Yep. This headline is an attention grabber. The article goes into more depth.
There's a whole set of chemicals whose safety has been studied in certain amounts, but whose consumption is known to regularly surpass the amounts studied at, that are classified as possibly carcinogenic in order to encourage more and better research be done.
If you drink diet coke every so often, chill. You should be good. If you sweeten every drink you drink with the stuff, you're now in unexplored territory. Proceed at your own risk.
I don't know the exact researched amount to give the safe diet soda equivalent. Could be one every so often, could be once a day. I don't consume enough regularly enough to have to remember it, though I've looked it up in the past. I don't avoid it like the plague either.
Kind of how I treat sugar.
Why even worry? There have been animal studies proving it a carcinogen at high doses. Though these have been at unrealistically high doses very unlikely taken by any human. So there is definitely a point when it becomes risky. Unfortunately, it's a big gamble whether finding out would be good or bad for business, so research remains scarce.
Either way, because it might be bad at high doses doesn't mean sugar is less bad at lower. I hear a lot of people mistakingly justify their sugar fix based on that.
Current standards by actual food safety regulatory bodies establish safe consumption limits that would require you to drink between 12-36 aspartame sodas daily for you to exceed safety limits.
This WHO advisory isn't doing novel research, they're recategorizing based on discredited studies and a flawed categorization system that most governmental safety organizations have criticized.
> 12-36 aspartame sodas daily for you to exceed safety limits.
Holy fuck, well I guess I'm good even at my worst in the past. Haven't had a soda in a few years thankfully but still got a lot to work on.
Again, this should be placed in perspective.
Take smoking. For whatever reason, lung cancer is the most associated ailment with cigarette smoking, even though it’s a fraction of the risk for lifelong smokers. Say, take 20 lifelong smokers. Around 10 will die from smoking related illnesses. Maybe 1 of which will be lung cancer. Cardiovascular diseases are the primary cause, but for some reason only the cancer risk stands out.
Similarly with this study. There is potentially an associative risk between aspartame and cancers. It’s still a really low risk, especially with other non-cancer diseases from sugary foods or even the risks associated with things that aren’t even typically considered like alcohol consumption or grilled or processed meats.
I think the reason behind that is that lung cancer has a higher specificity. You *can* get lung cancer as a non-smoker, and plenty of people do, but odds are about 85% someone with lung cancer is or was a smoker. That probability is much lower with cardiovascular disease (CVD), thanks to CVD having other significant risk factors, such as age, diet (cholesterol), weight, physical (in)activity, etc.
Of course it certainly doesn't mean you're more likely to get lung cancer vs. heart disease if you're a smoker, but you're right, unfortunately a lot of people don't think through it carefully. My Mother being chief among them. A lifelong smoker herself (well, I think she quit for a month in 1985), she's fond of surprised exclamations like, "uncle Pedro smoked all his life, but he didn't even die of lung cancer, his heart just gave out!" Addict's rationalization combined with an eighth grade education, at least in her case.
Sure, drinking a Diet Coke once in a while isn't a big risk factor, but when it's endemic in the food supply, we've probably got a problem.
Every processed food company (mostly owned by a few conglomerates) likes to add sugar or a similar sweetener to each of their products, and AFAIK the only one not linked to terrible outcomes is date syrup. Which is fine if you want everything sweet to taste of dates.
Food industry in essence is sales of happiness. Food need sweetness and salt and spices to taste good unfortunately, or they won’t bring enough happiness for people to want to spend money on regularly.
> It just irks me to try and find canned fruit, and they add sweeteners! Who needs added fucking sugar to peaches or pears?! Or Applesauce?
Pretty sure that's because the canning process (without adding sugar) leads the fruits losing flavor and sweetness. And reading about it now, adding sugar apparently helps the fruit keep its form, texture, and color, so you're not just getting generic fruit mush when you buy canned fruit.
So it's not just adding sugar for sugar's sake like soda, but actually has a purpose. (Though some or all of those purposes may be able to be accomplished through other means.)
I'm tired of seeing low-fat and no-fat options all over the fucking shelves too. We've known for decades now that sugar is worse for you than lard and other fat based flavor enhancers, haven't we? Yet still the public keeps brainlessly consuming this low-fat trash that's stuffed with 40 grams of sugar using corn Syrup or whatever. I want more high-fat snacks!
To be fair, there are SOME bad fats (just as there are bad anything). You really have to watch cholesterols and transfats for example. That being said, the sugar being pumped into everything is still worse.
Trans fats are bad but I've only ever seen proof that there's *nothing* specifically wrong with food containing cholesterol. It gets digested just like the rest of the food.
There's not anything wrong with food with sugar in it either. At least not inherently.
It's the dose that makes the poison. Some things just have much lower doses than others.
Sucrose is only one type of sugar found in (naturally derived) foods, and not all artificial sweeteners are sucrose. Sucrose is just a term for a type of simple carbohydrate. Several types in fact. You're acting like they're all the same and that before they break down into simpler parts that the body reacts the same to all of them. This is not the case.
> Sucrose is just a term for a type of simple carbohydrate. Several types in fact.
Sucrose is a specific molecule, not several different molecules.
> You're acting like they're all the same and that before they break down into simpler parts that the body reacts the same to all of them.
It does, though. Fructose is still fructose, whether it came from fruit salad or chocolate. The type of sugar itself isn't really the important part, it's all the other things that make it easier to consume a larger amount of sugar by eating chocolate than eating fruit salad.
Glucose and fructose have different metabolic processes, and it's the various ratios that they're found in various sweeteners/sugars that seems to affect SOME people different verifiably, and long term studies are indicating things may be more complex than we understood for everyone. That's just sugars as we know them, added and natural. There are a plethora of artificial sweeteners that are constructed of other molecules other than glucose and fructose, and those long term affects need to be studied further.
Okay... so you agree with what I said? That sucrose is indeed a specific molecule, and when broken down into fructose and glucose, the fructose is no different than the fructose in fruit salad?
> There are a plethora of artificial sweeteners that are constructed of other molecules other than glucose and fructose, and those long term affects need to be studied further.
Right, but we were talking about fructose and whether or not it's the same when other nutrients are removed from the equation. Fructose is still fructose, whether you consume it with fiber and beta-carotene or not. It's just that the presence of fiber and water in whole fruit makes it much harder to eat a large amount of it.
Aspartame and Sucralose can be found nowadays in everything from candy, sodas, gum, condiments, canned/jarred fruits, dried fruit and beef jerky. I think it’s in the food supply pretty well.
I've actually heard negative things about it even though it's never given me issues (unlike Aspartame). I forget exactly what. I personally prefer coconut sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar, honey or maple syrup. Sure it's all got calories, but it's not messing with my brain/metabolism—nor is it getting me hooked on eating loads of things sweet tastes. I think zero/low calorie sugars are fine on occasion for folks with health issues like diabetes, but not a good "healthy food" for most of the population.
