3 ms·
Well, cancer is a leading cause of death so it may not be easy to tease that one out. Regardless, where did you get the idea it's "practically universally" con
by argvargc 5y ago
Well, cancer is a leading cause of death so it may not be easy to tease that one out.
Regardless, where did you get the idea it's "practically universally" consumed?
Taking soda for example, people typically either do or don't drink diet soda, and in much of the beverage chillers I've seen "diet" is stocked in the minority (with limited regional variation). Bear in mind diet itself is fractured into aspartame and stevia and various others.
Similarly, aspartame or sorbitol or other artificial sweeteners are presented as an option for most hot drinks, alongside sugar - in my experience it's the sugar constantly being replaced on the table.
Looking at packaged foods, I can find few products containing it, and again, packaged foods are only a subsection of all foods out there.
Also there are those among us who consume predominantly (in many cases only) fresh vegetables, fruit, grains, legumes etc.
Look at India, China, Africa, and everywhere in between - this is well over half the worlds population and while many are exposed to at least a small selection of packaged foods, few can afford them, and many simply have no interest.
Just a cursory glance and very rough estimate showed 6000 metric tonnes of Nutrasweet produced in 2014. Divided into a population of 7.8 billion gives each person less than a gram per year.
Aside from the fact that like all products a chunk of that will go back to landfill unsold, there simply isn't nearly enough for it to be universally consumed.
- tptacek 5y agoPeople keep saying that it's hard to tease this out of the data, but consumption of aspartame skyrocketed suddenly in the 1980s. We ran the natural experiment. We have the before-after data. Does that data show a sharp rise in cancer correlated to aspartame consumption? No, it does not; it shows in fact (I believe) the opposite. That's the argument I'm inviting you to rebut. There are ways to rebut it! But "the data is super subtle" is on its own not a powerful argument.
- argvargc 5y agoSo if cancer went down, which could happen for all kinds of reasons, good luck finding any causal relationship that may yet still be there hidden beneath such noise. As far as I'm concerned, if rats are shown to get cancer from something for which there are many alternatives, I'll steer clear of it.
- nate_meurer 5y agoIn that case, here's a short list of other foods you'll want to avoid: - All citrus fruits (due to the limonene content) - Mint of any kind (limonene again) - Red meat - Excess protein - Coffee (acrylamide) - Chips and fries (acrylamide) - Bread (often contains acrylamide) - Dried fruits and nuts (another acrylamide risk) - Arugula, beets, cabbage, celery, cilantro, endive, fennel, lettuce, parsley, rhubarb, spinach, and any other vegetables that are high in nitrates. Also be sure to stay away from cell phones, WiFi, and microwave ovens. This is just a short list off the top of my head. It's a dangerous world out there. For a lab rat.
- tptacek 5y agoAlso ice cream and eye drops (carboxymethyl cellulose).
- nate_meurer 5y agoThe same voodoo is applied to the supposed connection to dementia. Like the neurotransmitter toxicity nonsense that Mercola helped popularize, which isn't supported by clinical studies, and doesn't even really make sense physiologically. That's not to say there isn't interesting stuff in these investigations. The recent studies the effect of sweeteners on gut biomes and the resulting effects on serum chemistry are fascinating to me, and I think these studies will be productive in other ways.