Olaitan Bobade: From short-lived curiosity to everyday curiosity about artificial sweeteners

This piece was written in the fall of 2024 by GRAD 5144 (Communicating Science) student Olaitan Bobade as part of an assignment to write a personal narrative about her research.

I wish I could start off this story by saying that I have always been interested in studying artificial sweeteners and how they impact health, but this is not the case. Rather, it is my interest in managing and preventing diet-related chronic diseases that piqued my interest in my current research. In fact, my first encounter with artificial sweeteners was taking a gulp of diet soda and wondering how it managed to taste so sweet while still delivering zero calories. Unfortunately, my curiosity was brief. I did not attempt to conduct any further research after learning that the sweet taste came from artificial sweeteners. If, at the time, someone had told my teenage self that I would end up spending many hours reading and reviewing the scientific literature on artificial sweeteners, I wouldn’t have believed it for a second.

    Fast forward to many years later: I earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics and became a dietitian-nutritionist working with individuals whose health status required them to limit the consumption of caloric sweeteners such as regular sugar. I often got questions from my clients about sugar substitutes. I particularly received this question from patients who mentioned that adhering to the new dietary recommendation was going to be difficult because they had had a sweet tooth all their life.

    As a sweet tooth myself, I always empathized with these patients. However, I did not feel confident about recommending artificial sweeteners to them because the existing research was not only limited; the majority of the research had been conducted in study populations that were not translatable to my patients’ specific medical conditions. At the time of this story, I was back home in Nigeria and had no idea that I would someday be working to fill that knowledge gap.

    In 2023, I started graduate school and found that my advisor was already doing some research in this area. It was a perfect fit. I had no difficulty relating to the research based on my previous clinical experience as a dietitian. Now, as a master’s degree student, I study how commonly consumed artificial sweeteners impact blood glucose levels in people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

    My research is the first controlled-feeding study examining how artificial sweeteners compare to regular sugar on acute glycemic effects in middle-aged and older adults with prediabetes. Although my research focuses mostly on clinical physiology and metabolism, it is exciting that I still get to integrate another of my research interests - addressing health disparities. This is because I am conducting my research among individuals with prediabetes, an understudied population in clinical research.

    As a nutrition professional, I have had the privilege to work across various areas of the nutrition sector, including research, clinical settings, and the food industry. Interestingly, the artificial sweeteners vs. caloric sweeteners conversation cuts across each of these sectors. I am very proud to be conducting research that can provide more clarity in this heavily debated discourse and excited about what my result findings will be and the impact they may have in the scientific community and beyond. Most importantly, I hope my research provides healthcare professionals with answers to the many questions they receive from their patients, just like I did a few years ago.

    I never would have thought that the gulp of diet soda I took as a teenager would become the foundation of my current research. I am grateful that I get to create something meaningful from that seemingly mundane event.