Adverse Reactions
An interview podcast bringing you the people and stories behind the science of how biological, physical, and chemical agents may cause adverse reactions to public, animal, and environmental health. This podcast is presented by the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and hosted by SOT members Anne Chappelle and David Faulkner.
About Anne
After graduating from the University of Delaware with a BS in biology in 1991, Anne Chappelle accidentally found her calling when she worked a gap year in an industrial toxicology laboratory. As it turned out, toxicology was the perfect marriage of protecting both human health and the environment. She then went on to receive her PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from the (now) University of the Sciences in Philadelphia in 1997, focusing on upper respiratory tract toxicity.
For the last 20+ years, as a toxicologist and risk assessment expert for the chemical industry, Anne has been thrilled to not work in a laboratory anymore. Along the way, she has added a few more titles: spouse; DABT; Principal of Chappelle Toxicology Consulting, LLC; occasional blogger at My Toxic Life; and most life changing (and expensive): Mom. She is thrilled to be partnered with David to add podcast co-host to the list because it gives her the opportunity to “channel my inner Terry Gross.”
About David
David Faulkner’s interest in science started at age five with a few Bill Nye the Science Guy VHS tapes and hasn’t diminished since. A lifelong artist and science fan, David has worked in nearly every mass communication medium to share his love of science with the world. Now, as an early career toxicologist, David is living out his dream of co-hosting a science podcast! With a budget! And a producer! And super cool guests! And an awesome co-host! David thinks Bill would be proud.
David attended the University of Michigan, where he completed a BS in microbiology, a BA in English language (emphasis in creative writing), and an MPH in environmental health sciences, and the University of California Berkeley, where he completed a PhD in molecular toxicology under the supervision of Dr. Chris Vulpe. He has held postdoctoral appointments at the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and just started a new position as a toxicological risk assessor. He also is a full-time parent to two adorable purple velvet plants: Planthony Bourdain and Marie Planthoinette.
Disclaimer
The viewpoints and information presented in Adverse Reactions represent those of the participating individuals. Although the Society of Toxicology holds the copyright to the production, it does not vet or review the information presented nor does presenting and distributing the Adverse Reactions podcast represent any proposal or endorsement of any position by the Society.
Adverse Reactions
High Intensity Sweeteners with a Sugar Czar
Whether its found in nature or composed by chemists a sweetener undergoes the same evaluations, according to Corey Scott, PhD, Principal Nutritionist, Cargill. Dr. Scott explains to co-hosts Anne Chappelle, PhD, and David Faulkner, PhD, how all sweeteners must be able to replace multiple properties inherit in sugar, such as taste, nutritional content, and binding properties.
About the Guest
Corey Scott, PhD, is a Principal Nutrition Scientist with Cargill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he leads global nutritional research on sweeteners and carbohydrates. Prior to this role, he was Global Nutrition Manager for Lipid Nutrition BV in the Netherlands, focusing on clinical research involving novel lipids for early life nutrition, weight management, and diabetes. Dr. Scott has also worked for General Mills in Golden Valley, Minnesota, as a nutrition scientist at The Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition. He currently serves as a steering team member and work package leader for Project SWEET (a five-year EU Consortium project evaluating sweeteners). He is the Chair of the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences Low- and Non-caloric Sweetener Committee, Chair of the North Carolina Agricultural and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University Technical Advisory and Finance Committee, and an industry advisor for the University and Industry Consortium/Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Sally Rockey Fellowship. Dr. Scott holds a doctorate degree in food science and nutrition from Ohio State University, a master’s degree in chemistry from North Carolina A&T State University, and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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[00:00:00] “Decompose” Theme Music
[00:00:05] Anne Chappelle: We’ve been doing Adverse Reactions, and this is what our
[00:00:08] David Faulkner: Fourth
[00:00:09] Anne Chappelle: Fourth
[00:00:09] David Faulkner: Season
[00:00:10] Anne Chappelle: Season
[00:00:11] David Faulkner: Amazing.
[00:00:11] Anne Chappelle: So, David, do we have a theme?