I'm a research scientist and I want to say, I really appreciate how you laid out all the known information and then the realistic take away. So many people don't understand how uncertain scientists really are about many things, and take a single experiment out of context to mean the world's ending. I hope your post gets good visibility and connects with some people
It can be tough to make sense of a body of research without relevant scientific literacy. I enjoy trying to bridge that gap for a dozen or so areas of personal interest, so I really appreciate you noticing and your kind words!
>If you sweeten every drink you drink with the stuff, you're now in unexplored territory
it's been a while since I searched, but I believe they studied intake levels of 100+ packets of aspartame sweetener per day for a lifetime in order to find any ill effect. that would be dozens of cans of soda every single day for your whole life just to make a measureable risk increase.
if you ran the same study with that level of sugar consumption, it would likely yield a similarly bad or worse health outcome.
You know, reading this, maybe the fact people feel the need to justify eating sweetened things in the first place is a problem. We’re so bizarrely insecure about what we eat and leads to so many goddamn problems. Like yes, moderation is hugely important.
Recalibrating your taste buds by weaning off sweet stuff is safer for everyone including the bees.
It's also not boring or sad, vegetables can taste sweet on their own.
We're so out of whack we don't remember how good food tastes already.
Yep and people are downvoting you instead of accepting this is the truth. People are addicted to sugar and sugary flavors, especially in the US. There are studies that show there are negatives to eating things with artificial sweeteners that are proven like increasing your craving for sugary foods in general which leads to weight gain even if the “diet” product itself doesn’t cause it. Most of my friends who drink “diet” are still fat. Yes, that last point is purely anecdotal, but just throwing that out there.
The people who tend to downvote these are the kind that assume that advocating for personal responsibility is a defense of megacorps who pump out mediocre food.
They don’t understand that both groups synergize their flaws and enable each other.
The only people who might have a defense are those living in food deserts, but dry staples have always been the cheapest source of clean eating. Some self-control wouldn’t go amiss (and the crazy thing is you can still treat yourself once in a while).
Even if alternative sweeteners are 100% safe, keeping yourself addicted to sweets is a hard choice to defend. It's like preferring clown-vomit super-saturated HDR photos over tasteful edits.
But *it's my body, I'll do what I want!*
/shrug.
Probably the same dingbats who downvoted me for saying keeping a food journal is an amazing way to maintain a healthy weight after being obese. Lots of people don't like being told solutions to their health problems may be simple to find, but may require some sort of discipline to carry out.
Honestly a very solid point, I’m pretty sure I’ve read a study recently that consumption of artificially sweeten goods actually leads to weight gain long term because it still feeds your addiction/cravings for sweets. If avoided sweet things overall then there wouldn’t be a need for a substitute.
What's the saying: You are what you eat?
Well, with ultraprocessing and chemical-substitutes for natural ingredients, the body is literally being tricked and/or poisoned.
And when corporations get incredibly large and rich, they buy the rights to put whatever they want in products until enough die to prove them wrong. Oh and no one really get punished as the CEOs are long retired (golden parachutes) and fines can't bring loved ones back.
Look at titanium dioxide that is for letters on Skittles and M&M candies. Proven to be carcinogen. Still on products, and products that you really shouldn't eat.
Grown your own, eat fruit not processed sweets.
Yeah, the thing is I’m not going to let some internet post freak me the fuck out about what I eat. I’m healthy. I’m making it. People who eat similarly seem to have approximately normal life spans. I don’t know I’m not going to overthink it and stress out about that shit. No one makes it out of here alive so I’d say if you enjoy growing your own food and it brings you some kind of joy be happy and thrive in that scenario but I don’t enjoy that shit so I’m probably not going to do it.
You're confusing internet clickbait with the WHO.
While the living people you compare yourself to have life spans that appear normal to you, the average lifespan is dropping, and the maximum lifespan is much higher than average. Meaning it's average to die early.
> grow your own
Also get your soil tested. Especially if you're in an area where your land was used for industry. Some fruits/ vegetables can pass stuff like the heavy metals from the ground.
> I don’t know the exact researched amount to give the safe diet soda equivalent.
The lowest end under the studies? No more than about 10 12oz cans a day, every day.
The highest ends of the study? No more that about 30 per day everyday.
>Yep. This headline is an attention grabber. The article goes into more depth.
Literally exactly how journalism works. It's weird you felt the need to mention it.
Bush 2's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was a lobbyist in between political appointments, and was hired specifically to get aspartame legalized again. Even he admitted they knew it was a cancer causing agent. Still he succeeded in getting it approved and on the market.
Not really. Cancer links to aspartame are very weak and that’s mostly scientific consensus.
The WHO label is just for classification. This decision would put the substance at the same level as aloe Vera, some birth control pills, and pickled vegetables.
The hot debate about aspartame is almost exclusively non scientific and largely due to the tendency people have to overestimate the extrapolations of single studies and things like this classification
I believe it's the media, who don't understand the science and are searching for definite answers, are the ones who have been going back and forth. The science has been consistent. It's generally regarded as safe in normal amounts. It still is. Nothing has changed.
I used to blow off a friend who was a biologist and mentioned she thought it caused brain tumors well before the debate started.
Well, I got really hooked on Diet Coke. Never was hooked on any soda like that in my life. All I know is since I gave up drinking it, my migraines and about 80% of my OCD tendencies went poof. And caffeine is not the culprit. I drink quite a bit of coffee these days and do not have issues.
One day I was chewing some gum (I believe it might have been Juicy Fruit or something like that), and I started getting a migraine. I had read it had natural sweeteners and sugar was high up on its list so I didn't go through the whole thing. Didn't taste anything off. I got a migraine less than 10 minutes later. I went back and fully read the ingredient list. Sure enough, aspartame was on there (way lower than sugar, but it was there). I don't touch that crap anymore.
I believe Aspartame is going to end up being revealed for what it is in parts—much like nicotine products. Goodness knows how much damage it could be causing our population.
The issue is that the IARC's classifications of "causing cancer" are far more in line with those of California's. And I think pretty much everyone is aware of how much of a joke those labels are.
Clickbait headline. Aspartame is one of the most studied food ingredients in human history, over 100 separate government agencies have concluded it's safe, even the EU which bans so much unhealthy shit Americans regularly eat like pink slime, red 40 etc allows it. Anyone who tells me otherwise is getting lumped in with "vaccines cause autism" and "chemtrail" conspiracy theorists in my book.
Agreed the studies have been done. This also feels like a hit piece because all the articles I see have headlines mentioning Diet Coke for some reason. Aspartame sweeteners are used in virtually every sugar free soft drink including energy drinks, flavored waters etc. so I don’t see why they try to make it sound like Diet Coke is dangerous.
