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Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports
- tracker1 3y agoIt seems within the past month we've seen the WHO warn about non-sugar sweeteners general, aspartame in particular, and looks like sucralose in particular. I'm not generally one to support conspiracy theories, but given the number of countries placing limits on added sugar, sugar taxes and the like, what are the odds the sugar/hfcs industries are funding these studies. Not to mention that with aspartame in particular, the evidence is sparse and low quality. The verbiage regarding Sucralose in actual human terms of consumption are much more alarming. I generally try to keep any sweet drink consumption with meals, or otherwise sweetened with stevia (which has seen it's own detractors). Given a century and a half of food industry lies, disinformation, misinformation and tethers with regulatory bodies, it's really hard to believe anything and just defer to if it was considered "food" a couple hundred years ago.
- MetricExpansion 3y agoThis (Group 2B) is the same list that includes mobile phone radiation. I think I’ll take my chances.
- redkinght99 3y agoOh man, this report about Gen Z taking "Diet Coke" breaks to 'escape work' came to mind: https://fortune.com/2023/04/25/gen-z-diet-coke-break-trend-tiktok/ https://fortune.com/2023/04/25/gen-z-diet-coke-break-trend-t...
- sgbeal 3y agoThe weird thing about this is that i stopped drinking Diet Coke, specifically because of aspartame, after reading this same thing in 1996 or perhaps early 97. WHO's decision to wait nearly 30 years before backing that just makes them look impotent.
- lkuty 3y agoWe got to stay actively informed to be eating good stuff way sooner than the official position of the government about various foods. There are so much bad stuff in the typical supermarket. One way is reading the "right" books.
- gnulinux 3y agoHow can a layman determine the right book? Anti-vax kooks also think they're reading the right sources.
- 2devnull 3y agoDoes it confirm your priors? Then it’s right.
- kodyo 3y agoIt's impossible for a layman to know because most people in accredited positions of authority lie without cessation. Identify people you trust on a subject, filter their claims through your own ideas about what is reasonable, and hope for the best. You might still get it wrong. Such is life.
- skrtskrt 3y agoI've recently noticed on TikTok a big trend of food scientists, and chemists that basically just aggressively "debunk" anyone saying any sort of preservative or processed food ingredient is bad for you, and they always fall back on "proven safe for human consumption" which is just like circular reasoning that the FDA is perfect, righteous, and good. There is of course a lot of kooky beliefs out there about food. But it seems like there is a very intentional social media campaign to associate ANY claim that the stuff in our food is not in our best interest with the kooks that believe the only safe thing to eat is raw goat balls or whatever. For books anyway, I found The Hundred-Year Lie to be incredibly in depth, but there's a lot of chemistry so it's verrry dense.
- iopq 3y ago
- throwaway1777 3y agoOk I’ll be that guy. The study says there’s no risk unless you drink equivalent of 70 cokes per day. So I think I’m ok. Barely.
- jjulius 3y agoYou're not wrong, but the full quote from the article is: >“Back in 1981 they established an acceptable daily intake of aspartame, of 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day. To consume over that limit would require a very large daily consumption of Diet Coke or similar drinks. On 14 July, Jecfa may change that risk assessment, or they may not.” Emphasis mine. I'd be curious to see if this understanding has shifted in the past 42 years.
- benatkin 3y agoThat doesn't mean it's good for you. I agree with the labeling of it as a neurotoxin, whether or not the rubber meets the pavement at a psychological level. There are better ways of calming for the vast majority of people than satisfying a sweet tooth so often. For one thing it can reduce the overall satisfaction of eating sweet things, through the law of diminishing returns.
- kagakuninja 3y agoI've been hearing that type of argument since the 70s, after they banned saccharine. Let's suppose a chemical causes slow damage to the body, maybe greatly increasing your risk of cancer or alzheimers if you drink a can of diet soda per day. How could we possibly know if it is safe? We often test chemicals on rats, but the problem is that they only live a few years. No one wants to wait 20+ years to see the results of an expensive study on longer lived mammals anyway. The solution is we feed the rats excessive amounts of the chemical and see if it causes problems. This isn't a great way to do it, but what other option would you suggest?
- throwaway1777 3y agoI would simply suggest we stop making any strong claims until we do know.