[00:00:13] David Faulkner: Everything is so much more complicated and interesting and more interconnected than we ever think it’s going to be.
[00:00:22] Anne Chappelle: We’ve really kind of strayed from traditional toxicology in this season.
[00:00:28] David Faulkner: It’s true. We have been expanding the reach of what most people think of as toxicology because one of the things I love about this discipline is that it is a necessarily applied science and that means it touches basically everything—all the other sciences.
[00:00:44] Anne Chappelle: Have a listen.
[00:00:45] “Decompose” Theme Music
[00:00:51] David Faulkner: Welcome to Adverse Reactions
[00:00:53] Anne Chappelle: high-intensity sweeteners with Sugar Czar Cory Scott
[00:00:57] Corey Scott: High-Intensity sweeteners—and they’re called by a number of names: low- and non-caloric sweeteners, high-caloric sweeteners; I’ll probably see all three during this talk—they’ve actually existed in our diet as an additive for about 40 years, so a long time. If a food product has an only sweetener, it’s typically a sugar-sweetened beverage. If you have a food, it has sugar and fats and proteins and all that, so these came about where years ago where individuals and companies wanted to reduce sugar but also provide that sweet taste. You can do that in a beverage very well. In a food product, the sugar is providing other properties outside of the sweetness as well.
[00:01:32] “Decompose” Theme Music
[00:01:38] David Faulkner: We are joined today by Dr. Corey Scott, PhD, also master of science. Dr. Scott is a Principal Nutritionist with Cargill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he leads global nutritional research on sweeteners and carbohydrates. Dr. Scott, thank you for joining us today.
[00:01:53] Corey Scott: Thank you so much. Very happy to be here. Very happy to discuss sugars and carbohydrates
[00:01:57] David Faulkner: The sweetness. Wonderful. I guess one place to start is just what is your superhero origin story? How did you get into food science?
[00:02:06] Corey Scott: I’m from a small town in North Carolina, and as early as I can remember, I always wanted to be a scientist. I was always drawn to science, mathematics, chemistry, and all that stuff. And for the longest time, I actually wanted to be medical doctor. I enrolled in UNC Chapel Hill—go Tar Heels! I got a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Then, I went on to get a master’s degree in chemistry, and during the time I was getting my master’s degree, I was introduced into food science.
I didn’t even know food science was an actual field of study. I applied for an internship with General Mills in Minneapolis. I did two interns, and then, during my second intern, I was introduced to the PhD program in food science. And there I was told that there’s actual research going on to make foods more healthy, not only more palatable and more shelf stable and that kind of stuff, but actually that could affect health. And that kind of got into what I wanted to do. So, that melded science and medicine and all these types of things.
So, I finished my PhD in food science. I joined the food industry about 23 years ago. Actually, did my PhD in a cancer hospital. So, I got the both worlds of doing food science and a little bit of medicine. I’ve enjoyed my 23 years in the food industry.
[00:03:13] David Faulkner: Wow. So, how much of your journey would you say was very deliberate: “I definitely want to move to Minnesota.” Not a lot of people say that—I’m from Michigan, so, you know, I’m all about it. But how much of it would you say was serendipity, like the right person at the right time was like, “Hey, have you heard about this sort of thing?”
[00:03:31] Corey Scott: Yeah, I think there was a lot of serendipity in there. I had a friend in graduate school who was from Minnesota, and he would tell me these stories about underground tunnels and skyways and how you could throw water in the air and it would fall as ice. And about the second year of my PhD, I said I will never, ever move to Minneapolis and that was the first job that I got.
My father’s a Midwesterner. He is from Michigan. Michigan is not Minneapolis, though. I ended up here, and I loved it from day one. I love the winters. I love the lakes. I love the people, the food. I’m just really happy that food science has taken me here and given me this career.
[00:04:04] Anne Chappelle: So, you’ve met my mom at a party, Corey. How do you explain what you do?
