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Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group
- xattt 3y agoI would love to be a fly on the wall to find out about the infighting that happens between various sweetener manufacturers.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoYou can catch more flies with honey than with ORBIT® Gum
- kunwon1 3y agoI might just be tired, but it seems like this article is poorly written. Which contention is tied to the alleged front group? Is Coca-Cola trying to get us to believe that aspartame is dangerous, or are they trying to get us to believe it's not dangerous? It's not immediately obvious to me that Coca Cola would benefit from either argument. Don't they sell a crapload of aspartame?
- kevinventullo 3y agoThe WHO issued two statements against aspartame, then a third saying it was safe. The third paragraph of the article states That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group, the public health advocacy group US Right-To-Know said in a recent report.
- ajkjk 3y agoIt's pretty obvious in the article? The WHO put out multiple, seemingly contradictory articles a while ago (I remember reading about it, and people were confused at the time). Turns out the one that say it was safe was secretly funded by Coca-Cola. It's fairly obvious that they would benefit from apartame's potential risks being ignored.
- cool_dude85 3y agoTo clarify, without reading the French article, it appears not that the third group was explicitly funded by Coca Cola, rather, many of the members on the committee have in the past been associated (membership on the board, attending conferences, membership in working groups, etc.) with a Coca Cola front group.
- ajkjk 3y agoyeah the implication is "... clearly Coca Cola is involved".
- lordlimecat 3y agoAspartame's potential risks, as compared with sucroses? Because I don't recall hearing about any aspartame-linked deaths ever, while I know that diabetes is a killer.
- blackhaz 3y agoI was having the same issues. It appears nothing is written directly nowadays.
- nxoxn 3y agoFrom the article: > A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a “possible carcinogen”, then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings – people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago, before new science cited by WHO raised health concerns. That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group, the public health advocacy group US Right-To-Know said in a recent report. < So, the second of your ideas is the correct interpretation. In my real layman's take of the timeline it went as such: 1) First report says Aspartame potentially bad. 2) Second report says, yeah, pretty sure Aspartame bad and going to go on the naughty list. 3) Third report comes out contradicting the previous reports, says everything is okie dokie artichokie. The third report is the one being linked to a Coca-Cola front group.
- seanp2k2 3y agoI would strongly encourage anyone who regularly consumes Coke to switch to black coffee or tea for a month and take notes on how they feel.
- mateus1 3y agoWhy? What did you experience?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoCoffee has acrylamide which has actually been shown to cause cancer.
- karaterobot 3y ago> Q. What is acrylamide and what do we know about its link to cancer? > A. Coffee can contain acrylamide, a chemical that is also used in certain industrial processes and has been commercially available since the 1950s. In addition to coffee, acrylamide is also found in French fries (frying causes acrylamide formation), toasted bread, snack foods, like potato chips and pretzels, crackers, biscuits, cookies and cereals, and in tobacco products. Acrylamide is classified by IARC as a “probable carcinogen,” based primarily on genotoxicity experiments in animals. In 2002, Swedish scientists discovered that acrylamide could be formed from asparagine (an amino acid) and sugar during high-heat cooking. This discovery led to intensified research into the association between acrylamide intake from diet and cancer risk in humans. In 2011 and 2014, two large studies summarized the evidence in humans and found no association between dietary acrylamide and risk of several cancers. https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-research-news/coffee-and-cancer-what-the-research-really-shows.html https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-research-news/coffee-and... This implies that the first part of your comment is correct, but the second part likely is not.
- faizan-ali 3y agoI did that (no Coke Zero for almost a month). Noticed nothing different.
- 3y ago
- ttul 3y agoSuppose aspartame is actually toxic. Wouldn’t that have population-level effects by now? It’s been in beverages for decades.
- stuaxo 3y agoOther factors may have made any effect less obvious.
- candiddevmike 3y agoI'd imagine it would.be really hard to discover correlations for this. Doctors ask if you're a smoker, not a diet coke drinker.
- mmastrac 3y agoAt least some studies have shown correlation between increased artificial sweetener intake and BMI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/ I personally avoid the stuff, preferring to just limit sugar.
- SoftTalker 3y agoWell most people who drink diet soda are fat. Why else would you drink it?
- mmastrac 3y agoThey say correlation does not imply causation, but have you noticed how often sentences with the word "correlation" also have the word "causation"?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhen I drink Diet Coke, I choose to drink it to avoid ingesting 40g+ of sugar. And I also prefer its taste to compared to sugar. And I am the opposite of fat.
- networkchad 3y ago
- grej 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230818145647/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/17/who-panel-aspartame-diet-coke-guidelines https://web.archive.org/web/20230818145647/https://www.thegu...
- veave 3y ago[flagged]
- spazx 3y agoAh, there must be a face-saving campaign on too, because when I see YouTube ads, I've been seeing a lot of content insisting "ASPARTAME IS SAFE."
- gdoug 3y agoDoes this change the scientific consensus? It seems like aspartame is actually safe in the concentrations we use - noted bad effects happen at very high amounts, like the equivalent of 150 cans of diet coke level high. Has anything absurdly changed on this front?