- LarsAlereon 3y agoTo clarify, this doesn't mean aspartame in food is harmful, it means that in certain circumstances it's possible for the chemical to cause cancer. For example, workers exposed to extremely high levels during manufacturing, or breakdown products formed during improper storage.
- arbitrage 3y ago[flagged]
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoAs is often noted, being exposed to too much or improperly stored (heated, cooled, contaminated) water can also be hazardous to your health and that shit's in everything.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cogman10 3y agoIt should. There are plenty of chemicals that you regularly consume which, in high dosages, are fatal but are required at low dosages. Too much calcium will causes osteopetrosis (too little does as well). Too much vitamin K causes liver damage Too much vitamin B1 causes hypertension Plenty of stuff is dangerous at high levels and safe at low levels. Our kidneys and liver exist to filter and eliminate excess.
- femboy 3y agoI wish there was a switch in the mass production of products to contain neither sugar or sweeteners. But it feels like that is never going to happen.
- SoftTalker 3y agoYou can do it yourself. I used to drink a lot of sweetened soda. I switched to diet, then stopped. Regular sugar-sweetened drinks taste sickeningly sweet to me now, and diet drinks taste like chemicals. Once you break the habit, your sense of taste recovers and you realize how nasty these drinks are. Most people get started on them as kids when you don't have a nuanced sense of taste and really crave sweet stuff.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brewdad 3y agoSame. I used to drink multiple Cokes a day. I switched to Diet Coke sometime in my late 20s. In my 30s I cut back to one Diet Coke a day and about 4 years ago in my mid 40s I switched over to carbonated water when I crave something fizzy but still limit myself to one a day most days. Coffee and plain water have replaced the soda I used to drink. This was all done over time as I realized I needed to change my diet to keep weight off and I wasn't really enjoying my daily soda(s) anyway. With an actual intent, one could drop soda within a few months easily and never miss it.
- nwienert 3y agoUntil you realize caffeine has long term negative effects on sleep even at low doses. Only the pure water drinkers can claim any moral high ground! (I’m not one of them)
- stronglikedan 3y agoWhy would there be? Sugar is good. Products with sugar are good. Self control is also good. People can like products with sugar and exercise self control, so there will always be a demand for mass produced products with sugar, and that's a good thing.
- jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 3y agoReminder that bacon is already a known carcinogen for those worrying about artificial sweeteners but happily eating processed meats.
- LegitShady 3y agoIt’s actually sodium nitrite that’s carcinogenic (after being exposed to high heat), and I can find bacon without sodium nitrite here pretty much at every grocery store.
- remote_phone 3y agoIf you read carefully, it still contains sodium nitrite except as powdered celery. So the source of the sodium nitrate is “natural” but the dose is still the same.
- Shorel 3y agoI buy raw pork belly. Doesn't taste the same after being cooked, but surely it has no nitrites. ;)
- LegitShady 3y agoFml so I’ve been paying more for nitrite free bacon that still has nitrite in it? It feels like saying something contains no nitrites or preservatives and then including them in the form of cultured celery extract should be fraud/false advertising and a crime.
- tptacek 3y agoYou extremely have been conned by the "nitrite-free bacon" labeling, yes. This is something that food writers have been complaining about for over a decade.
- malnourish 3y agoAdding to what remote_phone said, and repeating another comment of mine, that nitrite free bacon still has the same amount of nitrites (in some cases, more). https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos/5734-nitrate-free-bacon https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos...
- halfjoking 3y ago[flagged]
- neonsunset 3y agoWhen I accidentally ingest food or drinks containing aspartame, it takes me out for at least 24h with a hellish migraine.
- h2odragon 3y agobeing a statistical outlier means you don't count. Good luck explaining that to your doctors.
- neonsunset 3y agoStatistical outlier? Aspartame is known to be linked to migraine triggering: - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2708042/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2708042/ - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18627677/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18627677/ - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28198207/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28198207/
- kyriakos 3y agoI suffer from migraines. Usually related to exposure to sun and sleep patterns, I found out that drinking diet coke during a day that I already experienced one of my other triggers, gives me a migraine almost immediately. Any other day it has no effect.
- GRBLDeveloped 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2B I read through this list before when I was talking to a conspiracy theorist about 5G. Radio frequencies are on this list. As are caffeic acid (found in coffee, wine, mint), aloe vera and pickled vegetables.
