7 ms·

The 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. W

by sgbeal 3y ago

The 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 ago
We 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 ago
  How can a layman determine the right book? Anti-vax kooks also think they're reading the right sources.
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    Does it confirm your priors? Then it’s right.
  - kodyo 3y ago
    It'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 ago
      I'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
      Or you just read a scientific paper. It's called a review and it goes over several studies and uses statistics to determine probability of claims. For example, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8227014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8227014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9776645/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9776645/
    - failbuffer 3y ago
      That's not enough: you should also read the critics and opponents of what you think is true. That is, if you're truly trying to figure out reality and not just seeking psychological security. Remember, the test of a true intellectual is that they can convincingly defend a position they find abhorrent.
      - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
        “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” ― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
  - rcme 3y ago
    I disagree with the GP that staying informed about nutrition can be done with books. There is very little generally accepted science when it comes to nutrition. I try to use the "test of time" approach. If we haven't figured out that something was bad after at least 500 years, then it probably isn't that bad. If we've been eating a food for less than 500 years, then it should be considered suspect.
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > If we haven't figured out that something was bad after at least 500 years, then it probably isn't that bad. If we've been eating a food for less than 500 years, then it should be considered suspect. While I agree with the spirit of this, I'll point out that tobacco was brought to Europe over 500 years ago, and only recently discovered to be one of the most unhealthy products available. Not to mention that it was widely used in the Americas for long before that. In fact, 450 years after Columbian contact, the medical consensus was that tobacco was good for health.
      - jjoonathan 3y ago
        Tobacco is an all-natural plant product backed by longstanding tradition! How could it possibly be bad for your health? Ugh, if we hadn't banned them from advertising they would absolutely be using this angle and it would absolutely be working.
        saalweachter 3y ago
        Isn't this essentially part of the not-quite-marketing for marijuana? It's not highly processed like tobacco cigarettes, it's just natural?
        taeric 3y ago
        Well, it is more than a little insane how much worse cigarettes were from the things that were added to it. Even more crazy, to me, to consider how nicotine is by and large not what made them bad. Such that I'm honestly not clear on why there aren't more uses of that.
  - adriand 3y ago
    You don't need to read a book. I think you can get away with three steps: 1) This maxim from Michael Pollan: "Eat food [1]. Mostly plants. Not too much." (I personally follow an adjusted version of this: "Eat food. Only plants. Not too much.") 2) Review daily nutrient requirements to ensure your diet is providing you with adequate macro (protein, carbs, fat) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals). 3) A few months after adopting your new diet, get a high quality blood test that covers markers like iron, B12, etc., and make any required adjustments to what you're eating. 1: "Real food doesn’t have a long ingredient list, isn’t advertised on TV, and it doesn’t contain stuff like maltodextrin or sodium tripolyphosphate. Real food is things that your great-grandmother (or someone’s great-grandmother) would recognize." https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/ https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/
    - skummetmaelk 3y ago
      And if you eat too many of the wrong plants you get kidney stones etc. etc. Emphasizing variety is very important. It's almost like a second job to keep up with what you _should_ do. Reviewing daily nutrients is way too much effort for most folks.
      - NovaDudely 3y ago
        It is like jumping into a TV series that has 10 seasons or a podcast that has 300 back episodes, it seems daunting at first but taken one step at a time it can become very manageable to learn what to be done and how to manage it. It isn't so much managing daily nutrients but ensuring there is a decent variety of nutrients available at home. There is a lot of trial and error but long term it works out well. And like you said, variety is key!
      - saiya-jin 3y ago
