Effect of long-term intake of sweet beverages on feeding behavior and glucose metabolism in mice.

Abstract

The increase of obesity and diabetic patients comes to be a problem, and it is said that excessive sugar intake is one of the reasons. In this study, we focused on glucose and sucrose, and examined changes in body weight, feeding behavior, and glucose metabolism of mice during long-term intake of beverages containing these sweeteners.

Mice were divided into three groups: water-group, glucose beverage-group, and sucrose beverage-group. Beverages and foods were made accessible at any time for two months. We measured body weight, amounts of 24-hour beverages intake and food intake once a week. After the experiment, oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and oral sucrose tolerance test (OSTT) were conducted to compare blood glucose levels and insulin secretion levels.

As a result, although the total calorie intake was the same among the three groups, the body weight of the sucrose beverage-group was significantly higher than that of the water-group and the glucose beverage-group. From the OGTT results, insulin was hardly elevated even though the blood glucose level of each sweet beverage-group rose sharply. From the OSTT results, the blood glucose level of the sucrose beverage-group was significantly higher than that of the glucose beverage-group, but no significant difference was observed in the insulin secretion amount.

Therefore, it was suggested that long-term ingestion of sweet beverages causes a decrease in insulin secretory capacity, and in sucrose, absorption of disaccharides and decomposition into monosaccharides are activated, which may cause weight gain.