[00:04:10] Corey Scott: It’s a little easy and a little hard what I do. So, my job as a nutrition scientist is currently I do research on anything that tastes sweet. So, caloric sugars, sucrose, glucose, fructose but also high-intensity sweeteners. The research that I focus on are plant-based, high-intensity sweeteners. So, something like stevia as well but also polyols.
I do a lot of research on polyols. Polyols are bulking agents. You find those in oral-care products. You find those in foods. Polyols have similar sweetness of sugar, but they have the functionality of sugar as well. They’re add to bulk things up like cakes and cookies.
Sugars and high-intensity sweeteners are probably the most controversial or scrutinized food ingredients that exist. With that said, people do love things that are sweet, and people are drawn to things that are sweet. We think of sweetness and things as a treat.
So, what my research focuses on is more two parts. It focuses on the safety of sugars and carbohydrates and high-intensity sweeteners but also the efficacy.
So, when I say safety, you’ll read a lot that sugars and carbohydrates are maybe correlated with certain disease risk, and that’s not necessarily the case. Really the only issue with sugars and carbohydrates is oral health. There’s a linear relationship between intakes of sugars and dental caries. But when you look at other diseases, there’s not so much of a strong comparison, and if you look at the recommendations for sugar intake, it’s not zero. It’s typically up to 10 percent of calories in food, so you can indeed enjoy sugars in your diet and certainly have a healthy lifestyle. So, that’s more on the safety side.
On the efficacy, side this is where we get the polyols and high-intensity sweeteners. The job that they do is to provide the same sweetness of sugars but not the calories. So, people actually use these if they’re trying to manage their weight, as well. So, that’s the research that I lead to make sure that they’re indeed safe but also efficacious in individuals looking to lose weight.
[00:05:59] Anne Chappelle: You know, I worked in industry for over 20 years. There are few industries where I think I could have been like a true researcher within industry versus having a regulatory function, but you really identify yourself as a researcher. Do you have a lab?
[00:06:18] Corey Scott: No, we don’t have a lab. So, we do our research with universities or we either use consortia to do these as well. You mentioned science and regulatory affairs. I do work very closely with those, and the objective of the research that we do is we do want to learn about our ingredients, and we do at some point want to make claims. And these may not be on package claims. For example, if stevia does not have any effect on your gut microflora, that’s a study that we want to do that we actually just published where we want to show that. Or if you consume a beverage with stevia and now you’re consuming 150 calories less than you would with a sugar-sweetened beverage, are you going to eat any more? Are you going to overcompensate for that? And we published work to say that’s not the case, too. And you are correct: Industry research can be unique, but if you take something like Stevia, that’s only been on the market since 2008 so relatively short amount of time. And that’s why we’re doing some comprehensive studies on that to make sure we’re getting a lot of scientific information out on that particular product.
[00:07:16] Anne Chappelle: So you’re the Sugar Czar.
[00:07:18] David Faulkner: Do you have much of a sweet tooth yourself? Do you have a favorite sweet treat?
[00:07:21] Corey Scott: I have an incredible sweet tooth. This house is full of candy. My favorite thing is jelly beans. I think, what was the president … Jimmy Carter? I’m showing my age. Ronald Reagan? One of them loved jelly beans. I love chocolate, jelly beans, lollipops. This house is full of it.
[00:07:36] David Faulkner: So stevia is plant derived, right? [KJ1] Sugar is plant derived, right, as well? I am curious about this history of sugar alternatives. Can you tell us a little bit about where did this idea of what if we replaced sugar because it’s not necessarily an obvious thing to do. There had to be a point that someone was like, “Wait a minute, what if we replaced sugar in certain products?”
[00:08:01] Corey Scott: High-Intensity sweeteners—and they’re called by a number of names: low- and non-caloric sweeteners, high-caloric sweeteners; I’ll probably see all three during this talk—they’ve actually existed in our diet as an additive for about 40 years, so a long time. If a food product has an only sweetener, it’s typically a sugar-sweetened beverage. If you have a food, it has sugar and fats and proteins and all that, so these came about where years ago where individuals and companies wanted to reduce sugar but also provide that sweet taste. You can do that in a beverage very well. In a food product, the sugar is providing other properties outside of the sweetness as well. So, the original intent was to provide sweetness but reduce the calories. And if you go back to some of the old beverages, Tab and some of those things—I really date myself there—that was the original intent was to remove the calories, have a zero-calorie beverage or a lower-calorie beverage without the sugar.