        No its not, thats the perspective of sedentary person who sees somebody running their 5k every day and is eager to give up before even starting. Once you grok some trivially simple stuff (macro and micronutrients), few extremely trivial requirements (enough good sleep, stay away from sweet stuff in principle which may be hard in beginning but gets much easier over time, eat to stave off hunger and not to feel full, eat less in the evening), you are at least 90% there which is already enough. You really don't need to study constantly labels, you already know whats good and bad and its an effortless background process in the back of the mind. It really is trivial and very quick to grok. The hard part for many is discipline, thats a mind game everybody has to fight with themselves and find ways how to manage it without frustrating oneself constantly, and thus give up eventually on whole effort. People often compensate some deep mental issues, ie anxiety with overeating or eating junk food. Obviously this needs to be tackled first if any long term success can be claimed. Also, for parents, please don't condition your kids on sweet stuff as some sort of reward. If you have to, use some great fruits like forest fruits and not cakes, ice cream etc. You are not being a good parent at all by doing this, just conditioning them mentally that sweet junk is something special, a prize deserved, which creates pretty bad mental patterns for rest of our lives.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    Consider a classic like Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Eating by Walter Willett. All evidence-based. No fad crap you usually get in this space. You won't be surprised by any of the advice, but it's nice to see it all collated in one place. https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healthy/ https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healt... Here's a two hour interview with the author if you prefer the format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2JUtngxkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2JUtngxkw
  - logicchains 3y ago
    You mean papers like https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v... , which show being "up to date" with covid vaccinations actually increases one's chance of getting covid, are not the right sources?
arbitrage 3y ago
Personally I'm taking the WHO announcement as an implicit signal that they are no longer so tightly controlled/held captive by corporate interests as they have been for the past ... three, four decades? Better late than never, I guess.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
  Why? I don’t understand. You can imagine a scenario where executives at WHO have shorted the CocaCola stock or bought Aspartame alternatives stock? Many such scenarios possible.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
FYI, according to the linked article, the WHO is not claiming what you think it is claiming. >It is preparing to label the sweetener as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, Reuters reported on Thursday. That would mean there is some evidence linking aspartame to cancer, but that it is limited. The IARC has two more serious categories, “probably carcinogenic to humans” and “carcinogenic to humans”. >It previously put working overnight and consuming red meat into its probably cancer-causing class, and listed using mobile phones as possibly cancer-causing. >The IARC safety review was conducted to assess whether or not aspartame is a potential hazard, based on all the published evidence, a person familiar with the matter told the Guardian. However, it does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. Some pretty weak claims. Especially weak considering the risk of aspartame (which are not confirmed, and not at amounts regularly consumer) relative to the risk sugar it replaces (which are guaranteed at amounts regularly consumed - see type 2 diabetes).
nerdponx 3y ago
As a kid in the 90s I remember seeing health warnings on things like artificially-sweetened chewing gum. I have a very specific memory of asking my dad about it at the local deli.
- indymike 3y ago
  That was saccharin. I remember the label on my granddad's Tab cola. It caused bladder cancer in lab animals at high doses, and it was later found that the metabolic pathway that caused the cancer did not exist in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin
ranger_danger 3y ago
Where's the proof that drinking Diet Coke causes literally any health issue that is a direct relation to the aspartame itself specifically? Because I don't think that has ever existed because it's not actually harmful in this way... meanwhile your post reads like FUD.
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  You can start here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/phenylalanine/faq-20058361 https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h... Diet sodas with aspartame contain a warning for this reason. Now of course, most of us do not have this condition. But how do we know if it is safe? I decided 20+ years ago that artificial sweeteners were a crutch with no nutritional value and unknown risks, so I stopped consuming them.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Considering that sugar and excess consumption of carbohydrates is the number 1 health problem around the world, is it possible that the risks of low calorie sweeteners are not sufficient to outweigh the benefits of low calorie sweeteners?
    - dham 3y ago
      I was just explaining this to my wife while we've been on keto. Yes, artificial sweeteners are bad, let's try to avoid them if possible, but if consuming some aspartame in jello helps us stay on keto and lose belly fat, then the benefits outweigh the risk.
      - monkpit 3y ago
        Artificial sweeteners may[0] adversely affect the gut microbiome. However, other studies suggest that artificial sweeteners break down so quickly that they never reach the gut. It needs more research, but personally I choose to favor sugar over sweeteners, and just limit my consumption of sugar. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/
tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago
Government bodies took a lot more responsibility before the 90's after 90's they rather fund the private sector than be blamed for being authoritarian and monopolistic.