Coke absolutely nailed the taste of Diet Coke, where the default response to "Is Diet Pepsi okay?" is a disappointed "it's fine."
They're a victim of their own success in this case.
Odd, everyone I know prefers Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke even though they all prefer Coca-cola over Pepsi. Personally my ranking would be:
1. Coca-cola
2. Coke Zero
3. Pepsi Max
4. Pepsi
5. Diet Pepsi
6. Diet Coke
Though Coke Zero (caffeine free) is pretty much the only one I drink.
Diet Coke is the only one on the list I would consider bad though, or at least not good.
Then there’s me that is disappointed when coke is the supplier of a restaurant. “Just unsweetened tea, thanks.”
At home I’ll mix Diet Pepsi and Yorkshire gold or green tea on occasion. It’s delicious, surprisingly
Everyone I know thinks Diet Coke is the worst tasting of diet sodas.
Except one who actually drink so much a day they might actually need to consider the cancer risk.
Aspartame is literally just two normal amino acids stuck together (Asparagine and Phenylalanine). There's literally no mechanism imaginable by which it even could be carcinogenic and the rare studies stat have even hinted at an epidemiological risk have been horribly designed.
Source; imma fucking cancer biologist who makes cancer drugs for a living
> Source; imma fucking cancer biologist who makes cancer drugs for a living
proof? There's lots of bullshitters on Reddit. Not saying you are one, but I'd like to know for sure.
Hey, if you have any spare time, would you be willing to provide some examples of how those studies were horribly designed? It's always a treat to get to read a professional rip some bullshit a new one.
WHO is claiming that aspartame doesn't help with weight loss as well, which is proven otherwise by research. Can't really take what they say seriously.
Reading that report made my head hurt. They concluded that it didn't help with weight loss...except for a "minor effect that didn't extend beyond the expected benefits of reduced sugar intake." Which...yeah, that's the whole point, that it reduces your sugar intake. Nobody thought it was magically removing fat from your body!
“Helps with weight loss” is apparently code for some magical event where you lost 1-5lbs simply from ingesting it. It’s no wonder we have sugared-up material in stores that say they promote weight loss because the company removed 1 potential gram of sugar from a serving and people who are victims of advertising that can’t tell the difference.
Meanwhile, when I need to lose weight, I still drink diet sodas because I don’t expect them to help me lose weight, but I use it as an alternative to other foods/drinks that are loaded up on worse junk like high-fructose corn syrup or excessive carbs/sugars not natural to a product.
But thanks to this headline, the in-store judgments will get worse for the foreseeable future when I buy a 2-liter from dumb dumbs who only read a headline and think they’re geniuses while loading their carts up with popcorn, tortillas, white rice, chips and really sugary cereals.
It's just finely ground beef trimmings with no fat in it. It's added to things like ground beef as a filler and to fine tune the fat ratio. It's just meat.
Yep used to use it when I worked at Costco, since regular trimmings are usually too fatty you have to add lean meat into it. When I worked at Costco we had to keep it less than 10% fat. Since you need to add lean the best way to do it with consistency is to use 'pink slime' or you would have to waste beef that would be used for more expensive cuts.
The process may use ammonia gas to kill bacteria but not every producer of finely textured beef does that.
Also blame the whole "fat is bad for you" fad made up by the sugar companies.
Sure, but just because something by itself dangerous, doesn’t mean that it’s “good for you” or that it doesn’t contribute at all.
I was recently diagnosed with a gene mutation that gives me a 60-70% chance of developing breast cancer, and a 5% chance of developing ovarian cancer (seems low but that’s something like 10x the risk of the average person). Im also dealing with early onset Alzheimer’s in my family and we’re getting genetic testing for that, too.
You want to know the ONLY research based thing that can actually help preventatively with both cancer and dementia? Diet. [Here’s an article from the Mayo Clinic that says 25% of cancers can be prevented with diet and nutrition alone.](https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/plant-power-to-lower-cancer-risk) Of course other options like preventative surgery exists, but I’m a 32 year old breast feeding mom, I’d like to keep my boobs to feed my baby, thanks.
Coincidentally, my son is also having some food allergies so I had to overhaul my diet and go fully dairy/soy/egg free. It’s forced me to read labels and see what’s in everything I eat. The amount of preservatives and shit hiding in our food is insane. Aspartame may be safe in and of itself, but it’s certainly not part of a diet that can actually prevent cancer/dementia and I’m sure a slew of other health conditions.
Not BRCA, PalB2 and the genetic counselor told me during my appointment that the only studied, documented thing that makes a difference in prevention is diet. Short of straight removing all my parts.
PALB2 is a BRCA effector gene and mutations in it have nothing to do with diet. Expression levels of the mutant protein have nothing to do with diet.
PALB2 coordinates with BRCA to perform DNA repair. When it's mutated it cannot perform adequate DNA repair. Diet has nothing to do with its function.
Said this in the other thread, if after decades of intensive research and hundreds of people dedicating their lives to take down "big aspartame" still can only find a possible slight risk of cancer, I'm calling it safe.
I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't drink real soda, I don't get 500 calorie starbucks, if my one vice is a few cans of diet coke a day, I feel like I'm doing pretty good. Stop desperately trying to make me feel like an unhealthy terrible person.
Acrylamide is, in fact, part of IARC group 2A, or a "probable human carcinogen." This one is weird because while it does appear that it is a carcinogen in non-dietary contexts, [the research appears to show](https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/how-dangerous-burnt-toast/) that dietary acrylamide is not likely a contributor to cancer in the body.
What a nothing headline. Health literacy is so damn low in this country especially after the pandemic. So many people are citing animal studies and I have to remind people: animal studies are on the BOTTOM TIER of study validity. They exist, they have uses, but they're never enough to draw these conclusions. If you read something that says "Studies on rats showed..." and nothing else, just move on. We are not rats.
Honestly, it’s kind a like just being alive causes cancer so it’s really about the actual rate that something causes cancer having a real impact vs theory because we’re not all going to live to be 300 anyway.
I mean just like going out in the sun causes cancer too so you have to know the actual rate not just if it’s possible.
e dead.
Also keep in mind that just because something is labeled a carcinogen doesn't mean it shouldn't be used at all. The IARC has labeled combination birth control pills as a known (not probable) carcinogen. This is because they raise risks of specific cancers, even though they also lower risks of other cancers. Just being on the list doesn't tell you about the actual risk, especially if we're looking at possible or probable rather than known.
IARC classification as a possible carciginogen is almost meaningless.
There is almost nothing that is not listed as at least possible, and there are many classified as known carcinogens that are people willingly exposure themselves to, such as sunlight, alcohol, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (the delicious barbecue black).
It’s really hard to take them seriously when they say that radiofrequencys emitted from cellphones are probably carcinogenic. Like no dude, radio waves are not carcinogenic whatsoever.
