Ice Cream Gets a Blood-Sugar Test

A small clinical trial has given an unusually concrete setting to a familiar nutrition promise: dessert.

Researchers at Russia’s Federal Research Centre of Nutrition, Biotechnology and Food Safety tested brazzein, a sweet protein used as a sugar alternative, in 101 adults living with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD. In the randomized crossover trial, published in Clinical Nutrition ESPEN, participants ate three versions of 100 grams of vanilla ice cream on separate study days: one sweetened with sugar, one with brazzein, and one with brazzein plus the fibre inulin.

The measured result was narrow but useful. Blood-sugar rises after eating were lower after the brazzein versions than after the sugar-sweetened one, according to the study summary cited by Al Jazeera. The effect was most pronounced among participants with type 2 diabetes.

That does not make brazzein a settled answer to the harms tied to high sugar intake, and the study does not claim that. It looked at acute post-meal glucose responses in a specific group of adults already living with a liver condition often linked to obesity and diabetes. It did not show long-term weight loss, better liver outcomes, fewer complications, or what might happen when people consume such products regularly over months or years.

Those limits matter because sugar substitutes tend to arrive wearing two stories at once: one about immediate substitution, another about broader health. The first can be tested in a bowl of ice cream. The second is much harder. The World Health Organization advised in 2023 against using non-sugar sweeteners for weight control, citing evidence of possible undesirable long-term effects, including higher risks of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Brazzein also sits in a slightly different category from many better-known sweeteners. It is a naturally occurring sweet protein first identified in the West African oubli plant, though it is now largely made through fermentation. That may make it attractive to manufacturers looking for alternatives to sugar, but “natural” is not the same thing as proven beneficial.

The researchers themselves called for longer-term studies to see whether replacing sucrose-containing desserts with brazzein-sweetened versions leads to lasting metabolic, liver, microbiome or behavioural benefits. For now, what the trial supports is simpler: in this group, in this dessert, blood sugar climbed less sharply.