5 ms·

Why a cancer scare around aspartame is mostly unfounded

21 points by marban 3y ago

reese_john 3y ago
There is no downside in avoiding aspartame.
- mrob 3y ago
  The downside is that you either don't get to enjoy sweet things, or you have to switch to an alternative sweetener that might be worse, such as sugar.
- NewEntryHN 3y ago
  Not drinking coke.
archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/6VWY3 https://archive.is/6VWY3
em500 3y ago
Sounds like aspartame cancer risk will fall in the category "Everything we eat both causes and prevents cancer" https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-and-prevents-cancer https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-a...
- have_faith 3y ago
  Also related, what the Daily Mail reports as curing and causing cancer: https://web.archive.org/web/20221101162953/http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221101162953/http://kill-or-cu...
seper8 3y ago
Mostly unfounded. All these articles telling you how totally safe it is to ingest artificial chemical xyz remind me of how companies were telling you it was fine, even healthy, to smoke cigarettes. The degree of arrogance with which these scientists state their truths is confounding. Meanwhile chronic illnesses and cancer rates are skyrocketing. I'll pass on the industrial byproducts being used in my food, thanks.
- s_dev 3y ago
  >I'll pass on the industrial byproducts being used in my food, thanks. Is this even possible? Can you define industrial byproduct? Like even if you go to a typical Western grocery store and buy a single apple and then eat it. It was covered in a thin layer of wax to prolong its shelf life. Likewise if you buy a potato it might have trace amounts of industrial produced material in it from industrial farming.
  - BrandonS113 3y ago
    yes, the book Ultra-Processed People https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-processed-people-chris-van-tulleken.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-proces... does that quite well.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I'm the same, I like cola though so I ust have a regular coke 1/4 times a month.
- conception 3y ago
  Cancer rates are dropping not skyrocketing. https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/ https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - seper8 3y ago
    Overall yes, but under 50 the story is different. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/researchers-report-dramatic-rise-in-early-onset-cancers/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/researchers-r... Dramatic rise in cancer in people under 50
    - conception 3y ago
      “The team acknowledged that this increased incidence of certain cancer types is, in part, due to early detection through cancer screening programs. They couldn’t precisely measure what proportion of this growing prevalence could solely be attributed to screening and early detection. “ If the US is flat but global is rising pretty easy to explain by (poorer) diets and detection. These scientists don’t know why but that’d be my null hypothesis to beat.
INTPenis 3y ago
To people like me, it doesn't matter how unfounded it is. I'm sure there are people in this world who can benefit from sugar replacements, but in my mind there is absolutely no reason at all to start feeding myself artificial sweeteners when there is enough sweeteners in nature. On a related note, I'm kinda happy to note that steviol is much in use here in southern europe, where I'm currently residing. They don't even make a big deal out of it, regular sodas, vitamin powders, you read the ingredients and there it is. Steviol is a sweetener based on a natural plant Stevia. I've so far seen it in both Hungary and Croatia. I come from Sweden and it used to be that Stevia products were in a bin on their own, marketed specifically as stevia products. But down here they don't even mention it on the marketing side of the label. It's buried in the ingredients.
- glimshe 3y ago
  You can easily buy that in the US, we have boxes of the stuff at home. Nowadays you can also buy Monk Fruit-based sweeteners, which are also "natural". Unfortunately, both taste a bit worse than Aspartame (which is already not so great). I guess this is just a matter of habit, though.
  - INTPenis 3y ago
    I have never tasted any liquid with artificial sweeteners that was "right" to me. They all have a weird aftertaste that reveals to me that they contain a sweetener, even stevia products. I just would prefer the sweetener to be as natural as possible, if I had to use it.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      > I have never tasted any liquid with artificial sweeteners that was "right" to me Since you seem to be against anything artificial for god knows why, is this possibly a bias? You know it's artificial and that knowledge results in you thinking it tastes off to you?
- jebus989 3y ago
  This is an example of the "appeal to nature" logical fallacy. You may be able to make a case that Stevia is healthier than Aspartame, but it should be based on evidence to that effect rather than because you like the idea that it has ingredients derived from organic material.
pella 3y ago
related 2 weeks ago: "Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176555
gumballindie 3y ago
Let me check if i understand this correctly. News about aspartame causing cancer are published. Gain media attention, put certain corporations stock at risk. Dust settles. Said corporations bribe, erm pr, news outlets to change public opinion. How is it not obvious yet that we are being manipulated on a daily basis on everything we do ranging from what we eat, how we work, how we dress, how we think? I am not talking about conspiracy theories, I am talking about plain obvious media corruption.
- ghosty141 3y ago
  What. The EU’s food institution has published similar articles too saying aspartame is relatively safe and the cancer risk only becomes rlevant at siginifcant intake of it (liters of coke zero per day)
BrandonS113 3y ago
Can believe that, but there is more to such additives than cancer. The book Ultra-Processed People https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-processed-people-chris-van-tulleken.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-proces... makes clear the danger from such chemicals in our food.
