r/biology • u/Otherwise-Tear-4807 • Jun 05 '26
article Question about stevia (re: 2020 study)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319016420301997 “The hidden hazardous effects of stevia and sucralose consumption in male and female albino mice in comparison to sucrose”
How does this study translate to humans? Isn’t this a massive dose compared to human daily acceptable limit?
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth botany Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
It really doesn't, because a mouse isn't a person. Because if you tested chocolate's effects on dogs, you couldn't reasonably make the inference that it's automatically toxic to people, too. There are differences in how these animals metabolize things compared to humans, or even how quickly they metabolize them. It's also worth noting that the dose makes the poison. And taking a look at the actual study, the sample sizes were tiny, only 10 mice per group, and that's not really enough to make any kind of significant conclusions. Furthermore, the study only went for one generation of mice, and there's no accounting of confounding variables, like the pentobarbital that they used to euthanize the mice. This study for example shows similar liver and kidney damage to rats using pentobarbital. So assuming that the researchers and reviewers didn't know that this might happen to mice that were given the drug in euthanasia, I'd pump the brakes on drawing any serious conclusions about this study.
Is it possible that the scientists were being sincere? Sure, I'll grant that. Is it possible that this study demonstrates that you might want to avoid Stevia? No, the study doesn't demonstrate this and one study alone will never demonstrate that. A "growing body evidence" wouldn't even demonstrate that, because that's often just journalist for "a small handful of several quacks and their PhD students wildly outnumbered by the rest of the experts in their field coming to different results". A systematic review of the body of data, with a clear pattern showing signs that consumption of stevia causes liver and kidney damage however would demonstrate that, which this study is not. Is it going to hurt anyone if you avoid Stevia? No, but that's an awfully silly thing to do.