by sgbeal 3y ago

lkuty 3y ago

We 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 ago
How can a layman determine the right book? Anti-vax kooks also think they're reading the right sources.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  Does it confirm your priors? Then it’s right.
- kodyo 3y ago
  It'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 ago
    I'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
    Or you just read a scientific paper. It's called a review and it goes over several studies and uses statistics to determine probability of claims. For example, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8227014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8227014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9776645/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9776645/
  - failbuffer 3y ago
    That's not enough: you should also read the critics and opponents of what you think is true. That is, if you're truly trying to figure out reality and not just seeking psychological security. Remember, the test of a true intellectual is that they can convincingly defend a position they find abhorrent.
    - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
      “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” ― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
- rcme 3y ago
  I disagree with the GP that staying informed about nutrition can be done with books. There is very little generally accepted science when it comes to nutrition. I try to use the "test of time" approach. If we haven't figured out that something was bad after at least 500 years, then it probably isn't that bad. If we've been eating a food for less than 500 years, then it should be considered suspect.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > If we haven't figured out that something was bad after at least 500 years, then it probably isn't that bad. If we've been eating a food for less than 500 years, then it should be considered suspect. While I agree with the spirit of this, I'll point out that tobacco was brought to Europe over 500 years ago, and only recently discovered to be one of the most unhealthy products available. Not to mention that it was widely used in the Americas for long before that. In fact, 450 years after Columbian contact, the medical consensus was that tobacco was good for health.
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      Tobacco is an all-natural plant product backed by longstanding tradition! How could it possibly be bad for your health? Ugh, if we hadn't banned them from advertising they would absolutely be using this angle and it would absolutely be working.
      - saalweachter 3y ago
        Isn't this essentially part of the not-quite-marketing for marijuana? It's not highly processed like tobacco cigarettes, it's just natural?
        taeric 3y ago
        Well, it is more than a little insane how much worse cigarettes were from the things that were added to it. Even more crazy, to me, to consider how nicotine is by and large not what made them bad. Such that I'm honestly not clear on why there aren't more uses of that.
- adriand 3y ago
  You don't need to read a book. I think you can get away with three steps: 1) This maxim from Michael Pollan: "Eat food [1]. Mostly plants. Not too much." (I personally follow an adjusted version of this: "Eat food. Only plants. Not too much.") 2) Review daily nutrient requirements to ensure your diet is providing you with adequate macro (protein, carbs, fat) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals). 3) A few months after adopting your new diet, get a high quality blood test that covers markers like iron, B12, etc., and make any required adjustments to what you're eating. 1: "Real food doesn’t have a long ingredient list, isn’t advertised on TV, and it doesn’t contain stuff like maltodextrin or sodium tripolyphosphate. Real food is things that your great-grandmother (or someone’s great-grandmother) would recognize." https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/ https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/
  - skummetmaelk 3y ago
    And if you eat too many of the wrong plants you get kidney stones etc. etc. Emphasizing variety is very important. It's almost like a second job to keep up with what you _should_ do. Reviewing daily nutrients is way too much effort for most folks.
    - NovaDudely 3y ago
      It is like jumping into a TV series that has 10 seasons or a podcast that has 300 back episodes, it seems daunting at first but taken one step at a time it can become very manageable to learn what to be done and how to manage it. It isn't so much managing daily nutrients but ensuring there is a decent variety of nutrients available at home. There is a lot of trial and error but long term it works out well. And like you said, variety is key!
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      No its not, thats the perspective of sedentary person who sees somebody running their 5k every day and is eager to give up before even starting. Once you grok some trivially simple stuff (macro and micronutrients), few extremely trivial requirements (enough good sleep, stay away from sweet stuff in principle which may be hard in beginning but gets much easier over time, eat to stave off hunger and not to feel full, eat less in the evening), you are at least 90% there which is already enough. You really don't need to study constantly labels, you already know whats good and bad and its an effortless background process in the back of the mind. It really is trivial and very quick to grok. The hard part for many is discipline, thats a mind game everybody has to fight with themselves and find ways how to manage it without frustrating oneself constantly, and thus give up eventually on whole effort. People often compensate some deep mental issues, ie anxiety with overeating or eating junk food. Obviously this needs to be tackled first if any long term success can be claimed. Also, for parents, please don't condition your kids on sweet stuff as some sort of reward. If you have to, use some great fruits like forest fruits and not cakes, ice cream etc. You are not being a good parent at all by doing this, just conditioning them mentally that sweet junk is something special, a prize deserved, which creates pretty bad mental patterns for rest of our lives.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  Consider a classic like Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Eating by Walter Willett. All evidence-based. No fad crap you usually get in this space. You won't be surprised by any of the advice, but it's nice to see it all collated in one place. https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healthy/ https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healt... Here's a two hour interview with the author if you prefer the format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2JUtngxkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2JUtngxkw
- logicchains 3y ago
  You mean papers like https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v... , which show being "up to date" with covid vaccinations actually increases one's chance of getting covid, are not the right sources?