- msla 3y ago
  Any asshole can publish a book and a lot of them have. Aspartame has been studied avidly, if not obsessively, for decades. It has never shown a serious carcinogenic risk. That's what we're talking about here.
hankchinaski 3y ago
Editorial piece brought to you by Coca-Cola & Co. I don’t trust anything that is written on mainstream media about health. It has proven to be very unreliable and ill guided. My generale rule is if it didn’t exist 200 years ago I’m not gonna eat it
pella 3y ago
via: https://dynomight.net/aspartame/ https://dynomight.net/aspartame/ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762301 ) aspartame is… | odds …good for you | very unlikely …harmless | plausible …bad for you | plausible
- have_faith 3y ago
  You weight harmless and bad for you the same despite vanishingly small evidence of it being bad for you and lots of evidence showing that it breaks down immediately in your gut into components that you consume constantly from other sources?
  - pella 3y ago
    Research on the long-term effects of Aspartame and multi-generation studies are just starting. I don't think there's enough evidence to rule out problems. Most study summaries say more research is needed. And the more studies they do, the more complicated the area becomes. "Transgenerational transmission of aspartame-induced anxiety and changes in glutamate-GABA signaling and gene expression in the amygdala" https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213120119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213120119 "“What this study is showing is we need to look back at the environmental factors, because what we see today is not only what’s happening today, but what happened two generations ago and maybe even longer,” said co-author Pradeep Bhide, the Jim and Betty Ann Rodgers Eminent Scholar Chair of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences." "Led by doctoral candidate Sara Jones, the study involved providing mice with drinking water containing aspartame at approximately 15% of the FDA-approved maximum daily human intake. The dosage, equivalent to six to eight 8-ounce cans of diet soda a day for humans, continued for 12 weeks in a study spanning four years. Pronounced anxiety-like behavior was observed in the mice through a variety of maze tests across multiple generations descending from the aspartame-exposed males. “It was such a robust anxiety-like trait that I don’t think any of us were anticipating we would see,” Jones said. “It was completely unexpected. Usually you see subtle changes.” When given diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, mice in all generations ceased to show anxiety-like behavior. Researchers are planning an additional publication from this study focused on how aspartame affected memory. Future research will identify the molecular mechanisms that influence the transmission of aspartame’s effect across generations." https://news.fsu.edu/news/university-news/2022/12/08/fsu-research-links-common-sweetener-with-anxiety/ https://news.fsu.edu/news/university-news/2022/12/08/fsu-res...
jagaerglad 3y ago
Cancer or not, perhaps it is also healthier for our brains to not constantly be tricked that they found a nice high calorie food item? It feels that it would become like food-tiktok, dopamine "addiction" etc. Sure, perhaps overweight people can benefit from sugar free alternatives temporarily as a remedy to lose weight. Personally as someone who eats very clean and unprocessed, I like to take the sugar calorie consequence of sweet things I might eat like fruits and the occasional pastry or soda
- zulban 3y ago
  > perhaps it is also healthier for our brains to not constantly be tricked that they found a nice high calorie food item? No need to speculate or ask rhetorical questions. This is a scientific question with presumably lots of research already.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
saberience 3y ago
I think an interesting question on this topic is “which is worse for you, sugar or aspartame?” So would it be healthier to drink three cans or Coke per day or three cans of Diet Coke? As far as I can see (from all the research), ingesting sugar seems worse than ingesting artificial sweeteners with regards to long term health outcomes.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
Asparatame does not help weight loss or dieting long term. https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1112 https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1112 For me artificial sweeteners do not taste sweet. At least in what I have tried so far in light soda or tea sweeteners. Given the popularity of artificial sweeteners I must be an edge case. I dont remember when, but at least here in Norway Mountain Dew partially replaced sugar with an artificial sweetener. It tasted off for me but it took me a while to figure out what they had done.
danzk 3y ago
Aspartame is arguably the safest artificial sweetener. It's made of two naturally occurring amino acids and it's rapidly destroyed by the acidity of the digestive system.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  ...giving off formaldehyde in the process. Plenty of natural things will kill you, fast or slow. Also, if you combine natural things together in an industrial process, the result isn't natural anymore.
invalidname 3y ago
I cut sweeteners not so much because of the risk, but because they don't seem to help with weight loss. I've started drinking my espresso unsweetened with a bit of milk. It's disgusting. At least it's short. But, it helped me mature my pallet and avoid the next "sweet high". Chocolate tastes too sweet for me now and I tend to gravitate to healthier options. Part of that might be projection and wishful thinking, but I think it's a sweetness I was craving too much.
sebazzz 3y ago
It is hard to tell what is unfounded or not. One thing that the PFAS debacle shows is that (chemical) companies can keep major environmental and human health risks under the covers for decades, and even when uncovered - are not punished and things are forgotten quickly.