- LegitShady 3y agoCaffeic acid may be a carcinogen but I do not think any decent studies have found a connection between drinking coffee and cancer, and in fact some have found the opposite.
- codr7 3y agoA bigger problem is likely caffeine inhibiting uptake of vitamin D and disrupting sleep.
- tacocataco 3y agoPlus stress and high cortisol levels from burnout.
- shrubble 3y agoDonald Rumsfeld was famously influential in getting aspartame's approval ; however more of the story behind this can be found here: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8846759/Nill,_Ashley_-_The_History_of_Aspartame.html https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8846759/Nill,_As... In 1984 the year after aspartame's approval for soft drinks, the company that held the exclusive patent on it, sold $600 million worth (1984 dollars) of it. Myself the truly distasteful part is the use of neotame (a follow-on to aspartame) on animal feed, to get animals to eat feed that they normally would not; for instance, if the feed is rancid or otherwise in a condition/taste that normal animal instincts, would have the animal reject the food...
- cameldrv 3y ago> Myself the truly distasteful part is the use of neotame (a follow-on to aspartame) on animal feed, to get animals to eat feed that they normally would not; for instance, if the feed is rancid or otherwise in a condition/taste that normal animal instincts, would have the animal reject the food... True for human food as well. Maybe it’s not rancid, but food science can make terrible ingredients taste great. Take Doritos. It’s just cornmeal (animal feed) plus a ton of artificial flavoring that is incredibly well dialed in to make them delicious and even addictive.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI think it's disingenuous to say that cornmeal is just animal feed. Polenta has been a thing for a long time.
- cassianoleal 3y agoAnd it's awesome, especially fried!
- solardev 3y agoWho needs food science when you've got hot liquid fat?
- marvel_boy 3y agoCuriously the share value of COKE has not plunged today. (+0.21% as we speak)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoWhy would it? If it's a carcinogen for Coke then it's a carcinogen for Pepsi or everyone else.
- pessimizer 3y agoCoke owns most sodas, so if you're switching, you're likely to end up switching to another Coke product.
- blibble 3y agothey'll just swap it out for the next artificial sweetener and that'll be found to be bad in 20 years time, then they repeat again
- hombre_fatal 3y agoIt's already been priced in: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/eberem/everything_is_priced_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/eberem/ever... ;)
- brink 3y agoThat stuff gives me migraines. I can't even chew most gum without a headache because it's full of it.
- myshpa 3y agoSome gum bases are made from non-degradable plastic polymers ... another reason to stay away.
- moogly 3y agoIsn't it mostly Xylitol in chewing gum?
- brink 3y agoOn the list of gums that give me a headache, it's aspartame on the ingredients list. Believe me, I check. :)
- ajhurliman 3y agoXylitol is actually pretty rare as the main sweetener in gum, it’s a lot more expensive. If gum mentions that it contains xylitol, check the ingredient list to see if there are other sweeteners listed first. Xylitol is preferable because of its oral hygiene benefits, but most consumers are choosy enough to make sure their gum is exclusively xylitol. There are some brands on Amazon that sell 100% xylitol gum if you go out of your way to find it though. Be careful with it around dogs though, xylitol is insanely toxic to them.
- rootusrootus 3y agoThe ones I'm familiar with mostly use sorbitol. Though it's not uncommon to find aspartame on the 'less than 2% of the following' part of the ingredients list.
- TeaBrain 3y agoI just checked the gum in my backpack. Both Trident and Mentos gum have xylitol, sorbitol, acesulfame K, mannitol and sucralose. Mentos gum also has aspartame and maltitol syrup in addition to the others.
- nightski 3y agoThats interesting. All the recent scientific evidence I have been seeing has been saying that Aspartame really isn't bad. This seems suspect. It's so hard to trust science today since it has become so intertwined with politics and corporate agendas.
- carimura 3y agoagreed, it's really hard with lobbyists, captured agencies, flawed studies, social media noise, political narratives, etc etc etc. We try our best to just go back to first principles: as close to the food source as possible, as few added ingredients as possible, organic, etc.
- tptacek 3y agoAhh, the naturalist fallacy. But the natural substitutes for artificial sweeteners are markedly worse for you, and more primitive, less industrial cooking and food preparation techniques often can be as well.
- carimura 3y agohuh, there's a fallacy for everything these days. well yes, some mushrooms are as close to nature as possible but would kill us. but believing in nature more than pepsico is usually a decent choice.