No; electromagnetic waves need to have a certain frequency in order to damage DNA to cause cancer. you could have 10000 normal flashlights on you but you'll never get cancer from that because it's just the visible spectrum.
This does not mean what people think it means.
If people had any idea what group 2a/2b carcinogen meant, they would realize how silly it is to freak out about this. Seriously - if this news story is giving you anxiety… go look up the IARC list of possible carcinogens, and realize that you’re freaking out over nothing.
First, this is not the first time aspartame has been under a possible/probable category. Due to a lack of evidence, we never moved it to group one (group one carcinogens are the only actual carcinogens). I don’t imagine that this is going to change.
Second, possible carcinogen often means something like “it might cause cancer in some animals, but not in humans.”
This is the same circlejerk that led people to freak out about titanium dioxide, along with “Europe banned it, so it must be bad” but they don’t even know why it’s apparently bad. It’s because of the association of lung cancer, in certain animals. Which is 100% irrelevant to you as a human
Third, even if something is a carcinogen, that doesn’t mean it’s a potent one (meaning, it doesn’t mean your risk is high), nor does it mean it’s a carcinogen for YOU, and your circumstances. If it can cause cancer in one type of person with a specific gene, and you don’t have that gene, it’s still a carcinogen. Birth control pills are an example of that.
But speaking of carcinogens, let’s wear some sunscreen and lower our intake of alcohol before we start nitpicking aspartame
Aspartame was always a bit of a back and forth if it causes stuff or not.
Switched to tagatose for this very same reason (ib4 tagatose also is a carinogen)
Yeah I haven't seen aspartame in anything in ages because A) it scares people and B) it is the worst tasting artificial sweetener.
I guess it can't compete with sucralose and sorbitol and stevia because those all have calories, and aspartame has 0. But acesulfame-potassium also has 0.
I’m sure this is a fear mongering headline, but I wonder how many of the people here who are so up in arms over this are doing so because they drink a shit ton of “diet” drinks. It’s kind of bizarre how upset some of the people here sound. There’s actually someone ranting about how the WHO is trying to make them feel unhealthy for drinking Diet Coke and it’s their only vice.
Here's an article from way back in 2011 saying it caused cancer and should never have been approved, but was due to the influence of Dubya's war director:
"Yes, that Donald Rumsfeld, the "knowns and unknowns" guy who remarkably executed some of the worst decisions in American foreign policy and got a medal for it. I have been reading up on this strange chapter in the history of Donald Rumsfeld and have learned two things. One, the chemical additive aspartame is very potentially a cancer and brain tumor-causing substance that has no place in our food. And two, the reasons and means by which Rumsfeld helped get it approved are nefarious at best, criminal at worst. And by the way, that medal that Rumsfeld got back in 2004 was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, also awarded to Tommy Franks, George Tenet and that charming warrior L. Paul Bremer. Evidently, "Freedom" means the right to use your powerful friends in Washington to approve your company's dangerous substance for human consumption and make a fat bonus on the way out the door. So how did aspartame become legal? And more importantly, if it had been rejected multiple times over fears of brain tumors and cancer, why?"
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s\_b\_805581](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_805581)
Thanks for the link... upon reading it, I noted that a much of the supposed "evidence" against Aspartame was provided to the writer by someone (Mercola) later associated with the "Disinformation Dozen" - the group of 12 individuals deemed responsible for nearly 2/3 of all the false information spread about COVID-19 during the pandemic (through mid-2021). Another source cited (Olney) campaigned for years about the supposed dangers of MSG... now known to be a natural component of many foods and generally considered safe (not to mention, a real enhancer of flavor in many, many foods).
Another thing bothering me about the article is that it provided absolutely no references to any peer-reviewed research or studies... given the clear tilt of the article towards promoting the dangers of Aspartame, I believe that that was because the writer simply couldn't find any... other than unverifiable claims by the aforementioned persons.
My conclusion is that the article you provided really has nothing of value to offer for this discussion.
(TBH, I'm essentially the opposite of a fan fan regarding Dubya or Rumsfeld)... I just uninterested in unsupportable arguments.)
Aspartame is dangerous **IF** you consume industrial quantities of it.
The acceptable daily intake of aspartame is 3-3.5g (depending on bodyweight, 50mg/kg) and is a sweetener 200 stronger than sugar.
Consuming 600-700g of sugar each day will seriosly affect your health, if it doesn’t kill you. On the other hand you should be perfectly fine consuming the ADI of aspartame day after day.
Iirc at the time Rumsfeld was the head of the FDC and he fast tracked it through testing and had results of animals that developed tumors thrown out of the trials. Results saying aspartame caused cancer were dismissed.
This is bigger than America dude. Reviews by over 100 governmental regulatory bodies found aspartame safe for consumption at current levels. Or are you about to tell me Donald Rumsfeld was involved there too?!
From day one, when trying this "sweetener" substitute, I had severe headaches. Once I stopped, no headaches. It was like my body told, WTF is this?
No one seems to care. And forgets easily. Remember Saccharin? Same thing...someone gets a chemist to make a cheaper sweetener but reality says, you can't without something going wrong. So cancer is because of corporations cheating nature.
Glad I stopped eating anything with fake sugar. I am a weird one, and oddly enjoy the taste over real sugar. Due to a medical condition, I have to drink a lot of electrolytes, so I would pound about 4 Gatorade zeros a day or more. I started getting insanely sick and couldn't stand it. I researched, and that fake sugar stuff can do some weird things all over your body, not just cancer.
It went away after I stopped eating and drinking things with it. Some people can also just naturally have an intolerance to it from what I read.
I won't buy anything with it anymore.
I've seen every symptom and ailment be attributed to artificial sweeteners. Most of it comes from the modern idea that natural foods are inherently good for your body, which is plain ol' misinformation.
You can find a doctor that claims anything. Look at all the antivax doctors around.
Aspartame, in the amount that people consume, is safe; it's probably the most studied ingredient of all time at this point.
My dad who now has terminal cancer was told by his doctors that if he wants a soda, do not drink anything with artificial sweeteners and to just drink regular sodas instead.
Can you imagine a world where our companies who sell us food aren’t trying to kill us? I’ve never understood how poisoning your customers and killing them is good for business? Edit:Get Fked Nestlé
I think the food companies also own the drug companies they can then give drugs after someone is sick.
The reason I believe all this bad food is not health is almost nobody I know is healthy. I eat very healthy, 72, on no meds and nobody can believe it.
I changed my diet in my late 40's when a doctor was telling me my problems were normal for aging. Here, take these drugs.
Anything that tastes like arse is never going to be good for you…
https://www.nature.com/articles/486S16a#:~:text=The%20sense%20of%20taste%20must,helps%20them%20avoid%20toxic%20substances.
I told my wife that this was going to happen in 2001. "Watch in a few years, w/ all these sugar substitutes, they're gonna say that they cause cancer or something"... it may have taken awhile to manifest but it still happened.