21 points by marban 3y ago

reese_john 3y ago

There is no downside in avoiding aspartame.

mrob 3y ago
The downside is that you either don't get to enjoy sweet things, or you have to switch to an alternative sweetener that might be worse, such as sugar.
NewEntryHN 3y ago
Not drinking coke.

archo 3y ago

https://archive.is/6VWY3 https://archive.is/6VWY3

em500 3y ago

Sounds like aspartame cancer risk will fall in the category "Everything we eat both causes and prevents cancer" https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-and-prevents-cancer https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-a...

have_faith 3y ago
Also related, what the Daily Mail reports as curing and causing cancer: https://web.archive.org/web/20221101162953/http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221101162953/http://kill-or-cu...

seper8 3y ago

Mostly unfounded. All these articles telling you how totally safe it is to ingest artificial chemical xyz remind me of how companies were telling you it was fine, even healthy, to smoke cigarettes. The degree of arrogance with which these scientists state their truths is confounding. Meanwhile chronic illnesses and cancer rates are skyrocketing. I'll pass on the industrial byproducts being used in my food, thanks.

s_dev 3y ago
>I'll pass on the industrial byproducts being used in my food, thanks. Is this even possible? Can you define industrial byproduct? Like even if you go to a typical Western grocery store and buy a single apple and then eat it. It was covered in a thin layer of wax to prolong its shelf life. Likewise if you buy a potato it might have trace amounts of industrial produced material in it from industrial farming.
- BrandonS113 3y ago
  yes, the book Ultra-Processed People https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-processed-people-chris-van-tulleken.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-proces... does that quite well.
ChatGTP 3y ago
I'm the same, I like cola though so I ust have a regular coke 1/4 times a month.
conception 3y ago
Cancer rates are dropping not skyrocketing. https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/ https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- seper8 3y ago
  Overall yes, but under 50 the story is different. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/researchers-report-dramatic-rise-in-early-onset-cancers/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/researchers-r... Dramatic rise in cancer in people under 50
  - conception 3y ago
    “The team acknowledged that this increased incidence of certain cancer types is, in part, due to early detection through cancer screening programs. They couldn’t precisely measure what proportion of this growing prevalence could solely be attributed to screening and early detection. “ If the US is flat but global is rising pretty easy to explain by (poorer) diets and detection. These scientists don’t know why but that’d be my null hypothesis to beat.