arbitrage 3y ago

Personally I'm taking the WHO announcement as an implicit signal that they are no longer so tightly controlled/held captive by corporate interests as they have been for the past ... three, four decades? Better late than never, I guess.

systemvoltage 3y ago
Why? I don’t understand. You can imagine a scenario where executives at WHO have shorted the CocaCola stock or bought Aspartame alternatives stock? Many such scenarios possible.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

FYI, according to the linked article, the WHO is not claiming what you think it is claiming. >It is preparing to label the sweetener as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, Reuters reported on Thursday. That would mean there is some evidence linking aspartame to cancer, but that it is limited. The IARC has two more serious categories, “probably carcinogenic to humans” and “carcinogenic to humans”. >It previously put working overnight and consuming red meat into its probably cancer-causing class, and listed using mobile phones as possibly cancer-causing. >The IARC safety review was conducted to assess whether or not aspartame is a potential hazard, based on all the published evidence, a person familiar with the matter told the Guardian. However, it does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. Some pretty weak claims. Especially weak considering the risk of aspartame (which are not confirmed, and not at amounts regularly consumer) relative to the risk sugar it replaces (which are guaranteed at amounts regularly consumed - see type 2 diabetes).

nerdponx 3y ago

As a kid in the 90s I remember seeing health warnings on things like artificially-sweetened chewing gum. I have a very specific memory of asking my dad about it at the local deli.

indymike 3y ago
That was saccharin. I remember the label on my granddad's Tab cola. It caused bladder cancer in lab animals at high doses, and it was later found that the metabolic pathway that caused the cancer did not exist in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin

ranger_danger 3y ago

Where's the proof that drinking Diet Coke causes literally any health issue that is a direct relation to the aspartame itself specifically? Because I don't think that has ever existed because it's not actually harmful in this way... meanwhile your post reads like FUD.

kagakuninja 3y ago
You can start here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/phenylalanine/faq-20058361 https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h... Diet sodas with aspartame contain a warning for this reason. Now of course, most of us do not have this condition. But how do we know if it is safe? I decided 20+ years ago that artificial sweeteners were a crutch with no nutritional value and unknown risks, so I stopped consuming them.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Considering that sugar and excess consumption of carbohydrates is the number 1 health problem around the world, is it possible that the risks of low calorie sweeteners are not sufficient to outweigh the benefits of low calorie sweeteners?
  - dham 3y ago
    I was just explaining this to my wife while we've been on keto. Yes, artificial sweeteners are bad, let's try to avoid them if possible, but if consuming some aspartame in jello helps us stay on keto and lose belly fat, then the benefits outweigh the risk.
    - monkpit 3y ago
      Artificial sweeteners may[0] adversely affect the gut microbiome. However, other studies suggest that artificial sweeteners break down so quickly that they never reach the gut. It needs more research, but personally I choose to favor sugar over sweeteners, and just limit my consumption of sugar. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156656/

tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago

Government bodies took a lot more responsibility before the 90's after 90's they rather fund the private sector than be blamed for being authoritarian and monopolistic.