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WHO aspartame brouhaha
- vmoore 3y ago'Possibly' is a weasel word. They need absolute definitions of carcinogens or people can't take their claims seriously.
- Zetice 3y agoFor "absolute" anything, try religion. For everything else, there's science.
- xeromal 3y agoAbsolutes are much easier to follow for humans hence why religion has them. Drink in moderation is a much harder sell than don't drink at all. We suck at moderating anything without going cold turkey.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoGood luck coming up with absolute definitions: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-cancer-risk/determining-if-something-is-a-carcinogen.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-... Absolute definitions are hardly ever useful. Even for mundane things. How do you determine if something is ‘wet’?
- Bakersfield 3y agoRoll her around in flour.
- Dylan16807 3y agoThat's only hard because "wet" has a bunch of meanings. For whether something is a carcinogen it's like asking if it's "humid", and we have very clear and precise ways to communicate that.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThe WHO is not asking anyone to change their actions due to this new research. It seems expected for the WHO to have a list of things that experiments might indicate are carcinogens. They never recommended to stop consuming aspartame, or claimed it was definitely dangerous in the current consumed quantities.
- pavon 3y agoWHO did recommend to stop consuming non-sugar sweeters (all types not just aspartame, and based on multiple factors, not just this research)[1][2] [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-use-non-sugar-sweeteners-for-weight-control-in-newly-released-guideline https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-... [2] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073616 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073616
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI did not know about that. Interestingly, they specify their advice is conditional on using it for a specific purpose? >the use of non-sugar sweeteners to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain and diet-related noncommunicable diseases in adults and children. As in it does not sound like they are writing stay away from it period.
- tremon 3y ago"climate change" is a weasel term. They need absolute definitions of the changes coming or people can't take their claims seriously. [edit to explain myself: the above was meant to critize the parent for using the same non-logic that the climate denier movement uses: requiring an impossily high standard of evidence)
- rootusrootus 3y agoThe evidence presented by scientists to demonstrate climate change is much stronger than "possibly."
- sandworm101 3y agoI drink diet sodas. I have received many emails/calls/texts from friends and family telling me about the "news" of them being a possible carcinogen. To every such person I say: Alcohol is a KNOWN carcinogen. Drinking alcohol causes cancer. So don't lecture me about drinking diet coke until you have given up on beer.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoI usually just drink water. You should try it, it’s awesome.
- sandworm101 3y agoAnd diet soda, beer, milk, vodka and most every other beverage is technically also "mostly water".
- kcplate 3y agoUgly bags of mostly water?
- BrianHutch 3y agoDeep STTNG cut there.
- johntfella 3y agoOn my property I have both a well and a spring so that's what I generally use. Recent outing in the city reminded me of the chlorine they use. It was kind of an amusing episode as drinking the water at the restaurant I had sworn maybe the glasses weren't fully rinsed so the waitress brought out another and made sure it was clean.. still tasted of chlorine. So I had her fill my canister up thinking it was just a detergent they were using.. still tasted of chlorine so I presumed it must be the water and remembered that indeed chlorine/chloramine is added to public supplies. I don't know if that will prove to be a problem in the future and most things that claim to be are a bit on the tin foil hat tent that said a recent study does seem to show minimal impact on gut biome (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01101-3 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01101-3) .. whether there is a compounding effect down line who knows.. but could explain some of the issues that differentiate between farm communities and urban dwellings (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kidsallergies/amish-farm-kids-remarkably-immune-to-allergies-study-idUSBRE8431J920120504 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kidsallergies/amish-farm-...)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- helsinki 3y agoSo, can I safely drink Diet Coke or not? I don’t have the ability to give this article my full attention, at the moment.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lurker123321 3y agoYes, the evidence of actual harm from aspartame consumption seems very limited.
- bshipp 3y agoI'm guessing the evidence of actual harm from aspartame consumption is also orders of magnitude lower than the damage from sugar-induced diabetes.
- tremon 3y agoProbably not, but not because of this article. There've been a number of studies that show that artificial sweeteners have a similar effect on building up insulin resistance as actual sugars. We'll have to wait another 20 years for the evidence to overwhelm the moneyed interest.
- dwaite 3y agoAspertame got US FDA approval in 1974, after being discovered in 1965. I'm not ready to anticipate a shocking revelation in another 20 years after heavy investigation for 50+.
- timeon 3y agoYou can - if you can tolerate the taste.
