swedish study cautiously concluded<\/a> that an occasional sweet treat could be good for cardiovascular health, the source (food or drink) and type of the sugar mattered.<\/p>\n

Related: Blood Sugar Spikes Linked With 69% Higher Risk of Alzheimer’s<\/a><\/p>\n

Those gut bugs, it seems, can be quite influential.<\/p>\n

“These findings suggest that sucrose elimination from a low-fat diet disrupts gut microbiota, impairs metabolic homeostasis, and promotes gut and liver inflammation, revealing an unrecognized dietary trigger of metabolic dysfunction,” the researchers conclude<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The research was presented at ENDO 2026<\/a>, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, and has been accepted in Frontiers in Immunology: Nutritional Immunology.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cutting down on sugar delivers a host of health benefits, from minimizing tooth decay to improving mental health.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,85,46,371,543],"class_list":["post-502273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-msft-content","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}