INTPenis 3y ago

To people like me, it doesn't matter how unfounded it is. I'm sure there are people in this world who can benefit from sugar replacements, but in my mind there is absolutely no reason at all to start feeding myself artificial sweeteners when there is enough sweeteners in nature. On a related note, I'm kinda happy to note that steviol is much in use here in southern europe, where I'm currently residing. They don't even make a big deal out of it, regular sodas, vitamin powders, you read the ingredients and there it is. Steviol is a sweetener based on a natural plant Stevia. I've so far seen it in both Hungary and Croatia. I come from Sweden and it used to be that Stevia products were in a bin on their own, marketed specifically as stevia products. But down here they don't even mention it on the marketing side of the label. It's buried in the ingredients.

glimshe 3y ago
You can easily buy that in the US, we have boxes of the stuff at home. Nowadays you can also buy Monk Fruit-based sweeteners, which are also "natural". Unfortunately, both taste a bit worse than Aspartame (which is already not so great). I guess this is just a matter of habit, though.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  I have never tasted any liquid with artificial sweeteners that was "right" to me. They all have a weird aftertaste that reveals to me that they contain a sweetener, even stevia products. I just would prefer the sweetener to be as natural as possible, if I had to use it.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > I have never tasted any liquid with artificial sweeteners that was "right" to me Since you seem to be against anything artificial for god knows why, is this possibly a bias? You know it's artificial and that knowledge results in you thinking it tastes off to you?
jebus989 3y ago
This is an example of the "appeal to nature" logical fallacy. You may be able to make a case that Stevia is healthier than Aspartame, but it should be based on evidence to that effect rather than because you like the idea that it has ingredients derived from organic material.

pella 3y ago

related 2 weeks ago: "Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176555

gumballindie 3y ago

Let me check if i understand this correctly. News about aspartame causing cancer are published. Gain media attention, put certain corporations stock at risk. Dust settles. Said corporations bribe, erm pr, news outlets to change public opinion. How is it not obvious yet that we are being manipulated on a daily basis on everything we do ranging from what we eat, how we work, how we dress, how we think? I am not talking about conspiracy theories, I am talking about plain obvious media corruption.

ghosty141 3y ago
What. The EU’s food institution has published similar articles too saying aspartame is relatively safe and the cancer risk only becomes rlevant at siginifcant intake of it (liters of coke zero per day)

BrandonS113 3y ago

Can believe that, but there is more to such additives than cancer. The book Ultra-Processed People https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-processed-people-chris-van-tulleken.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/books/review/ultra-proces... makes clear the danger from such chemicals in our food.

msla 3y ago
Any asshole can publish a book and a lot of them have. Aspartame has been studied avidly, if not obsessively, for decades. It has never shown a serious carcinogenic risk. That's what we're talking about here.

hankchinaski 3y ago

Editorial piece brought to you by Coca-Cola & Co. I don’t trust anything that is written on mainstream media about health. It has proven to be very unreliable and ill guided. My generale rule is if it didn’t exist 200 years ago I’m not gonna eat it

pella 3y ago

via: https://dynomight.net/aspartame/ https://dynomight.net/aspartame/ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762301 ) aspartame is… | odds …good for you | very unlikely …harmless | plausible …bad for you | plausible