- nicole_express 3y agoIt seems like the primary purpose of the IARC Group 2B list is to identify targets for additional study; from that perspective, and thinking about how widely aspartame is used, it makes sense to want to remove as much doubt as possible. Really it comes down to the media not being good at presenting science topics, which is pretty typical unfortunately.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoIt also comes down to the WHO not communicating this sufficiently clearly. In the end, I consider the WHO as having lost all credibility - it doesn't matter why articles based on WHO statements cannot be trusted (e.g. whether the WHO statements are factually wrong, or intentionally misleading, or being communicated in ways that media are likely to misinterpret without quickly following up when this happens), the result is that any article claiming "WHO says X" is best dismissed as likely misinformation.
- cwkoss 3y agoIt's entirely on the poor journalism. It's not WHO's job (nor is it possible) for them to ensure every global publication regurgitates their press releases accurately. I mean, sure, you can distrust WHO if you want because of this, but seems kind of a silly reason.
- Affric 3y agoThe comment you're replying to is rather hyperbolic but your succinct comment is thought provoking in both sentences: 1. What is success in public health communication for the WHO? An organisation that operates globally, in many languages, at all levels of economic development, and no mechanism of generating its own revenue? 2. If you believe the WHO to have lost all credibility which group of public health experts could you consider credible?
- callalex 3y agoPresentation of medical studies surrounding aspartame (one of the most heavily studied foods in human history) are a perfect canary to determine if an organization cares about scientific accuracy, or appearing in headlines.
- elzbardico 3y agoWhen I stopped drinking soda because of the sugar, I entertained the idea of drinking diet sodas. The taste was awful, and even knowing that I would come to appreciate it over time, I decided to go to good old water instead. Never looked back.
- Zetice 3y agoWater gives me headaches...
- neom 3y agoTry warm water, cold/cool water gives me headaches but warm batter doesn't.
- carabiner 3y agoThat's called withdrawal. Believe me, many humans in the past survived on water and solid food alone.
- Zetice 3y agoI'm trying to do more than survive?
- ihateolives 3y agoWhatever you're trying to do humans have been doing it successfully for thousands of years before the invention of sodas, mainly with water and alcohol.
- Zetice 3y agoYou're claiming that humans have been successfully living to 80+ as happy, healthy individuals for thousands of years?
- Danjoe4 3y agoAre you obese? Soda and most forms of liquid calories are bad for you. Most of your fluid intake should be from water.
- boringuser2 3y agoIs there any artificial sweetener that has been studied to the extent that aspartame has that definitively does not cause cancer? Because, if not, the question isn't between aspartame or some other interchangeable artificial sweetener, but between aspartame and HFCS or regular sweetener, which I strongly suspect contributes more deleteriously to health via obesity than aspartame does via possible carcinogenic affect. The thing is, I'm okay with governmental bodies regulating substances (not necessarily the WHO, but that's a different story), but you need to balance different factors including substitution when you make a decision like this. For example, the EU recently banned topical zinc as ZP in topical formulations (think head and shoulders) due to being a possible topical carcinogen (the evidence suggested it wasn't, but it is a non-topical carcinogen) because interchangeable formulations existed that also worked. Given that it probably isn't possible to subject a substance to the same scrutiny as aspartame without many years of targeted and expensive effort, we're probably just stuck with this sweetener for the foreseeable future.
- hunson_abadeer 3y agoSugar alcohols such as xylitol and sorbitol are very unlikely to be harmful. That said, they aren't drop-in replacements. Xylitol cools down when it dissolves, so it gives some candy their trademark "cool" feeling, but it's not something you always want. Plus, when consumed in larger quantities, it has a laxative effect.
- gruez 3y ago>Sugar alcohols such as xylitol and sorbitol are very unlikely to be harmful According to whom? If people are suspectful of the must studied food substances, why would they trust something that's less studied?
- hunson_abadeer 3y agoSugar alcohols are abundant in nature and have been a part of our diets for pretty much all recorded history. They are well-understood and probably don't warrant the kind of intensive inquiry that is appropriate for a completely novel synthetic compound, such as aspartame. There are more papers on aspartame than on potatoes, but that's not a reason not to avoid the latter, right?
- nntwozz 3y agoAnecdote, a friend didn't want my chewing gum when offered because it contained Aspartame. I was going to mention the Alcohol argument but then I realized I have better things to do with my life.
- throw_pm23 3y agoSome don't take aspartame candies, chewing gum, etc. not due to its possible health effects, but because it takes bitter to them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mouth 3y agoI find aspartame has a terrible aftertaste.