- kossTKR 3y agoThere's studies on it destroying the gut flora that is continuously being ignored. Also sending "sweet" signals from the mouth can't be good in the long run, - pretty sure it spikes insulin somewhat, and even if not we need to understand diet in a holistic way - if something is too good to be true, it probably is. That said i've consumed a lot of the stuff in my time and is not that worried.
- karlkatzke 3y agoThere's a lot of other things I'm going to die from before I die from artificial sweeteners.
- SoftTalker 3y agoA quip from Adam Eget on one of Norm Macdonald's podcasts: A lot of things would have to go very right for me to end up dying from too much salt.
- switchbak 3y agoThat's an overly simplistic model. The factors leading to your demise are interrelated in a complex way. Diet (including sweeteners) can affect your weight and diabetes risk, which can affect a number of downstream morbidities (heart disease, kidney disease, cancer), any of which can be the one to take you out.
- asyx 3y agoThere are millions of people with cgms that drink soda with artificial sweeteners that see no spike in their blood sugar. There are enough people in this world that would have to deal with serious health complications if aspartame caused BG spikes that we'd know for absolutely certain if it did. And we don't.
- zapdrive 3y ago[flagged]
- hotdogscout 3y ago>The same WHO that said COVID-19 did not originate in a Chinese lab Actually a group of scientists published that on Nature Medicine. Fraudulently though, and under tremendous pressure from China and Nature. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-proximal-origins-must-be-retracted https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-proximal-origins-mu...
- mnd999 3y agoNothing is 100% safe so it seems unlikely the WHO would have said that.
- hotdogscout 3y ago[non sequitur] Some vaccine manufacturers (Brazil's Butantan) said that [vaccines were 100% effective against COVID]. My guess is whoever wrote that thought it'd convince people to take the vaccine, subsequently save more lives and therefore the lie would be justified. https://butantan.gov.br/noticias/vacina-do-butantan-atinge-100-de-eficacia-para-casos-moderados-e-graves https://butantan.gov.br/noticias/vacina-do-butantan-atinge-1...
- zerocrates 3y agoI don't read Portuguese but surely that says "100% effective" and not "100% safe." 100% effective is of course dubious as well but they seem to be discussing the results of a particular study, so 100% in the sense that nobody in the study got a serious case of covid.
- hotdogscout 3y agoI misinterpreted your comment as effectiveness of vaccines, my bad. I still don't think you can claim a vaccine is 100% effective because it successfully prevented less than 50 middle aged doctors and nurses from dying of COVID in the short span they were monitored.
- yieldcrv 3y agono conflict = no interest reproduce the science and publish the results or move on it serves nobody to pretend as if some random group of people are going to organically put their resources into a specific study, and then act surprised when someone that is professionally familiar with the subject matter for money eventually is doing the studies
- getarofilter 3y ago[dead]
- sampo 3y ago> WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a “possible carcinogen” Not WHO. IARC declared [1]. WHO itself took a more nuanced position [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Agency_for_Research_on_Cancer#Aspartame_(2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Agency_for_Resea... [2] https://www.who.int/news/item/14-07-2023-aspartame-hazard-and-risk-assessment-results-released https://www.who.int/news/item/14-07-2023-aspartame-hazard-an...
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThe accusation (it's clearer if you read the linked report that the Guardian story is reporting on) is that the more nuanced position was the result of the people making the decision having hidden links to Coca-cola.
- Zelphyr 3y agoThe food industry in the US is making us sick. Full stop. Combine that with a healthcare industry that cares for anything but health[1] and I can't help but think we may be on the precipice of a set of problems not seen before in society. 1: My wife is a Nurse Practitioner with 20 years of experience. Her and every provider she knows that I have met have, in sadness, agreed with that statement. They got into medicine to help people but the companies they work for only see patients as profit centers.
- mmastrac 3y agoI'm assuming you're a North American like myself. I find it shocking how attitudes towards health and food in Europe are so different from here. Flying back from France or Italy through the USA is a surreal experience -- obesity is a major problem in America and a pretty bad one in Canada as well. I am convinced it's not a problem of willpower, but the food just being engineered to be addictive and overly flavourful at any cost.
- farseer 3y agoahhhh Doritos!
- mmastrac 3y agoNot even once. (too late)
- wkat4242 3y agoYeah it's difficult, bodyshaming is too much of a thing. Even something as simple as MSG makes you want to eat much more. MSG occurs naturally in some foods but they tended to be really expensive (e.g. highly matured cheeses) so it was not such a big deal. But now it's added to everything.
- ska 3y agoIt's true that MSG content in e.g. aged parmesan is high... but it's not so low in e.g. cheddar and people tend to use a lot more of that. Also mushrooms, tomatoes, etc. especially dried. Mainly staying away from too much processed foods helps, but MSG content isnt' the main problem with them, it's a combination of flavoring agents + very high calorie density.