[00:08:51] David Faulkner: Interesting. Aspartame, that’s fully synthetic, isn’t it?
[00:08:55] Corey Scott: That’s correct, yes.
[00:08:56] David Faulkner: But then, stevia’s derived from a plant.
[00:08:59] Corey Scott: So, stevia grows in the plant. It’s called a Stevia rebaudiana plant. It looks like a little shrub. It’s native to South America. It’s also grown in China. You extract stevia almost identical to the way that you make tea. So, you put leaves in hot water. You extract out all the components from the leaf, and you do a number of filtration fractionation steps, and then you’re left with stevial glycosides.
So, when we say stevia, that represents what we know now about 60 different molecules, and those molecules vary in their level of sweetness and their level of bitterness. So, if you were to go to the grocery store today and buy a packet of ttevia, you’re buying what we call Reb A, Stevia rebaudiana A. That’s the most abundant in the leaf, but it’s not the sweetest, and it also can have some off taste with it as well. Now, companies are actually making stevia by fermentation. They mimic the biological process in the plant. You can do that on an industrial scale, and now, you can get those minor stevial glycosides and make a sweetener that’s very close to the taste of sugar.
[00:09:56] David Faulkner: That’s using bacteria to make insulin or something like that, right? It’s the same idea.
[00:10:01] Corey Scott: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Indeed. Yes. Yeah.
[00:10:03] David Faulkner: That’s really cool.
[00:10:04] Corey Scott: Yeah, you have substrates and inputs, and then, you have the microorganisms that will ferment those sugars and then make the stevedore bodies.
[00:10:11] David Faulkner: So, you alluded to this earlier, sugars are naturally occurring in all kinds of foods, including foods that people may not necessarily think of as having sugars in them. They’re just everywhere, and they provide some other really important chemistry functions. Can you talk a little bit about when you have these sugar functions in foods, like I’m thinking baking, for example, is notorious—the chemistry has to be spot on, right? Can you get Maillard reactions and things like that?
[00:10:38] Corey Scott: I like to think of sugar molecules as little bricks. My father was a brick mason, so I like to go with that. So, that is your structure, your texture of your cakes and cookies and things. They bind water, they interact with starches, they interact with proteins, as you just mentioned, so you’re getting that nice texture and not only a taste that’s a major driver for food liking; it’s also texture. If you bit into a cookie or a brownie or something and the texture was too hard or too soft, it could be very off-putting.
So, a lot of physiochemical properties are going on with sugar, very difficult to replace all of those. That’s why you see things like polyols, maybe fibers, or things mixed with the high-intensity sweeteners to try to mimic all the wonderful things that sugar in itself can do by itself.
[00:11:18] Anne Chappelle: So, there is the Scoville scale for hotness for peppers. Is there a Scoville for sugar because a lot of times I think of the taste of sugar as very qualitative or subjective. So, how do you convert that?
[00:11:31] Corey Scott: So, we use what’s called sucrose equivalence. And what you do is you put sugar in water, and you keep increasing the amount of sugar. Which, sugar in itself, there’s a linear correlation between the amount of sugar that you add and the sweet perception that people do. So, you set up a taste panel. You can have normal consumers, or you can have professionals, and they taste the amount of sugar that you put in water. So, you mentioned Scoville Units. Basically, the highest level of sweetness you can get is what we call SEV15—so sucrose equivalent of 15. So, if you take a soft drink in America that is really sweet, that’s like the highest level. If you go to Europe, their sucrose levels in beverages are around eight. It’s a lot lower. Some places are around five. So, we do have an objective measure of sweetness that we can relate things to.