- mdavidn 3y agoI have the opposite problem: I recognize regular soda by its terrible aftertaste. Drinks sweetened with aspartame don’t leave an aftertaste in my mouth.
- xeromal 3y agoThe rarest of the rares
- rsynnott 3y agoI dislike plain aspartame, but most soft drinks here (Ireland, this stuff is weirdly regional) now seem to use it in combination with acesulfame K; this mixture is much less objectionable (apparently acesulfame K on its own is also fairly unpleasant; they mask each others' aftertaste).
- colordrops 3y agoyes, because if we take one risk, we must take all of the risks. you might as well smoke too by your logic.
- breakingrules 3y ago[dead]
- justincredible 3y ago[dead]
- light_hue_1 3y agoIARC, the organization that produced this mess is doing science communication a massive disservice and it should be reformed. They call category 2B "possibly carcinogenic" when in reality the evidence required for category 2B is basically anything that is as flimsy and hypothetical as possible. No one would refer to anything in category 2B as "possibly carcinogenic" in daily life. At best you might say this category is "worthy of potential future study". Their poor communication creates hype and hysteria while discrediting scientists everywhere. A few years ago they said "Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B)." https://publications.iarc.fr/126 https://publications.iarc.fr/126 The reasoning for this is on page 419. They classified radio as possibly carcinogenic because prior studies weren't as well controlled as they wanted, some analyses they wanted weren't done, and because one very small study that saw a minor correlation that isn't at all consistent with the population level data that we have (which says there's no association). That's it. All of this hype for absolutely nothing. IARC needs to be fixed.
- garganzol 3y agoAny electromagnetic radiation of considerable power and penetrability causes oxidative stress, which in turn causes cellular damage, which in turn increases probability of getting cancer. So they are kind of right when they say that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic to humans. They are, but to a small degree for the most part.
- deadbeeves 3y agoThe statement "radio can possibly cause cancer" is irrelevant if it takes a signal so powerful no human would ever encounter it, let alone produce it. The question is whether radio signals used in telecommunications can cause cancer, especially compared to the waves already present in nature.
- euroderf 3y agoThe people most at risk would (one would think) be people that have a cellphone glued to their ear all day. But these people would (or: do) also end up with damage to their hearing, so maybe that tempers behavior ?
- ericmay 3y agoThe thing that worries my about artificial sweeteners and specifically diet pop consumption is whether or not the constant exposure to artificial sweeteners causes your body to release an insulin response anyway and that then causing problems. If I had to guess we are going to get a big breakthrough study on diet pop that is going to link it to diabetes or something like that. I remain skeptical that there is a free lunch here. No medical or scientific basis for this. I don’t really drink pop (once/year maybe?) with or without sugar or artificial sweeteners.
- scubadude 3y agoI had read this hypothesis before, but a quick scan suggests a number of studies vindicate diet drinks, e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27934644/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27934644/
- ericmay 3y agoThanks for sharing!
- throwing_away 3y agoI used to drink a fair amount of diet and mostly quit because of the caffeine and the possibly tooth enamel damage. It was surprising the amount of concerned friends who were convinced the stuff would kill me. I really looked for any hint of evidence that it might, and aspartame keeps winning. I'm off it now anyway, but it does seem to just be nicely flavored (slightly acidic) caffeine water.
- ineedasername 3y ago>pop Soda.
- xeromal 3y ago>Soda. Coke.
- 3y ago
- garganzol 3y agoAspartame is a proven contributing factor of insulin resistance development. And you will get it even faster with aspartame than with sucrose. (Sucrose is a fancy but precise name of the usual sugar) Even high fructose corn syrup is better than aspartame when it comes to long-term health consequences. So, consider to avoid aspartame like a plague. If you are into soda than you may find stevia-based formulations which have no side effects.
- indymike 3y agoI'd love to see a citation for this. I've seen a lot of literature saying "it might" but nothing that is conclusive. As a type II diabetic, this matters a lot to me. If there were a link between aspartame and type ii (insulin resistant diabetes) the lawsuits would make asbestos look like small claims.
- garganzol 3y agoIf you experience adverse effects of T2DM like neuropathy, you may find that symptoms worsen after the intake of a diet coke with aspartame. But if you are not on the edge yet, you will feel nothing extraordinal.
- Dylan16807 3y agoThat's not a citation, that's even more claims that need backing.