- zwieback 3y agoIt seems to me that at this point there are certain topics that trigger both superstitions and defensive reactions from industry that a totally different funding model is needed. How could we fund proper scientifc research on topics like sweeteners, Roundup or GMOs?
- lordlimecat 3y agoWild idea: what if we evaluated research on its merits, looking at things like methodology, controls, and reproducibility?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoNah bruhh we just want to read headlines from the Daily Mail that tell us how to interpret complicated stuff
- neilv 3y agoIs it possible for a US federal organization to settle the science question sufficiently, in a timely manner? And for US regulatory authorities to take any appropriate action based on that? Also, whenever it's found that a company is knowingly creating a public health hazard, including by suppressing and falsifying scientific research, do we yet have federal mechanisms to smack that down while it's happening?
- ceejayoz 3y agoIf PFAS compounds are any indication, no. Industry will successfully stall and sow doubt on the science question for decades. Regulatory authorities will act after that, at which point they switch to a similar compound and the clock resets. Fifty years later, there'll be a settlement far lower than the accumulated profits that doesn't begin to cover the damages.
- smarx007 3y agoWhat kind of journalism is this? First, The Guardian uses statements from a no-name group "US Right-To-Know" instead of doing fact-finding themselves. Fact-finding is what good journalism is all about. Second, it is quite bold to assume that any academic who produced a joint industrial-academic report is corrupt. Setting aside the borderline irresponsible generalisation, many universities set strict conditions for such cooperation. The most prominent is a condition not to be paid or remunerated in any other way for the joint work. The Guardian did not even try to check if any remuneration took place. This makes it impossible for me to form an opinion about the article contents.
- wkat4242 3y agoIndeed the sourcing is weird. The Guardian is not what it used to be.
- carlosbaraza 3y agoIndeed, I just stopped reading half way through, because it's extremely low quality journalism. A conflict of interest doesn't mean full blown corruption, they might still have done the right thing with a conflict of interest. That's the job of the journalist, to properly dig in and find evidence for their case. Instead they just introduced more noise to an already noisy topic full of controversy.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoI'm conflicted about this story. I fully believe that Coca-cola and other megacorps would have front groups undermining health research, but I'd normally expect it to be arguing against sugar replacements. The linked report is done by a group that has previously found the front group working to undermine warnings about sugar and soda taxes (which despite the name are generally sugar taxes, and don't apply to low sugar sodas): > ILSI sugar study out of ‘tobacco industry’s playbook’ > In 2016, public health experts denounced an ILSI-funded sugar study published in a prominent medical journal that was a “scathing attack on global health advice to eat less sugar,” reported Anahad O’Connor in the New York Times. The ILSI-funded study argued that warnings to cut sugar are based on weak evidence and cannot be trusted. But I guess it's possible that both Sugar and Aspartame are bad for you and they'll just try to undermine any possible health risk from the so-called "food" industry.
- raverbashing 3y agoYou mean the BS report that more confuses than helps people? That puts it as a “possible carcinogen” (list 2B https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IARC_MONO_classification_2023_updated.png https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IARC_MON... ) together with a laundry list of common things that may or may not cause cancer (in doses that may or may not be realistic) You can bet that excessive sugar and obesity contribute more to overall disease than aspartame ever will.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoArtificial sweeteners are, as a class, extra fattening. They are absolutely counterproductive to anyone trying to reduce weight or indulgence in sweet foods. The sweeteners are far sweeter than anything in nature, and so they trick the body into going into a sugar-processing mode, but there's no sugar to be had, so the pancreas goes absolutely nuts. Artificial sweeteners are essentially malware that you're putting into your body to hack its processes.
- raverbashing 3y agoNo, this myth needs to die Calories are fattening. Energy does not come from the void. Period Problem is people overcompensating because they had a diet coke so they think it's ok to get the large fries
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoBut why do artificial sweeteners exist? Why bother putting them in food in the first place? It seems like we've received some irrational fear of real sugar and made to feel like, we consumed too much of it, so here's this fake replacement so you can consume all the shit you like, but guilt-free. There's also been an absurd increase in the sweetening of every food, where things like bread just have massive amounts of HFCS and there's been a backlash about that. I think that all this insistence on sweetening everything has just created a market where people don't care how they get their sweet fix, they just want it so desperately that they're willing to consume horrible synthetic toxic waste to get it.
- lordlimecat 3y agoAspartame has been a boogeyman for literally decades, and yet no solid experimental study has shown evidence of carcinogenic activity nor of any negative health effects at realistic quantities. Any risk posed by aspartame is completely overshadowed by the risks posed by the sugary alterative. Sugar in general is one of those topics where otherwise intelligent people will suddenly lose the capacity for critical thought-- espousing the use of fructose-based sweeteners (agave) in lieu of HFCS over some concern over fructose, or opting for "natural sucrose" over a non-caloric, zero GI option like erithrytol. Asking questions about who is funding the research is valid but anytime someone starts coming for the non-sugar option it should raise red flags about the motive for doing so; I would argue that the sugar lobby is far more concerning than the sweetener lobby. Diabetes, not aspartame overdose, is the real killer today.