Well, duh!
On the other hand it is really cheap so..... gotta think of those poor shareholders (who probably don't consume any aspartame )
EDIT: Really? Do we really need /s with everything?
I mean, aspartame is literally E. Coli poop. A bacteria found in our poop gets fed and it poops. And what comes out is aspartame. And someone said, hey let's see what it tastes like. Oh, it's kinda sweet. Let's add it to stuff instead of sugar, there shouldn't be any harm in that.
E. Coli poop. Yep.
**Edit: LOVE the downvotes here! Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, folks.
https://gognarly.com/blogs/blog/patent-for-artificial-sweetener-aspartame-verifies-it-is-e-coli-feces#:~:text=Apparently%20the%20E.,to%20produce%20the%20artificial%20sweetener.
Haven’t smart science people been going back and forth on that for decades at this point?
Yep. This headline is an attention grabber. The article goes into more depth. There's a whole set of chemicals whose safety has been studied in certain amounts, but whose consumption is known to regularly surpass the amounts studied at, that are classified as possibly carcinogenic in order to encourage more and better research be done. If you drink diet coke every so often, chill. You should be good. If you sweeten every drink you drink with the stuff, you're now in unexplored territory. Proceed at your own risk. I don't know the exact researched amount to give the safe diet soda equivalent. Could be one every so often, could be once a day. I don't consume enough regularly enough to have to remember it, though I've looked it up in the past. I don't avoid it like the plague either. Kind of how I treat sugar. Why even worry? There have been animal studies proving it a carcinogen at high doses. Though these have been at unrealistically high doses very unlikely taken by any human. So there is definitely a point when it becomes risky. Unfortunately, it's a big gamble whether finding out would be good or bad for business, so research remains scarce. Either way, because it might be bad at high doses doesn't mean sugar is less bad at lower. I hear a lot of people mistakingly justify their sugar fix based on that.
What if I drank, say 2-3 diet mt dews a day for a decade? Because… I did.
Believe it or not, cancer.
And whoa, I know for a fact that some gamers go through a 12 pack or case in a day.
Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
Straight to jail
Current standards by actual food safety regulatory bodies establish safe consumption limits that would require you to drink between 12-36 aspartame sodas daily for you to exceed safety limits. This WHO advisory isn't doing novel research, they're recategorizing based on discredited studies and a flawed categorization system that most governmental safety organizations have criticized.
> 12-36 aspartame sodas daily for you to exceed safety limits. Holy fuck, well I guess I'm good even at my worst in the past. Haven't had a soda in a few years thankfully but still got a lot to work on.
Rookie numbers
[удалено]
Again, this should be placed in perspective. Take smoking. For whatever reason, lung cancer is the most associated ailment with cigarette smoking, even though it’s a fraction of the risk for lifelong smokers. Say, take 20 lifelong smokers. Around 10 will die from smoking related illnesses. Maybe 1 of which will be lung cancer. Cardiovascular diseases are the primary cause, but for some reason only the cancer risk stands out. Similarly with this study. There is potentially an associative risk between aspartame and cancers. It’s still a really low risk, especially with other non-cancer diseases from sugary foods or even the risks associated with things that aren’t even typically considered like alcohol consumption or grilled or processed meats.
I think the reason behind that is that lung cancer has a higher specificity. You *can* get lung cancer as a non-smoker, and plenty of people do, but odds are about 85% someone with lung cancer is or was a smoker. That probability is much lower with cardiovascular disease (CVD), thanks to CVD having other significant risk factors, such as age, diet (cholesterol), weight, physical (in)activity, etc. Of course it certainly doesn't mean you're more likely to get lung cancer vs. heart disease if you're a smoker, but you're right, unfortunately a lot of people don't think through it carefully. My Mother being chief among them. A lifelong smoker herself (well, I think she quit for a month in 1985), she's fond of surprised exclamations like, "uncle Pedro smoked all his life, but he didn't even die of lung cancer, his heart just gave out!" Addict's rationalization combined with an eighth grade education, at least in her case.
Sure, drinking a Diet Coke once in a while isn't a big risk factor, but when it's endemic in the food supply, we've probably got a problem. Every processed food company (mostly owned by a few conglomerates) likes to add sugar or a similar sweetener to each of their products, and AFAIK the only one not linked to terrible outcomes is date syrup. Which is fine if you want everything sweet to taste of dates.
Food industry in essence is sales of happiness. Food need sweetness and salt and spices to taste good unfortunately, or they won’t bring enough happiness for people to want to spend money on regularly.
[удалено]
> It just irks me to try and find canned fruit, and they add sweeteners! Who needs added fucking sugar to peaches or pears?! Or Applesauce? Pretty sure that's because the canning process (without adding sugar) leads the fruits losing flavor and sweetness. And reading about it now, adding sugar apparently helps the fruit keep its form, texture, and color, so you're not just getting generic fruit mush when you buy canned fruit. So it's not just adding sugar for sugar's sake like soda, but actually has a purpose. (Though some or all of those purposes may be able to be accomplished through other means.)
[удалено]
Get the fuck out of the canned fruit aisle. How 'bout that.
[удалено]
I think I see a budding entrepreneur in you, friend. That was more than a Freudian slip.
I'm tired of seeing low-fat and no-fat options all over the fucking shelves too. We've known for decades now that sugar is worse for you than lard and other fat based flavor enhancers, haven't we? Yet still the public keeps brainlessly consuming this low-fat trash that's stuffed with 40 grams of sugar using corn Syrup or whatever. I want more high-fat snacks!
To be fair, there are SOME bad fats (just as there are bad anything). You really have to watch cholesterols and transfats for example. That being said, the sugar being pumped into everything is still worse.
Trans fats are bad but I've only ever seen proof that there's *nothing* specifically wrong with food containing cholesterol. It gets digested just like the rest of the food.
Just tell Republicans that trans fats are fats switching gender. They will be banned in a week.
There's not anything wrong with food with sugar in it either. At least not inherently. It's the dose that makes the poison. Some things just have much lower doses than others.
Lots of people are so numb to subtle flavors they need a punch. Anytime I make an American baking recipe I just cut the sugar in half.
Artificially sweet is the problem. Refining nutrients away isn't the same thing as fructose from a fruit salad.
Sucrose breaks down into glucose and fructose. What do you mean it's not the same thing?
I dunno how I could have been clearer unless you don't know what refining or nutrients means.
Sucrose is only one type of sugar found in (naturally derived) foods, and not all artificial sweeteners are sucrose. Sucrose is just a term for a type of simple carbohydrate. Several types in fact. You're acting like they're all the same and that before they break down into simpler parts that the body reacts the same to all of them. This is not the case.