- hulitu 3y agoAFAIK it can cause diarrhea.
- vore 3y agoAspartame is not a sugar alcohol like the other artificial sweeteners that do cause diarrhea due to incomplete digestion.
- astrange 3y agoIf you find everything is hard to trust, that likely just means you're not good at trusting things. For instance, this is a known symptom of being Gen X.
- tekla 3y ago> The "radiofrequency electromagnetic fields" associated with using mobile phones are "possibly cancer-causing" Wow. Easier to list out what doesn't cause cancer
- marginalia_nu 3y agoThe word "possibly" does a lot of heavy lifting in having this make sense.
- beders 3y agoYeah, with billions of cell phone users humankind is practically dead now....
- umeshunni 3y agoDid you know that sunlight causes cancer?
- cameronh90 3y agoThey do: "Group 4: probably not carcinogenic" The list is empty...
- yomlica8 3y agoAnd here I just thought it just tasted kind of off and gave me headaches.
- dghughes 3y agoWeird to have Coke in the Reuters headline when it's not just Coke that uses aspartame. And this is interesting may be related? >Aspartame is hydrolysed in the body to three chemicals, aspartic acid (40%), phenylalanine (50%) and methanol (10%). Aspartic acid is an amino acid. >When there is an excess of neurotransmitter, certain neurons are killed by allowing too much calcium into the cells. ...The neural cell damage that is caused by excessive aspartate and glutamate ... they ‘excite’ or stimulate the neural cells to death. >Methanol is highly toxic; it is gradually released in the small intestine when the methyl group of the aspartame encounters the enzyme chymotrypsin. It has been pointed out that some fruit juices and alcoholic beverages contain small amounts of methanol. source: https://www.3dchem.com/aspartame.asp https://www.3dchem.com/aspartame.asp
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoDiet Coke is undoubtedly America's biggest source of aspartame. Diet Coke has massive market share.
- carimura 3y agoI had a computer science professor who drank so much diet coke that she had a wall of empty cans stacked up from floor to ceiling in her office. Even then, 20 years ago now, I was so grossed out with that level of artificial intake I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. But that wouldn't have helped my grade.
- jaclaz 3y agoNot much diet coke, but (JFYI) ... https://uranus.chrysocome.net/coke.htm https://uranus.chrysocome.net/coke.htm
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhat is “artificial intake”? Would it have been preferable to “real” intake of sugar from regular Coke?
- RhodesianHunter 3y agoIt's always surprising to me how quick we are to go from discovering a chemical to mass-producing it. We're only just figuring out all of the negative externalities of things like PFAS, and they're in absolutely everything (packaging, clothes, pizza box linings, food cans, cookware...)
- flashback2199 3y agoLeaded gasoline will really blow your mind, at least it did for me Edit: Figuratively not literally, haha!
- mcast 3y agoVertasium has a great video on the invention of leaded gasoline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA
- kzrdude 3y agoIt was known to be harmful back in 1920s when it was introduced
- justinator 3y agoBut it solved a problem that got in the way of selling you things! It's also still used in most every prop engine that flies over my house everyday at a normal schedule, so we still haven't solved the problem of leaded gas. We never will (in my lifetime).
- freedomben 3y ago> It's also still used in most every prop engine that flies over my house everyday at a normal schedule, so we still haven't solved the problem of leaded gas. We never will (in my lifetime). Do you know why? I was under the impression that avgas (aka leaded gas for airplanes) was being forced out (albeit slowly) by EPA
- cheekibreeki2 3y agoJust returned from Ireland and every 'regular' soda was full of disgusting artificial sweeteners. In the usa these would be labeled diet. And of course sucralose was pretty common and we're now finding scary things about its harm to the human body. Sugar really isn't that bad..
- mcdonje 3y agoJust because we're finding out many sugar replacements are bad doesn't mean that sugar isn't bad in high doses as with sugary drinks.
- beebeepka 3y agoDon't consume high doses of anything. Sugar is fantastic.
- biomcgary 3y agoAs a biologist, I can tell you that sugar really is bad. All sorts of nasty effects (e.g., look at the RAGE gene and pathway). Of course, that doesn't mean artificial sweeteners are a good alternative. Limiting added sweeteners of any kind is a good idea, just hard to follow.