have_faith 3y ago
You weight harmless and bad for you the same despite vanishingly small evidence of it being bad for you and lots of evidence showing that it breaks down immediately in your gut into components that you consume constantly from other sources?
- pella 3y ago
  Research on the long-term effects of Aspartame and multi-generation studies are just starting. I don't think there's enough evidence to rule out problems. Most study summaries say more research is needed. And the more studies they do, the more complicated the area becomes. "Transgenerational transmission of aspartame-induced anxiety and changes in glutamate-GABA signaling and gene expression in the amygdala" https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213120119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213120119 "“What this study is showing is we need to look back at the environmental factors, because what we see today is not only what’s happening today, but what happened two generations ago and maybe even longer,” said co-author Pradeep Bhide, the Jim and Betty Ann Rodgers Eminent Scholar Chair of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences." "Led by doctoral candidate Sara Jones, the study involved providing mice with drinking water containing aspartame at approximately 15% of the FDA-approved maximum daily human intake. The dosage, equivalent to six to eight 8-ounce cans of diet soda a day for humans, continued for 12 weeks in a study spanning four years. Pronounced anxiety-like behavior was observed in the mice through a variety of maze tests across multiple generations descending from the aspartame-exposed males. “It was such a robust anxiety-like trait that I don’t think any of us were anticipating we would see,” Jones said. “It was completely unexpected. Usually you see subtle changes.” When given diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, mice in all generations ceased to show anxiety-like behavior. Researchers are planning an additional publication from this study focused on how aspartame affected memory. Future research will identify the molecular mechanisms that influence the transmission of aspartame’s effect across generations." https://news.fsu.edu/news/university-news/2022/12/08/fsu-research-links-common-sweetener-with-anxiety/ https://news.fsu.edu/news/university-news/2022/12/08/fsu-res...

jagaerglad 3y ago

Cancer or not, perhaps it is also healthier for our brains to not constantly be tricked that they found a nice high calorie food item? It feels that it would become like food-tiktok, dopamine "addiction" etc. Sure, perhaps overweight people can benefit from sugar free alternatives temporarily as a remedy to lose weight. Personally as someone who eats very clean and unprocessed, I like to take the sugar calorie consequence of sweet things I might eat like fruits and the occasional pastry or soda

zulban 3y ago
> perhaps it is also healthier for our brains to not constantly be tricked that they found a nice high calorie food item? No need to speculate or ask rhetorical questions. This is a scientific question with presumably lots of research already.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

saberience 3y ago

I think an interesting question on this topic is “which is worse for you, sugar or aspartame?” So would it be healthier to drink three cans or Coke per day or three cans of Diet Coke? As far as I can see (from all the research), ingesting sugar seems worse than ingesting artificial sweeteners with regards to long term health outcomes.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

Asparatame does not help weight loss or dieting long term. https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1112 https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1112 For me artificial sweeteners do not taste sweet. At least in what I have tried so far in light soda or tea sweeteners. Given the popularity of artificial sweeteners I must be an edge case. I dont remember when, but at least here in Norway Mountain Dew partially replaced sugar with an artificial sweetener. It tasted off for me but it took me a while to figure out what they had done.

danzk 3y ago

Aspartame is arguably the safest artificial sweetener. It's made of two naturally occurring amino acids and it's rapidly destroyed by the acidity of the digestive system.

speed_spread 3y ago
...giving off formaldehyde in the process. Plenty of natural things will kill you, fast or slow. Also, if you combine natural things together in an industrial process, the result isn't natural anymore.

invalidname 3y ago

I cut sweeteners not so much because of the risk, but because they don't seem to help with weight loss. I've started drinking my espresso unsweetened with a bit of milk. It's disgusting. At least it's short. But, it helped me mature my pallet and avoid the next "sweet high". Chocolate tastes too sweet for me now and I tend to gravitate to healthier options. Part of that might be projection and wishful thinking, but I think it's a sweetness I was craving too much.

sebazzz 3y ago

It is hard to tell what is unfounded or not. One thing that the PFAS debacle shows is that (chemical) companies can keep major environmental and human health risks under the covers for decades, and even when uncovered - are not punished and things are forgotten quickly.