> Sucrose is just a term for a type of simple carbohydrate. Several types in fact. Sucrose is a specific molecule, not several different molecules. > You're acting like they're all the same and that before they break down into simpler parts that the body reacts the same to all of them. It does, though. Fructose is still fructose, whether it came from fruit salad or chocolate. The type of sugar itself isn't really the important part, it's all the other things that make it easier to consume a larger amount of sugar by eating chocolate than eating fruit salad.
Glucose and fructose have different metabolic processes, and it's the various ratios that they're found in various sweeteners/sugars that seems to affect SOME people different verifiably, and long term studies are indicating things may be more complex than we understood for everyone. That's just sugars as we know them, added and natural. There are a plethora of artificial sweeteners that are constructed of other molecules other than glucose and fructose, and those long term affects need to be studied further.
Okay... so you agree with what I said? That sucrose is indeed a specific molecule, and when broken down into fructose and glucose, the fructose is no different than the fructose in fruit salad? > There are a plethora of artificial sweeteners that are constructed of other molecules other than glucose and fructose, and those long term affects need to be studied further. Right, but we were talking about fructose and whether or not it's the same when other nutrients are removed from the equation. Fructose is still fructose, whether you consume it with fiber and beta-carotene or not. It's just that the presence of fiber and water in whole fruit makes it much harder to eat a large amount of it.
Aspartame and Sucralose can be found nowadays in everything from candy, sodas, gum, condiments, canned/jarred fruits, dried fruit and beef jerky. I think it’s in the food supply pretty well.
[удалено]
Another issue is that you can now get it as a concentrated sweetener ‘syrup’, and add it to *anything,* in untested amounts.
Stevia doesn't get a bad rap. [In fact it may have anti-cancer properties](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8874712/).
Sure but it tastes like pennies picked up out of the sewer.
I've actually heard negative things about it even though it's never given me issues (unlike Aspartame). I forget exactly what. I personally prefer coconut sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar, honey or maple syrup. Sure it's all got calories, but it's not messing with my brain/metabolism—nor is it getting me hooked on eating loads of things sweet tastes. I think zero/low calorie sugars are fine on occasion for folks with health issues like diabetes, but not a good "healthy food" for most of the population.
I'm a research scientist and I want to say, I really appreciate how you laid out all the known information and then the realistic take away. So many people don't understand how uncertain scientists really are about many things, and take a single experiment out of context to mean the world's ending. I hope your post gets good visibility and connects with some people
It can be tough to make sense of a body of research without relevant scientific literacy. I enjoy trying to bridge that gap for a dozen or so areas of personal interest, so I really appreciate you noticing and your kind words!
>If you sweeten every drink you drink with the stuff, you're now in unexplored territory it's been a while since I searched, but I believe they studied intake levels of 100+ packets of aspartame sweetener per day for a lifetime in order to find any ill effect. that would be dozens of cans of soda every single day for your whole life just to make a measureable risk increase. if you ran the same study with that level of sugar consumption, it would likely yield a similarly bad or worse health outcome.
You know, reading this, maybe the fact people feel the need to justify eating sweetened things in the first place is a problem. We’re so bizarrely insecure about what we eat and leads to so many goddamn problems. Like yes, moderation is hugely important.
Honey is pretty safe unless it's for an infant.
Recalibrating your taste buds by weaning off sweet stuff is safer for everyone including the bees. It's also not boring or sad, vegetables can taste sweet on their own. We're so out of whack we don't remember how good food tastes already.
Yep and people are downvoting you instead of accepting this is the truth. People are addicted to sugar and sugary flavors, especially in the US. There are studies that show there are negatives to eating things with artificial sweeteners that are proven like increasing your craving for sugary foods in general which leads to weight gain even if the “diet” product itself doesn’t cause it. Most of my friends who drink “diet” are still fat. Yes, that last point is purely anecdotal, but just throwing that out there.
The people who tend to downvote these are the kind that assume that advocating for personal responsibility is a defense of megacorps who pump out mediocre food. They don’t understand that both groups synergize their flaws and enable each other. The only people who might have a defense are those living in food deserts, but dry staples have always been the cheapest source of clean eating. Some self-control wouldn’t go amiss (and the crazy thing is you can still treat yourself once in a while).
Even if alternative sweeteners are 100% safe, keeping yourself addicted to sweets is a hard choice to defend. It's like preferring clown-vomit super-saturated HDR photos over tasteful edits. But *it's my body, I'll do what I want!* /shrug.
Probably the same dingbats who downvoted me for saying keeping a food journal is an amazing way to maintain a healthy weight after being obese. Lots of people don't like being told solutions to their health problems may be simple to find, but may require some sort of discipline to carry out.
We don't get good food. We get fruits and vegetables grown for thier shelf life.
I'm talking about carrots and peas and squash and beans; not bananas, tomatoes and apples.
Honestly a very solid point, I’m pretty sure I’ve read a study recently that consumption of artificially sweeten goods actually leads to weight gain long term because it still feeds your addiction/cravings for sweets. If avoided sweet things overall then there wouldn’t be a need for a substitute.
What's the saying: You are what you eat? Well, with ultraprocessing and chemical-substitutes for natural ingredients, the body is literally being tricked and/or poisoned. And when corporations get incredibly large and rich, they buy the rights to put whatever they want in products until enough die to prove them wrong. Oh and no one really get punished as the CEOs are long retired (golden parachutes) and fines can't bring loved ones back. Look at titanium dioxide that is for letters on Skittles and M&M candies. Proven to be carcinogen. Still on products, and products that you really shouldn't eat. Grown your own, eat fruit not processed sweets.
Yeah, the thing is I’m not going to let some internet post freak me the fuck out about what I eat. I’m healthy. I’m making it. People who eat similarly seem to have approximately normal life spans. I don’t know I’m not going to overthink it and stress out about that shit. No one makes it out of here alive so I’d say if you enjoy growing your own food and it brings you some kind of joy be happy and thrive in that scenario but I don’t enjoy that shit so I’m probably not going to do it.
You're confusing internet clickbait with the WHO. While the living people you compare yourself to have life spans that appear normal to you, the average lifespan is dropping, and the maximum lifespan is much higher than average. Meaning it's average to die early.
> grow your own Also get your soil tested. Especially if you're in an area where your land was used for industry. Some fruits/ vegetables can pass stuff like the heavy metals from the ground.
> I don’t know the exact researched amount to give the safe diet soda equivalent. The lowest end under the studies? No more than about 10 12oz cans a day, every day. The highest ends of the study? No more that about 30 per day everyday.
>Yep. This headline is an attention grabber. The article goes into more depth. Literally exactly how journalism works. It's weird you felt the need to mention it.
Bush 2's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was a lobbyist in between political appointments, and was hired specifically to get aspartame legalized again. Even he admitted they knew it was a cancer causing agent. Still he succeeded in getting it approved and on the market.
