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Sweeteners Lab Report

This study compared the effects of natural and artificial sweeteners on the heart rate of Daphnia pulex. The researchers found that the natural sugar turbinado increased heart rate as expected, while all artificial sweeteners (Splenda, Equal, Sweet n Low) decreased heart rate. Refined sugar did not affect heart rate, possibly due to chemicals added during processing. The artificial sweeteners are minimally absorbed and do not raise blood glucose levels like natural sugars, explaining their lack of effect on heart rate.

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197 views

Sweeteners Lab Report

This study compared the effects of natural and artificial sweeteners on the heart rate of Daphnia pulex. The researchers found that the natural sugar turbinado increased heart rate as expected, while all artificial sweeteners (Splenda, Equal, Sweet n Low) decreased heart rate. Refined sugar did not affect heart rate, possibly due to chemicals added during processing. The artificial sweeteners are minimally absorbed and do not raise blood glucose levels like natural sugars, explaining their lack of effect on heart rate.

Uploaded by

clingle
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A Comparison of Natural and Artificial Sweeteners on Daphnia pulex

Carrie Lingle, Deanna Belsky, John Henninger, Justin Thomas

Biology 111 Principles of Biology I Monday Lab

November, 2008
Introduction

Natural sweeteners or sugars such as sucrose, lactose, and fructose are simple

carbohydrates that are found in many types of foods and drinks. Artificial sweeteners are

substances that have a sweet taste like sugars, but are made of different substances than

sugars, and usually have a much lower caloric content. Artificial sweeteners are used as a

substitute in foods and drinks to lower the caloric value of those foods.

The purpose of our study was to determine how various natural and artificial

sweeteners would affect Daphnia pulex’s basal heart rate, which in turn would give us an

idea of how these products operate in and affect the human.

Materials and Methods

We conducted our experiment using Daphnia pulex that were provided to us by our

lab instructor, and we prepared the Daphnia pulex for use and viewing per instructions

given (1).

We obtained samples of refined white sugar, Turbinado (raw sugar) sugar, and the

artificial sweeteners Equal, Splenda, and Sweet n Low. We began by preparing several

different concentrations of the Turbinado sugar by dissolving it into distilled water. We

found that a 12% concentration achieved the best results. We then made 12% mixtures of

each of the samples using distilled water for each type of sample. We stirred the samples

thoroughly to make sure that they were dissolved before we used them. We obtained D.
pulex and placed them in an observation container. We allowed the D. pulex to settle in the

observation chamber for 2 mins and then we set our control for each D. pulex by counting

the heart rate of each of the D. pulex for 15 seconds. We did this three times to determine

the average control heart rate for each D. pulex. Next we placed a drop of one of the

mixtures of our natural and artificial sweeteners on the D. pulex and waited for 5 mins to

let the sweeteners take an affect. After 5 mins, we again found the average heart rate for

each D. pulex. We used 5 separate D. pulex, one each for each type of sweetener that we

tested.

Results

We conducted this test to determine what effects natural and artificial sweeteners

have on D. pulex. The results of our experiment are shown in Figure 1. The graph clearly

shows that the D. pulex reacted to all of the artificial sweeteners in the same way with a

reduced heart rate. We see that the Turbinado sugar increased the heart rate, but

surprisingly the refined sugar did not.


Figure 1. Comparison of basal heart rates of D. pulex to heart rates when exposed to

solutions of natural and artificial sweeteners.

Discussion

The results of our experiment did support our hypothesis that natural sweeteners

would increase the heart rate of the D. pulex while artificial sweeteners would have less

affect or none. The Turbinado sugar increased the heart rate of the D. pulex as expected.

Sugars are simple carbohydrates that the body uses as a form of quick energy. Simple

carbohydrates are very easily digested in the human gastrointestinal tract, and quickly

absorbed into the blood stream. Simple carbohydrates such as sugar can raise the glucose

levels in the blood very rapidly and this increase can cause rapid heart rate in humans. This

is often associated with hyperglycemia in people who have uncontrolled diabetes. We


saw a fairly consistent result from all of the artificial sweeteners. Each of the artificial

sweeteners is some form of sugar substitute, meaning that none of them contain sucrose

(sugar), but instead contain some other substance that tastes sweet but is not sucrose. Each

of the artificial sweeteners was made of a different substance. Splenda contains sucralose,

Equal contains aspartame, and Sweet N Low contains saccharin. Each of these sugar

substitutes has one major attribute in common. All of them are very minimally absorbed

and or metabolized by the human body. An interesting point of comparison of artificial

sweeteners to natural sweeteners in the metabolism of each in the human body is that

natural sugars are quickly and easily absorbed and transformed into glucose, while artificial

sweeteners are either not metabolized at all, or they are metabolized and broken down into

various residual chemicals, but not glucose. This is what allows the artificial sweeteners to

have few or no caloric content.

The results of the refined sugar was a little surprising, however I believe the answer

may lie in the methods of refinement. Many chemicals are used in the refining of raw

sugars to refined white sugars, whereas the raw sugars have a minimal of chemical

additives. I believe that these chemicals might have an effect on how fast the sugars are

metabolized. I believe that if we had left the D. pulex in the refined sugar solution for a

longer period of time that we would probably have seen the heart rate eventually reach the

level of that of the Turbinado raw sugar.

The control of determining the basal heart rate of each D. pulex seemed to work

well, as the results were all different than the control set. Some possible errors to consider

for this experiment are that we had to use different D. pulex for each test. It would not

work to test each type of sweetener on one D. pulex without the results being terribly
skewed and confusing, however each D. pulex could react slightly differently to any

particular type of sweetener and the basal heart rates were different for each D. pulex, so

this experiment simply gives us a rough comparison of the results of sweeteners on various

D. pulex. Further testing could be to investigate the length of the affects of increased heart

rate from the natural sugar solutions on the D. pulex to possibly better understand how

natural sugars affect the human body over a period of time.

Literature Cited

(1) BIOL 111 Principles of Biology Laboratory Guide Fall “Physiology of Daphnia”,

2004, Department of Biology, Indiana, PA.

(2) Sugar Substitutes. (2008). Artificial sweeteners: A safe alternative to sugar? Retrieved
November 2008. From http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/artificial-
sweeteners/MY00073/FLUSHCACHE=0&UPDATEAPP=false

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