Cognition refers to a person’s ability to learn think, understand and remember and provides us with memory and decision-making capacity. A paper recently published in the journal Neurology reported on data from a longitudinal observational study of civil servants aged over 35 years enrolled in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health. Researchers looked at the consumption of low and no-calorie sweeteners and suggest that there is a possibility of long-term harm on cognition. Cognitive decline was particularly linked to artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols (e.g. sorbitol and maltitol). The authors acknowledge there were study limitations in their analysis as the dietary data is self-reported, people fell out of the cohort over time and of course there will be other health behaviours which could contribute to this which were not accounted for. Further research is needed, but it is important that those collecting dietary data are able to isolate intakes of low and no-calorie sweeteners so that there can be clarity about intakes and potential links to health.
Concalves NG, Martinez-Steele E, Bensenor I et al (2025) Association between Consumption of Low- and No-Calorie Artificial Sweeteners and Cognitive Decline.
Neurology. October 7, 2025 issue
105Â (7)Â e214023