So, typically, when you formulate a food, you take the sugar out, but you want to make it lower calorie or zero calorie but have the same sweetness. You can target that sweetness based on these sucrose equivalence tests that we do in water. There are some equations based on each particular high-intensity sweetener, based on each bulking agent—equations of how much you put in will equal that sucrose-equivalent level that you’re trying.
[00:12:40] David Faulkner: Thinking about all the organic and natural marketing and things like that, that you see, so you have a bright line of “Okay, from this derivation onward, we’re no longer dealing with something that is natural.” How do you develop new sweeteners and things like that?
[00:12:56] Corey Scott: I’ll talk about that in two ways. So, you have your synthetic sweeteners, and then, you have your plant-derived sweeteners, and they all work the same way. They work the same way as sugar. They bind to sweet taste receptors in your tongue, and that sends a signal to your brain that you have something sweet. There are different regions on the sweet taste receptors that they bind to, and there are different potencies all over the place.
So, I’ll start with artificials. Bringing those to market takes quite a lot of time. You first have to discover them and do research and then do the regulatory assessment, the tox assessment—you know, this can take years and millions and millions of dollars.
And then the plant-based ones—well, you gotta find them. Now, how was stevia and monk fruit, something like that, found? Centuries ago, people would eat the leaves, and they used to call it sweet leaf, and then we learned how to extract the sweet taste component out of that.
What we know about consumers—what I’ve heard through my career—is 25 percent of people absolutely love all high-intensity sweeteners. Twenty-five percent of people don’t really care for them at all. And then, 50 percent of people are in the middle, but they skew towards liking them, and they skew towards liking them as they get older, as they’re concerned about their weight, or they just maybe want to reduce sugar. So, they skew towards those.
[00:14:00] Anne Chappelle: I’m thinking of the adverse reaction that my mother-in-law has whenever she has something sweetened with an artificial sweetener. She gets a massive headache, becomes very cranky, and goes home. Besides that being a positive or negative thing for my relationship with my husband, could you talk a little bit about the adverse reactions or the toxicity that might be associated with some of these?
[00:14:25] Corey Scott: I’ll answer that from sugars and high-intensity sweeteners. So, to go back to toxicology, when food ingredients get approved, these sweeteners have what’s called an ADI (acceptable dietary intake) level, of these. And what that number comes from is they do rodent studies, and they take the level of a sweetener fed to a rodent and at which point in their diet does this start to cause adverse effects. And they take that dosage and then divide that by 100. And then that’s the dose, the maximal dose, that’s allowed in food there. So, that’s how we establish the toxicity for that as well.
If you look into the literature, when you look at adverse events reporting, you don’t typically see these things on the randomized control studies where you feed high-intensity sweeteners. If you look into the blogosphere and things like that, you do see people tend to say, “Hey, I drank this diet beverage, and I have a headache.” And if you look at the list of migraine triggers and headache triggers, that may be on there along with another other ingredient. But I do know when we look at adverse events reported, we specifically ask these, and it’s very atypical to see these with the sweetener itself or even with the control or even cause to any treatment that we’re doing. But sweeteners are safe. They have global regulatory approval.
[00:15:35] Anne Chappelle: The company I work with, we do GRAS submissions and do these dossiers and they’re quite extensive. It does take a tremendous amount of time to qualify the ingredient, but not just the ingredient itself but the pathway, the impurities, what food categories. How do you ensure that you’re doing all the tests that you need to do for safety
[00:15:57] Corey Scott: We’re tailoring our research to know what we don’t know. When I ingest sugar, I get a signal to my brain that sweetness and calories are coming, so my body knows what to do with all these hormones. But if sweeteners are only half the story, what goes on then? That may be something that no one really thought to ask 20 years ago, but we’re asking those questions now.
So, I would say the research has gotten much, much more sophisticated. Again, it’s more about understanding our ingredients from those standpoints as well. So, the in vitro test and the rodent test, they point us in the right direction of where to look and what to look for.
I’ll go to the effects of sweeteners on gut microflora. Historically, they were done in rodents. Historically, they were done in fecal samples that were put in a dish, and then, you overlay the sweeteners on top of them and see what happens to the bacteria. You see what happens to the sweetener as well.
