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A few of the conspiracy nutters that I know firmly beleive that "Big Aspartame" is responsible for suppressing information about its dire negative effects. But

by glonq 3y ago

A 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 ago
And 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 ago
  Big 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 ago
    I'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 ago
      How much longer are the sugar patents still in effect that allow Big Sugar to exist?
    - throw6666667 3y ago
      That's not how things work, at all. Most of the things you consider conspiracy theories are done completely in the open and there's nothing conspiratorial nor theoretical about it. These huge companies have hundreds of lawyers and lobbyists, sometimes they work together to push or prevent legislation. They are doing their job, nothing illegal about it, companies are also allowed to do it. Just to give you a recent/techy example, I'm sure Meta and Google lawyers and lobbyists worked together to deal with the ridiculous Canada news law. Same with Epic and others pushing alternative payments in the App Store. Not everything is a "secret cabal hideout" jeez
samtho 3y ago
To expand on point number 3, the sugar industry is one of the most notorious at utilizing motivated research to its own benefit. If aspartame had even slightest chance of causing illness or cancer, you could bet on the inevitable, unrelenting smear campaign that Big Sugar would be waging against it.
- vosper 3y ago
  Who are the players in Big Sugar who works exploit this? Can’t be the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, because they’d also be part of Big Aspartame.
- vosper 3y ago
  Who are the players in Big Sugar who would exploit this? Can’t be the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, because they’d also be part of Big Aspartame.
  - samtho 3y ago
    You’re correct that soft drink providers have no horse in this race as they are mere consumers of sweetening agents, and the their product output depends on customer demand. It would hardly make much difference to them if 90% of consumers started to prefer Diet Coke over Coca-Cola, they would just make more Diet Coke. The sugar industry’s escapades are well known. Most notably, the SRF’s (Sugar Research Foundation) war on dietary fats[0][1]. [0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074... [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/
    - throwaway38249 3y ago
      They need to sell something, if people believe sugar is bad, sweeteners are bad, even disposable plastic bottles are bad, what's left? Edit to add something more concrete, we already have the "sugar tax" in the UK, to avoid it soft drinks went mostly sugar free or reduced sugar substantially, and replaced it with sweeteners. And now: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/artificial-sweeteners-to-face-government-scrutiny-after-who-report-raises-health-fears/680641.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/artificial-sweeteners-to-face-go... Simultaneously: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/deposit-return-scheme-for-drinks-containers-moves-a-step-closer https://www.gov.uk/government/news/deposit-return-scheme-for...
User23 3y ago
> ...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. Have you ever heard of tobacco? Suppressing information about the harmful effects of a popular consumer product for decades is observably within the capabilities of at least some who might wish to do so.
abhaynayar 3y ago
It's kind of similar to finding a trivial security bug in a critical piece of software after a decade of it being introduced into code. You would think it would not be possible because the software is being used everywhere for extremely important stuff, and so many highly-skilled security researchers would have already looked out for it due to incentives. But there are many examples of this happening. I have heard of many instances where a critical security bug was already reported many years ago, but no one bothered to look at it and fix it until someone else rediscovered it.

by glonq 3y ago

kelipso 3y ago

And 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 ago
Big 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 ago
  I'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 ago
    How much longer are the sugar patents still in effect that allow Big Sugar to exist?
  - throw6666667 3y ago
    That's not how things work, at all. Most of the things you consider conspiracy theories are done completely in the open and there's nothing conspiratorial nor theoretical about it. These huge companies have hundreds of lawyers and lobbyists, sometimes they work together to push or prevent legislation. They are doing their job, nothing illegal about it, companies are also allowed to do it. Just to give you a recent/techy example, I'm sure Meta and Google lawyers and lobbyists worked together to deal with the ridiculous Canada news law. Same with Epic and others pushing alternative payments in the App Store. Not everything is a "secret cabal hideout" jeez

samtho 3y ago

To expand on point number 3, the sugar industry is one of the most notorious at utilizing motivated research to its own benefit. If aspartame had even slightest chance of causing illness or cancer, you could bet on the inevitable, unrelenting smear campaign that Big Sugar would be waging against it.

vosper 3y ago
Who are the players in Big Sugar who works exploit this? Can’t be the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, because they’d also be part of Big Aspartame.
vosper 3y ago
Who are the players in Big Sugar who would exploit this? Can’t be the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, because they’d also be part of Big Aspartame.
- samtho 3y ago
  You’re correct that soft drink providers have no horse in this race as they are mere consumers of sweetening agents, and the their product output depends on customer demand. It would hardly make much difference to them if 90% of consumers started to prefer Diet Coke over Coca-Cola, they would just make more Diet Coke. The sugar industry’s escapades are well known. Most notably, the SRF’s (Sugar Research Foundation) war on dietary fats[0][1]. [0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074... [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/
  - throwaway38249 3y ago
    They need to sell something, if people believe sugar is bad, sweeteners are bad, even disposable plastic bottles are bad, what's left? Edit to add something more concrete, we already have the "sugar tax" in the UK, to avoid it soft drinks went mostly sugar free or reduced sugar substantially, and replaced it with sweeteners. And now: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/artificial-sweeteners-to-face-government-scrutiny-after-who-report-raises-health-fears/680641.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/artificial-sweeteners-to-face-go... Simultaneously: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/deposit-return-scheme-for-drinks-containers-moves-a-step-closer https://www.gov.uk/government/news/deposit-return-scheme-for...

User23 3y ago

> ...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. Have you ever heard of tobacco? Suppressing information about the harmful effects of a popular consumer product for decades is observably within the capabilities of at least some who might wish to do so.

abhaynayar 3y ago

It's kind of similar to finding a trivial security bug in a critical piece of software after a decade of it being introduced into code. You would think it would not be possible because the software is being used everywhere for extremely important stuff, and so many highly-skilled security researchers would have already looked out for it due to incentives. But there are many examples of this happening. I have heard of many instances where a critical security bug was already reported many years ago, but no one bothered to look at it and fix it until someone else rediscovered it.