- kushan2020 3y agoYou are making it sound like alcohol - where the warning is no amount of alcohol is safe. Sugar is a naturally occurring substance and is totally safe for consumption. However, purified added sugar is bad for you because in nature you cannot find a fruit that contains that many sugars per gram.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoSugar in the amount put in soda absolutely is terrible for you. The problem definitely is with people drinking too much soda, period, but replacing your average Americans's diet soda consumption with sugar soda consumption works out to an average increase of ~73 calories/person/day. Of course, most of that consumption is being done by the subset of the population currently primarily drinking diet soda, which multiples that number by 2-5 depending on what study you refer to. Which would definitely be an alarming increase in caloric consumption in a significant block of the population.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dimitar 3y agoThis is awful reporting. Aspartame has been studied for more than 40 years and no regulatory body in any country has found it to be cancerogenic; it is a risky substance for people with a rare desease called Phenylketonuria. So, the reader will be under the impression that it will cause cancer, which is pretty dubious, all while obesity for which sugary drinks are partially responsible is a very real cancer risk.
- jeron 3y agoeffectively this is pick your poison: aspartame or sugar
- 131012 3y agoWell no. May I suggest water?
- seanthemon 3y agoYou may, thank you
- jandrese 3y agoI've found water to be a rather poor sweetener.
- carimura 3y agojust don't drink TOO much [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1770067/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1770067/
- tehnub 3y agoI choose Stevia
- PreachSoup 3y agoSucralose is another a widely used option. Cokecola uses aspartame, pepsicola uses sucralose. You can also easily buy it off the shelf
- mrabcx 3y agoPerhaps this will finally increase the popularity of Stevia.
- RamblingCTO 3y agoJust live healthy. I hate the addition of stevia and other sweeteners to everything. Please give me cane sugar. I'm a grown up, I can handle my intake, thanks. (Especially anything in the direction of soylent, green shakes etc. No need for stevia.)
- Tokkemon 3y agoNah, it tastes worse.
- nicole_express 3y agoI hope this questionable categorization doesn't result in aspartame being removed from sodas; I much prefer it to other artificial sweeteners. Can definitely tell when Diet Coke is formulated to include them.
- Tokkemon 3y agoWe don't discuss the dark times when Pepsico switched from aspartame to sucralose in the 2010s.
- powera 3y agoEverything might cause cancer. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-... The current system (especially CA Prop 65) makes it impossible for these pronouncements to carry any meaning whatsoever.
- beebeepka 3y agoThe whole war on sugar is baffling to me. After I had my first glass of soda in a decade, my impression is that artificial sweeteners are garbage. Poisonous, too. But this has been known for decades, hasn't it. It's cheap, though. As for me, I am off to the toilet for my drink. It has served me well so far even though it has no taste or electrolytes
- jcutrell 3y agoHonestly, what I want to know in a headline like this is "what changed?" As someone who deals with health anxiety already, I have done my fair share of research on things like this. Aspartame, along with most other artificial sweeteners, have not been proven to be carcinogenic in many studies done over a 40 year period. Additionally, the hazard ratio of any of these sweeteners in comparison to the equivalent consumption of sugar is laughably small. So, when something like this happens, I really want to know what the trigger was. My fast-brain fills in the gap with "there was a new breakthrough in research." But, this categorization doesn't imply that necessarily. Just that they are doing a review. But why now?
- recursive 3y agoRight here, in this very thread, are comments suggesting that there is no credible evidence that aspartame is a carcinogen.
- gcanyon 3y agoHealthcare Triage did a review of the research years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf82FfX-wuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf82FfX-wuU tl;dw: artificial sweeteners get a bad rap, multiple studies have found no harm, studies that did find harm were on rats (which often doesn't translate to humans), and the harms associated with excess sugar consumption are numerous, well-founded, and damning.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tahoeskibum 3y agoCoffee is a known carcinogen (due to formation of acrylamides in roasting). Ripe fruits emit small amounts ethylene that is carcinogenic.
- userbinator 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide#United_States "Acrylamide is considered a potential occupational carcinogen by U.S. government agencies and classified as a Group 2A carcinogen by the IARC." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene#Safety "It is listed as an IARC class 3 carcinogen, since there is no current evidence that it causes cancer in humans." Those are very different.