Now, we’re doing those in humans, and we’re looking at urine samples. We’re looking at blood. We’re looking at the fecal metabolome and the fecal microbiome. So, we’re really trying to see what happens to the bacteria. What happens to the ingredient? How does it break down? And we’re getting a lot of comprehensive answers. But then again, now you can look at reabsorption. Now, you can look at intestinal receptors. The more answers you get, the more questions you get.
[00:17:09] David Faulkner: That’s science: It’s never about a single answer that solves everything. It’s always a single answer that creates a million new questions.
[00:17:16] Anne Chappelle: So, you’re involved with something called Project Sweet.
[00:17:20] David Faulkner: Sounds delicious.
[00:17:21] Corey Scott: So, Project Sweet is a European Commission consortium project. It’s funded by what’s called a Horizon 2020 grant. So, this is money that the European Union set aside for research. My company, Cargill, along with 28 other partners, we came together in a consortium, and we applied for those research dollars. And we were awarded that back in 2017.
So, the objective of that project is that Western Europe is starting to see the increases in obesity and other non-communicable diseases that we’re seeing here in the United States. The question that they’re asking is, “Would reduced sugar have an effect on mitigating some of these diseases?”
In Europe, they do not use high-intensity sweeteners, not nearly to the level that we use in the United States. In the United States, high-intensity sweeteners are pretty much in everything. In Europe, not only are they not in a lot of products, but there are regulations on what products they can go in, and there are regulations on the levels that can go in there. So, not where we are with sweeteners. So, the question they want to ask is, “If we follow what’s being done in America—reducing sugar with the use of high-intensity sweeteners—what does that look like from a public health standpoint, from an economic standpoint, from a sustainability standpoint, from a consumer acceptance standpoint?”
This is a five-year study that has human clinical studies in it, the research and development of novel beverages and foods with novel sweetener blends. Because we do know if you blend sweeteners, you get more close to the taste of sugar rather than the use of individuals. That project began officially in October 2018, and it ended officially in March of 2024. We’ve had a number of publications on the health side, on the consumer side, I think on the regulatory side as well, and between now and the next few years, you’ll see more of those coming as well. So, really a good comprehensive study to look at pretty much all the aspects of high-intensity sweeteners that you can.
[00:19:05] Anne Chappelle: So, what was the biggest thing that surprised you that came out of this study so far?
[00:19:10] Corey Scott: I think what we learned was from scientific end was confirming. We did confirm the safety and efficacy, and we used some novel blends—so some blends that had not been tested before. So, we did a blend of stevia and monk fruit, a plant-based blend. We did a blend of a protein called thalmatin with stevia. What was surprising though, I think, is the consumer attitudes towards sweeteners. If you look at Western Europe, all the companies that make that up, some countries love sweeteners, and some countries don’t. Some countries love specific sweeteners. Some countries don’t. That was surprising just that diversity and the feeling towards sweeteners but that again is an opportunity now to show them this data and hopefully get everyone on right side of the street.
[00:19:49] Anne Chappelle: So, let’s talk about nutrition. What about the role of artificial sweeteners in nutrition, or how do you improve nutrition with some of your research?
[00:20:00] Corey Scott: I’ve worked in food companies for 75 percent of my career, and I can tell you that when you reformulate food or you do a line extension, you’re looking for a better taste or something. If you want to improve the calories, you take the sugar out, and you put something in.
But let’s say that you have a healthy food that has a certain amount of sugar, a high amount of protein, and a high amount of fiber. And it’s really healthy, but then you reformulate it, and you lower the calories. But now, you’ve reduced the fiber, you’ve reduced the protein, so technically made it less healthy.
So, we’re paying really close attention to nutrient density. So, if your aim is to reduce sugar, if your aim is to reduce calories, we want that to be as healthy as it was before, and we’d love it to be more healthy. This is where nutritionists talk to food scientists because food scientists are wizards at making great-tasting food that are reduced in this and reduced in that.