- garganzol 3y agoThere is a cause and effect, and they always have a relation. If aspartame worsens insulin sensitivity by increasing insulin resistance [1] then this will eventually lead to neuropathy [2]. This is a simple logical chain to follow, but I understand that not everybody is made for it. But the real drama occurs when a person finally hits T2DM and starts to develop dementia. Only then they will start to learn, listen and study medicine (maybe), but for the most part it is already too late. See, in this condition, the brain suffers from tissue hypoxia, so the individual has dim chances of properly doing their medical homework, if any work at all. And they won't get a proper help at the usual clinic outside of palliative care, unless they go to a place specializing in neuroendocrinology which is often a cost-prohibiting option not available to everyone. I know, the link between T2DM and dementia may come as surprise to you as well, so here is a citation [3]. "But it's only affecting older people, I'm fine!" - wrong. It affects anyone but the incidence rate is indeed correlated with age. But before all that happens, one can enjoy one more cup of a thirst quincher with aspartame, of course! All those mad naysayers suck, you know. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28571543/#:~:text=Result%3A%20Aspartame%20may%20act%20as,in%20insulin%20deficiency%20or%20resistance https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28571543/#:~:text=Result%3A%.... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359792/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359792/ [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9052006/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9052006/
- thumbsup-_- 3y agoI live by a simple rule, if it's an artificial chemical or if it's packaged, it's most likely bad for my body while anything natural is most likely good or ok. The fact is that humans are bad at long term impact studies. When long term studies reveal something, it's very hard to take that stuff off market (not that we haven't done so. We have with done that with Talc, Asbestos). It's also possible that something is considered safe today but might be proven to be harmful decades later. We think that organizations like FDA are only thinking about health of people but that's not entirely true, they also need to think about economic impact of their actions. Declaring something carcinogen which is billion $ product, it's going to be very hard for them to do so. So, my rule is to simply err on the side of caution.
- tptacek 3y agoThere are a bunch of natural carcinogens that occur in unpackaged ordinary food, some of which have clear epidemiology, which is something you can't say about any artificial sweetener, or even drinking pure RoundUp. Avoiding packaged food can be a good rule for other reasons, but it's not a divining rod for carcinogenicity.
- worik 3y ago> but it's not a divining rod for carcinogenicity. True, but what they said was: > it's most likely bad for my body while anything natural is most likely good or ok. ...as a guiding principal it is probably right. Do not eat anything that your great grand aunt would not recognise as food.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoMy mom is in her sixties and doesn't recognize escargot or offal as food and believes sushi and medium rare pork are unacceptably risky. The further you go back the more reliance you find on preservative techniques other than refrigeration. That means a lot of salt, or smoking, which is a known carcinogen.
- deadbeeves 3y ago
- imchillyb 3y ago"Sola dosis facit venenum." Only the dose makes the poison. Everything is toxic. There is nothing in the known universe that is not toxic.
- valec 3y agowhy has neotame not been pursued? if aspartame is carcinogenic, seems logical to switch to an extremely similar but out-of-patent compound 50x as sweet with an identical flavor-profile.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> why has neotame not been pursued? if aspartame is carcinogenic I think you just answered your own question.
- valec 3y agono, I didn't. it was approved by both FDA and EU regulatory agencies, and, assuming similar carcinogenicity, would be a much better option considering it's 50x as potent as a sweetener. in other words, less cancer per unit sweet. and there's no reason to believe this potency as a sweetener (how strong it binds to and activates very specific gpcrs on tongue) correlates to carcinogenicity
- aj7 3y agoHow much methanol?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI use Equal. I use it in the two cups of coffee that I have each day (7AM and 4PM). I don’t usually drink any kind of soda (on the very rare occasions that I might have one, is is sugar), and don’t chew gum. If I eat candy or sweets (not that often), I use good-old-fashioned-not-good-for-you sugar. I don’t drink alcohol, exercise for about an hour, each day, and try not to be too crazy in my diet. But I live on Long Island, New York, and I drink a lot of tap water. Even filtered tap water is questionable. That probably far outweighs any risk from asparatame.
- dancemethis 3y agoProbably the first time I see brouhaha being used outside King Crimson's "Elephant Talk".
- dang 3y agoRecent and related: FDA says aspartame is safe, disagreeing with WHO finding - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728033 - July 2023 (145 comments) WHO says soda sweetener aspartame may cause cancer, but it’s safe within limits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717961 - July 2023 (10 comments) Aspartame Is a Possible Cause of Cancer in Humans, a WHO Agency Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717553 - July 2023 (5 comments) The WHO is about to declare aspartame can cause cancer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644185 - July 2023 (26 comments) Aspartame: Once More Unto the Breach - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36562739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36562739 - July 2023 (199 comments) Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942 - June 2023 (565 comments)