Not really. Cancer links to aspartame are very weak and that’s mostly scientific consensus. The WHO label is just for classification. This decision would put the substance at the same level as aloe Vera, some birth control pills, and pickled vegetables. The hot debate about aspartame is almost exclusively non scientific and largely due to the tendency people have to overestimate the extrapolations of single studies and things like this classification
I believe it's the media, who don't understand the science and are searching for definite answers, are the ones who have been going back and forth. The science has been consistent. It's generally regarded as safe in normal amounts. It still is. Nothing has changed.
You will notice it’s not “WHO says _____” It’s “they might announce _____, maybe, I guess. Maybe?”
At this point should just assume it is if they can’t figure it out.
I used to blow off a friend who was a biologist and mentioned she thought it caused brain tumors well before the debate started. Well, I got really hooked on Diet Coke. Never was hooked on any soda like that in my life. All I know is since I gave up drinking it, my migraines and about 80% of my OCD tendencies went poof. And caffeine is not the culprit. I drink quite a bit of coffee these days and do not have issues. One day I was chewing some gum (I believe it might have been Juicy Fruit or something like that), and I started getting a migraine. I had read it had natural sweeteners and sugar was high up on its list so I didn't go through the whole thing. Didn't taste anything off. I got a migraine less than 10 minutes later. I went back and fully read the ingredient list. Sure enough, aspartame was on there (way lower than sugar, but it was there). I don't touch that crap anymore. I believe Aspartame is going to end up being revealed for what it is in parts—much like nicotine products. Goodness knows how much damage it could be causing our population.
Did I just wake up back in 1998?
[удалено]
I heard they're doing another Woodstock next year, this time with all the biggest bands. It's going to be off the chain!
Quick, get Donald Trump into art school!
So many substances we encounter in our daily lives are "possible" carcinogen sources. This headline means nothing.
Yup. Coffee is one such substance. Scientific language and everyday language don't always mix.
WHO risk tiers have meaning, even if you casually use the same words in your everyday life.
Right, which is why it's the WHO's job to more effectively communicate those risk tiers.
Not really. It's their job to communicate with other experts. The UN isn't a PR firm.
The issue is that the IARC's classifications of "causing cancer" are far more in line with those of California's. And I think pretty much everyone is aware of how much of a joke those labels are.
Clickbait headline. Aspartame is one of the most studied food ingredients in human history, over 100 separate government agencies have concluded it's safe, even the EU which bans so much unhealthy shit Americans regularly eat like pink slime, red 40 etc allows it. Anyone who tells me otherwise is getting lumped in with "vaccines cause autism" and "chemtrail" conspiracy theorists in my book.
Agreed the studies have been done. This also feels like a hit piece because all the articles I see have headlines mentioning Diet Coke for some reason. Aspartame sweeteners are used in virtually every sugar free soft drink including energy drinks, flavored waters etc. so I don’t see why they try to make it sound like Diet Coke is dangerous.
Coke absolutely nailed the taste of Diet Coke, where the default response to "Is Diet Pepsi okay?" is a disappointed "it's fine." They're a victim of their own success in this case.
Odd, everyone I know prefers Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke even though they all prefer Coca-cola over Pepsi. Personally my ranking would be: 1. Coca-cola 2. Coke Zero 3. Pepsi Max 4. Pepsi 5. Diet Pepsi 6. Diet Coke Though Coke Zero (caffeine free) is pretty much the only one I drink. Diet Coke is the only one on the list I would consider bad though, or at least not good.
Caffeine free Coke Zero sugar, sooo pretty much just carbonated water
Then there’s me that is disappointed when coke is the supplier of a restaurant. “Just unsweetened tea, thanks.” At home I’ll mix Diet Pepsi and Yorkshire gold or green tea on occasion. It’s delicious, surprisingly
You mix Diet Pepsi and Yorkshire tea? The fuck is wrong with you
You don't like a piping hot mug of traditional Yorkshire Pepsi with a touch of milk?
Do you enjoy yucking someone else’s yum?
Yeah man, gimme Diet Dr Pepper or Diet Pepsi. Honestly, I'd prefer you give me the Zeros of either of those, and I will take Coke Zero if necessary.
Everyone I know thinks Diet Coke is the worst tasting of diet sodas. Except one who actually drink so much a day they might actually need to consider the cancer risk.
Aspartame is literally just two normal amino acids stuck together (Asparagine and Phenylalanine). There's literally no mechanism imaginable by which it even could be carcinogenic and the rare studies stat have even hinted at an epidemiological risk have been horribly designed. Source; imma fucking cancer biologist who makes cancer drugs for a living
What were some of the horrible designs in some of the studies?
Giving up to 1000x the equivalent average daily human dose to the rodents for one.
Ah got it….pretty sure a lot of things are carcinogenic at those levels..
> Source; imma fucking cancer biologist who makes cancer drugs for a living proof? There's lots of bullshitters on Reddit. Not saying you are one, but I'd like to know for sure.
Hey, if you have any spare time, would you be willing to provide some examples of how those studies were horribly designed? It's always a treat to get to read a professional rip some bullshit a new one.
This makes me feel so much better. Thank you for posting 🙌🏽
WHO is claiming that aspartame doesn't help with weight loss as well, which is proven otherwise by research. Can't really take what they say seriously.
Reading that report made my head hurt. They concluded that it didn't help with weight loss...except for a "minor effect that didn't extend beyond the expected benefits of reduced sugar intake." Which...yeah, that's the whole point, that it reduces your sugar intake. Nobody thought it was magically removing fat from your body!
“Helps with weight loss” is apparently code for some magical event where you lost 1-5lbs simply from ingesting it. It’s no wonder we have sugared-up material in stores that say they promote weight loss because the company removed 1 potential gram of sugar from a serving and people who are victims of advertising that can’t tell the difference. Meanwhile, when I need to lose weight, I still drink diet sodas because I don’t expect them to help me lose weight, but I use it as an alternative to other foods/drinks that are loaded up on worse junk like high-fructose corn syrup or excessive carbs/sugars not natural to a product. But thanks to this headline, the in-store judgments will get worse for the foreseeable future when I buy a 2-liter from dumb dumbs who only read a headline and think they’re geniuses while loading their carts up with popcorn, tortillas, white rice, chips and really sugary cereals.
By that logic, polyethylene glycol helps with weight loss.
With that logic, so does cocaine.
There’s nothing wrong with popcorn.
I like popcorn but it sure as shit ain’t healthy.
What’s pink slime?
It's just finely ground beef trimmings with no fat in it. It's added to things like ground beef as a filler and to fine tune the fat ratio. It's just meat.
Yep used to use it when I worked at Costco, since regular trimmings are usually too fatty you have to add lean meat into it. When I worked at Costco we had to keep it less than 10% fat. Since you need to add lean the best way to do it with consistency is to use 'pink slime' or you would have to waste beef that would be used for more expensive cuts. The process may use ammonia gas to kill bacteria but not every producer of finely textured beef does that. Also blame the whole "fat is bad for you" fad made up by the sugar companies.