But, if you make it taste better, but the calories go up, or if salt goes up, or if the protein goes down, or fiber goes down, that doesn’t do anybody any good. So, we’ve really paid attention when we work with food scientists to make sure we reformulated that it’s at least as healthy, but we really want to make that healthier.
[00:21:08] David Faulkner: This is a question that I’ve had since I was in high school when I first remember there was a thing the media that was like, “Aspartame, it causes cancer in rats and things like that.” And then I remember reading a follow-up thing that was just like, “Yeah, but they gave the rats like insane amounts for many years.” What is the state of knowledge on that?
[00:21:24] Corey Scott: Those rodent studies, they’re old, they’re flawed, they’ve been really criticized in the scientific community. Unfortunately, though, they’re often cited. Aspartame does have global regulatory approval. Aspartame just went through a reevaluation of its safety by two agencies under the World Health Organization. IARC concluded that aspartame is a class 2b carcinogen, but JECFA said, “No, it’s not.” I actually tend to believe more with JECFA; they’re much more objective in their safety rulings as well. And again, that data is only based on rodents. Aspartame has a long history of safe use; it’s just unfortunate that people go back to those particular studies, but they’ve, long been discredited. They just keep coming up.
[00:22:02] David Faulkner: I’m really curious about the work that you did in lipids.
[00:22:06] Corey Scott: I did clinical research on lipids, and I did a number of those. So, there are specialty fatty acids that are beneficial for diabetics, and they help blood glucose management. They’re naturally occurring lipids, believe it or not, like conjugated linoleic acid, which is a polyunsaturated fat, a trans fat and a cis fat all together. So, it’s quite a unique fat that you can find in nature. You can find it in cows. So, cows will eat grass; the cow’s stomach will convert linoleic acid to conjugated linoleic acid. So, it’s quite a healthy fat. And we were isolating that fat for plants actually and selling it in the supplement food world, but that fat actually helps you burn fat, believe it or not.
[00:22:45] David Faulkner: This is too good to be true.
[00:22:46] Corey Scott: You could buy CLA at a health store, and I buy it and then use it. I think it works very well. Yeah.
[00:22:51] David Faulkner: Fat that helps you burn fat. That’s wild. Okay. Continue.
[00:22:54] Corey Scott: I did a lot of work with infant formula, and what’s unique is human breast milk is high in palmitic acid. Infant formula is high in palmitic acid, but palmitic acid from a plant is in a completely different structure than it exists in mammals.
So, we were using interesterification to more mimic the structure of mammalian palmitic acid rather than using it as a plant source. So, I was doing some infant nutrition research, and the benefit of that type of fat is that you get more mineral absorption, you get more fat absorption. The baby’s happier, the baby’s not constipated as well. So, that was a product in the area I really enjoyed working on.
[00:23:32] David Faulkner: We’ve talked a lot about sugar alternatives. Are there artificial fats or fat alternatives that we could be looking at?
[00:23:39] Corey Scott: They have some. So, fats supply a large amount of calories. Fats get in your body and do all sorts of things that they can bind to receptors. They also act as signaling molecules. You think of DHA and EPA, they’re going to be your brain. So, fats do a number of things.
Food scientists have designed these alternative fats, I’ll call them. You have to pay attention to food functionality. You have to pay attention to digestive tolerance and all these things. So, fats have always been a little more weird to deal with than these sugar alternatives.
[00:24:07] Anne Chappelle: So, I think about the change in attitude we’ve had over the last 15 or 20 years in terms of understanding where your food comes from, what is in your food. Eat local, eat fresh, eat organic, all of those kind of trends of going back to quote unquote “the natural.” And that’s where I think some of your research in sweeteners crosses that line because it is a natural substance. You’re not just making this up in a test tube.
[00:24:39] Corey Scott: We started learning these things, probably in the food industry, at least when I started around 20 years ago, is understanding adding things, making it more healthy, taking things away that may not be so healthy.
