Microbiota Sweeteners

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Composition of the gut microbiota is dependable on the diet that is consumed. As a result, the metabolic potential can be compromised. Diet that is mostly present in developed countries is a Western diet also called a meat-sweet diet. Western diet is characterized with high intake of red and processed meat, butter, high-fat dairy products, eggs, refined grains, white potatoes, French fries, and high-sugar drinks. Western diet also contains various additives such as sweeteners and food dyes that can impact gut microbiota. For example, artificial sweeteners including saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame were given to mice in drinking water; that combination of the sweeteners changed gut microbial community. Mix of sweeteners entered the large …show more content…

For years, people have been adding colors that are naturally present in vegetables, animals, and minerals. Larger production volumes requested the usage of higher amount of dyes, so in order to reduce the expenses of production, to make sure that it runs fast and can be reproducible the synthetic dyes came into production. They were considered safe because they are stable, but nowadays many researchers are reporting negative effects of azo dyes. The researchers have started to investigate the azo dyes back in the late sixties (Roxon et al., 1967). Synthetic azo dyes are widely used in different industries. Azo dyes have characteristic chemical structure that is called (azo) bond R-N = N-R'. Azo dyes are compounds consisting of a diazotized amine attached to an amine or a phenol and contain one or more azo linkages. Aromatic amines are essentially the products of azo dyes. Nowadays there are more than 3000 recognized azo dyes which are present in different industries such as textiles, paper, food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries (Johnson et al., 1978). Currently, there are six azo dyes used as food colorants: allura red (red shade) (E129), carmoisine (red shade) (E122), ponceau 4R (red shade) (E124), quinoline yellow (yellow shade) (E104), sunset yellow (orange shade) (E110), and tartrazine (orange shade)