- mhanberg 3y agoLiterally read halfway down the article before they say that "working overnight" is also in the "probably carcinogenic" category and that the organization is known for publishing confusing results that cause panic. FFS
- fortenforge 3y agoActually "working overnight" is "probably carcinogenic" which is a higher evidentiary standard than Aspartame which is "possibly carcinogenic". Basically these WHO cancer guidelines are entirely useless in terms of public health and have probably done as much harm as Prop 65 has in California.
- miika 3y agoMobile phones, WiFi etc a have been under the same classification by WHO since 2011. The industry didn’t take it too seriously, and probably this one doesn’t mean anything either. https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E....
- glonq 3y agoA few of the conspiracy nutters that I know firmly beleive that "Big Aspartame" is responsible for suppressing information about its dire negative effects. But when you consider: - how many doctors and scientists are personally/professionally motivated to research this - how many gov't organizations are concerned about this - how many industry competitors would benefit from discovering this - how many lawyers would get rich from exploiting this ...then I somewhat doubt that one group could suppress all of this, globally, for 40+ years. At this point, aspartame is probably one of the most researched food additives out there.
- kelipso 3y agoAnd yet it took 40+ years for its danger to be widely acknowledged. Forgive me but for thinking there is something suspicious going on... Frankly, the Big Aspartame should be the default explanation and any other explanation be under more scrutiny.
- samtho 3y agoBig Aspartame does not exist in a vacuum, however. The sugar industry is arguably bigger, more powerful, and has even more budget to fund motivated research. I don’t trust Big Aspartame to prove to is that it is safe, but I put my full faith in Big Sugar to tell us if something is wrong with Aspartame.
- glonq 3y agoI'm not sure that I even beleive in "Big Aspartame". The patents have expired, so there are dozens of companies who manufacture it globally. I doubt that they all meet at their global secret cabal hideout to align their plans to extinguish all research.
- qup 3y agoHow much longer are the sugar patents still in effect that allow Big Sugar to exist?
- 3y ago
- thrawa8387336 3y agoMeh, I'd sooner believe it treats depression. Try having a Diet Coke and report on the 24h after ;)
- mvdtnz 3y agoEvery now and then I get car parts delivered from USA and without fail they come with a label telling me they cause cancer. I can't take this kind of labeling seriously when it comes from an American source.
- jeegsy 3y agoOne would have hoped for a more definitive statement (either way) than 'possible'
- Tokkemon 3y agoIt is definitive. It doesn't cause any measurable harm.
- SirMaster 3y agoExisting... is a possible cancer risk.
- jncfhnb 3y agoDo other people feel like aspartame introduces a tangible viscosity into drinks? I feel like it’s like drinking slime
- CydeWeys 3y agoThe opposite. Real sugar makes a drink much more viscous. Fake sugar leaves the mouth feel thin.
- vvilliamperez 3y agoI think what you experiencing is an overproduction of saliva to dissolve what your body thinks is sugar.
- Tokkemon 3y agoNope. The amount you need in a drink is so small it wouldn't substantially affect the viscosity at all. Source: me, who mixes soda syrups and did piles of informal experiments on syrup ingredients.
- tptacek 3y agoThe challenge you have here is that aspartame isn't just one of most widely studied substances in the food chain, but that it's also one of the most widely and vigorously consumed. People drink a lot of diet soda; a lot of people drink it to the exclusion of all other liquids. So it's going to be tricky to get the epidemiology to match up with the claim here: if aspartame is meaningfully carcinogenic (meaning: more than by the trace amounts all sorts of other things in the food supply are, from small quantities of mold due to spoilage to acrylamide forming in almost anything we cook), we'd expect to see a pretty obvious effect in case rates. The article mentions a French study showing a "slight" increase, over 100,000 pts, in an observational study that used self-reporting to control for other risk factors. I can't find it; has anyone else?
- cykros 3y agoI suspect it's more that aspartame indirectly causes cancer, which is why it doesn't look, walk, or quack like a duck, but it DOES have a habit of feeding the ducks. What I mean by that is that candida LOVES aspartame, and candida, a fungus that lives in the human gut and feeds on sugars, alcohols, preservatives, and a few other things Americans in particular eat a ton of, HAS been seen to cause cancer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24963692/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24963692/
- TheBlight 3y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 3y agoI don't consume caffeine, but Dave Arnold of the (unimpeachable) Cooking Issues podcast has a whole spiel about how Diet Coke drinkers use it as a primary source of hydration.