But then I would say in at least five or 10 years, the industry has become more transparent about where things are coming from, how we get them, and why we process them. There are things like lifecycle analyses now to really look at the environment. So, sugar—what’s the land use? What’s the water use? Okay, now we’re growing stevia. How does that stack up against what we’re doing?
There are certain safety tests you have to do in order to get your product approved and available. But are there things you don’t? And historically, when you look at high-intensity sweeteners in the ’80s, “Oh, they’re going to cause cancer. They’re going to do this.” I think people are past that. But now, consumers ask, “What about my gut microflora? What about the gut-brain axis?” They’re asking these things right now—they’re just questions. The research is trying to fill those gaps as well.
[00:25:34] Anne Chappelle: So, what do you put in your coffee?
[00:25:36] David Faulkner: Oh.
[00:25:37] Corey Scott: I put in stevia if I have it, or I put in sugar. I put in two small little spoonfuls of sugar
[00:25:44] David Faulkner: We like to ask every guest: “If you were not doing what you are doing today, career wise, what would you be doing?”
[00:25:50] Corey Scott: I would be a game show host. In high school—I love math and science and physics—but I also was in the theater and doing acting. I wanted to go to be a Hollywood actor in the movies, but I said like Price Is Right or something like that—or not Jeopardy! because I want to have fun with the contestants. So, someplace where I could joke with. Jeopardy! is a bit too serious, but I’d love to be wearing fancy suits and being on TV and being a game show host.
[00:26:16] David Faulkner: That’s wonderful. I love that answer. That makes me so happy.
[00:26:18] Anne Chappelle: See, Corey’s got it because he’s got the pocket square going already. All game show hosts have the excellent pocket square.
[00:26:26] David Faulkner: The dapper jacket, yeah.
[00:26:27] Anne Chappelle: The winning smile. This has been a lot of fun, Corey. Thank you so much for spending some time with us and talking about the sweetest parts of your life.
[00:26:38] Corey Scott: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it.
[00:26:39] “Decompose” Theme Music
[00:26:44] Anne Chappelle: Next on Adverse Reactions,
[00:26:46] David Faulkner: “Snow Big Deal? Similar Exposures, Different Outcomes,”
[00:26:50] Anne Chappelle: with Dr. Sam Snow, a risk assessor at ICF.
[00:26:55] Sam Snow: We were expecting non-chemical stressors to really cause the ozone effects to be exacerbated. And what we surprisingly found was that the biggest effect with or without the ozone exposure were the rats that were just isolated by themselves that were socially isolated. So, if they were single house, they had these effects that you would not expect without ozone exposure. And then when they were exposed to ozone, that’s when the exacerbation happened.
[00:27:19] “Decompose” Theme Music
[00:27:25] Anne Chappelle: Thank you, all, for joining us for this episode of Adverse Reactions, presented by the Society of Toxicology.
[00:27:31] David Faulkner: And thank you to Dave Leve at Ma3stro Studios,
[00:27:34] Anne Chappelle: that’s Ma3stro with a three, not an E,
[00:27:38] David Faulkner: who created and produced all the music for Adverse Reactions, including the theme song, “Decompose.”
[00:27:45] Anne Chappelle: The viewpoints and information presented in Adverse Reactions represent those of the participating individuals. Although the Society of Toxicology holds the copyright to this production, it has,
[00:27:56] David Faulkner: definitely,
[00:27:57] Anne Chappelle: not vetted or reviewed the information presented herein,
[00:28:01] David Faulkner: nor does presenting and distributing this podcast represent any proposal or endorsement of any position by the Society.
[00:28:08] Anne Chappelle: You can find out more information about the show at adversereactionspodcast.com
[00:28:13] David Faulkner: and more information about the Society of Toxicology on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
[00:28:19] Anne Chappelle: I’m Anne Chappelle,
[00:28:21] David Faulkner: and I’m David Faulkner. Hopefully at least half of you make it back for the next episode.
[00:28:26] Anne Chappelle: This podcast was approved by Anne’s mom.
[00:28:30] “Decompose” Theme Music
[00:28:33] Episode Ends
[KJ1]There is a “yeah” stated in the background by Corey Scott