- tannernelson 3y agoI feel seen
- 3y ago
- gumby 3y agoA bit of background (from an unlikely source). The Tl;DR: \* Group 1: carcinogenic (this includes cigarettes, the HPV viruses that cause cervical cancer, and ionizing radiation) \* Group 2A: probably carcinogenic (this includes red meat, hot beverages, and working as a hairdresser) \* Group 2B: possibly carcinogenic (this is the group aspartame reportedly may end up in) \* Group 3: not classifiable \* Group 4: probably not carcinogenic (this list contains zero items; a chemical called caprolactam was previously on it, but was moved to group 3) These are not designations of cancer *risk*, but of *the chance that there is a detectable link of some kind*. https://lifehacker.com/aspartames-possible-carcinogen-designation-means-basica-1850590970 https://lifehacker.com/aspartames-possible-carcinogen-design...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- leashless 3y agoIs Stevia evil these days? Tastes less toxic. Is it?
- Tokkemon 3y agoIt tastes worse.
- hedora 3y agoI wish they’d just force all products with a non nutritional sweetener to have a big cigarette-style warning label on the front of the packaging. I still haven’t gotten over the rise of “organic” artificial sweeteners. That must have involved some N-th level regulatory capture with the product labeling regulators.
- cheekibreeki2 3y agoThe eu slaps these sweeteners in drinks not marked as artificially sweetened, it's maddening.
- tacocataco 3y agoFruit is sweet enough for me already. Some granola and Greek yogurt to cut that down a bit more.
- klabb3 3y agoThe most obvious substitute for aspartame is sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. In liquid form, and the quantities that people drink soda, the health risks are immense. Cardiovascular decease kills a comparable amount of people as cancer overall, from all sources. For aspartame to end up a net negative, it’d have to be massively carcinogenic. Certainly its better to replace Diet Coke with water, all else equal, but the effort in changing habits is much higher. There is a ton of preventable decease due to bad diet and lack of exercise, despite well known causes. So why is that? Health discussions have this psychological bias where people think “be more like me” is effective (don’t do drugs, just go out and meet people, exercise more, just stop smoking). The fact that people think like this, despite the war on drugs disaster, is madness. Especially when the solution is so simple: throw the moralism away and focus solely on harm reduction – also known as “whatever works”. Just good old empiricism.
- skellyclock 3y agoOne of my favourite all-time comments on HN was the guy that was constantly trying new experimental sweeteners just for fun and ended up with something that bound to his tastebuds for months. I can't find it.
- Etrnl_President 3y agoBut the FDA approved it. It is safe. Silly WHO.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoAnother "eggs are bad" article. Wake me when there's something other than a nothingburger here.
- cm_silva 3y agoAs an experiment, sprinkle some aspartame-based artificial sweetener over an ant and watch what happens.
- xvilka 3y agoIt's better to not use sweetener at all, nor sugar. After some withdrawal period body stops to crave either. The only good amount of either is zero.
- liampulles 3y agoI got off the sugar addiction (which I am very happy about) but still need something to sweeten my tea and coffee addiction, which I use sweetener for I am a Luddite when it comes to tastes, no two ways about it. I suspect many people are, and so some tradeoff has to be made.
- qwerty456127 3y agoNice! I can't wait for cheap obsolete sweeteners like aspartame and acesulfam-k to begone from my beloved energy drinks to be replaced with relatively modern and supposedly prebiotic alternatives like steviol glycosides, xylitol etc. Unfortunately even the most expensive energy drink manufacturers still use aspartame and acesulfam-k.
- hobomatic 3y agoBeing 'declared possible' seems meaningless. Isn't it already implicitly possible?
- 6510 3y agoThe US research history has to be one of the weirdest possible. Large financial incentive, actual fraud, repeated animal trials where everything goes wrong. Does it cause cancer, does it have a negative effect on the brain, how much fraud was there? (eventually it was approved without science by FDA committee votes, they should be in prison for that alone) But the only relevant question is: Does it help with weight loss? If the answer is no, who cares about everything else? There is no sugar shortage. We don't need a competing poison, we are doing great killing ourselves with just sugar.
- nuc1e0n 3y agoMaybe. But is this like how Bananas are radioactive? i.e. almost not at all? How carcinogenic would the equivalent amount of sugar be?
- l0ngyap 3y ago[dead]