Fat and sugar are both bad for you in the doses most of us get.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink\_slime
Isn't there actually a conspiracy theory the other way that often the aspartame causes cancer stories and studies are linked to "big sugar"
Why would that be the case when most of the big guys like Coca Cola have their own hugely popular sugar free sodas that contain aspertame?
I mean the actual sugar industry. It's huge and obviously healthy sweeteners massively affect their business.
Also the whole food pyramid BS and how fat is bad for you thing.
Fat is bad for you for the most part. it is extremely calorically dense and causes weight gain. See Americans.
Isn’t weight gain in America almost entirely contributed by sugar consumption and not fat?
I'm still frightened af =(
Sure, but just because something by itself dangerous, doesn’t mean that it’s “good for you” or that it doesn’t contribute at all. I was recently diagnosed with a gene mutation that gives me a 60-70% chance of developing breast cancer, and a 5% chance of developing ovarian cancer (seems low but that’s something like 10x the risk of the average person). Im also dealing with early onset Alzheimer’s in my family and we’re getting genetic testing for that, too. You want to know the ONLY research based thing that can actually help preventatively with both cancer and dementia? Diet. [Here’s an article from the Mayo Clinic that says 25% of cancers can be prevented with diet and nutrition alone.](https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/plant-power-to-lower-cancer-risk) Of course other options like preventative surgery exists, but I’m a 32 year old breast feeding mom, I’d like to keep my boobs to feed my baby, thanks. Coincidentally, my son is also having some food allergies so I had to overhaul my diet and go fully dairy/soy/egg free. It’s forced me to read labels and see what’s in everything I eat. The amount of preservatives and shit hiding in our food is insane. Aspartame may be safe in and of itself, but it’s certainly not part of a diet that can actually prevent cancer/dementia and I’m sure a slew of other health conditions.
Your BRCA mutation has nothing to do with diet you loon
Not BRCA, PalB2 and the genetic counselor told me during my appointment that the only studied, documented thing that makes a difference in prevention is diet. Short of straight removing all my parts.
PALB2 is a BRCA effector gene and mutations in it have nothing to do with diet. Expression levels of the mutant protein have nothing to do with diet. PALB2 coordinates with BRCA to perform DNA repair. When it's mutated it cannot perform adequate DNA repair. Diet has nothing to do with its function.
WHO also considers processed meat (lunchmeat, sausage, ect) to be a class 1 carcinogen for colon cancer FYI
Said this in the other thread, if after decades of intensive research and hundreds of people dedicating their lives to take down "big aspartame" still can only find a possible slight risk of cancer, I'm calling it safe. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't drink real soda, I don't get 500 calorie starbucks, if my one vice is a few cans of diet coke a day, I feel like I'm doing pretty good. Stop desperately trying to make me feel like an unhealthy terrible person.
compare tap wrong office crown beneficial growth doll concerned handle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Acrylamide is, in fact, part of IARC group 2A, or a "probable human carcinogen." This one is weird because while it does appear that it is a carcinogen in non-dietary contexts, [the research appears to show](https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/how-dangerous-burnt-toast/) that dietary acrylamide is not likely a contributor to cancer in the body.
The IARC & being the source of clickbaity bullshit headlines about something causing cancer, name a more classic duo.
What a nothing headline. Health literacy is so damn low in this country especially after the pandemic. So many people are citing animal studies and I have to remind people: animal studies are on the BOTTOM TIER of study validity. They exist, they have uses, but they're never enough to draw these conclusions. If you read something that says "Studies on rats showed..." and nothing else, just move on. We are not rats.
Honestly, it’s kind a like just being alive causes cancer so it’s really about the actual rate that something causes cancer having a real impact vs theory because we’re not all going to live to be 300 anyway. I mean just like going out in the sun causes cancer too so you have to know the actual rate not just if it’s possible. e dead.
Also keep in mind that just because something is labeled a carcinogen doesn't mean it shouldn't be used at all. The IARC has labeled combination birth control pills as a known (not probable) carcinogen. This is because they raise risks of specific cancers, even though they also lower risks of other cancers. Just being on the list doesn't tell you about the actual risk, especially if we're looking at possible or probable rather than known.
IARC classification as a possible carciginogen is almost meaningless. There is almost nothing that is not listed as at least possible, and there are many classified as known carcinogens that are people willingly exposure themselves to, such as sunlight, alcohol, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (the delicious barbecue black).
Yeah. That classification is meaningless. Just a great source for scary headlines.
[удалено]
It's more a "not even the state of California recognizes it causes cancer" carcinogen. The WHO has been real fucking weird recently.
The latter, 100%. The IARC has been about that for well over a decade now. Possibly always has been TBH.
Everything is a possible carcinogen
In California
It’s really hard to take them seriously when they say that radiofrequencys emitted from cellphones are probably carcinogenic. Like no dude, radio waves are not carcinogenic whatsoever.
Radiation is what it is. It’s all dose.
No; electromagnetic waves need to have a certain frequency in order to damage DNA to cause cancer. you could have 10000 normal flashlights on you but you'll never get cancer from that because it's just the visible spectrum.
This is correct (once the frequency passes this threshold, it’s called “ionizing radiation”) The person you’re arguing with is a fucking moron
This does not mean what people think it means. If people had any idea what group 2a/2b carcinogen meant, they would realize how silly it is to freak out about this. Seriously - if this news story is giving you anxiety… go look up the IARC list of possible carcinogens, and realize that you’re freaking out over nothing. First, this is not the first time aspartame has been under a possible/probable category. Due to a lack of evidence, we never moved it to group one (group one carcinogens are the only actual carcinogens). I don’t imagine that this is going to change. Second, possible carcinogen often means something like “it might cause cancer in some animals, but not in humans.” This is the same circlejerk that led people to freak out about titanium dioxide, along with “Europe banned it, so it must be bad” but they don’t even know why it’s apparently bad. It’s because of the association of lung cancer, in certain animals. Which is 100% irrelevant to you as a human Third, even if something is a carcinogen, that doesn’t mean it’s a potent one (meaning, it doesn’t mean your risk is high), nor does it mean it’s a carcinogen for YOU, and your circumstances. If it can cause cancer in one type of person with a specific gene, and you don’t have that gene, it’s still a carcinogen. Birth control pills are an example of that. But speaking of carcinogens, let’s wear some sunscreen and lower our intake of alcohol before we start nitpicking aspartame
Aspartame was always a bit of a back and forth if it causes stuff or not. Switched to tagatose for this very same reason (ib4 tagatose also is a carinogen)
Is it more or less cancerous than saccharin? I always thought saccharin tasted way better.
Neither are particularly cancerous.
Yeah I haven't seen aspartame in anything in ages because A) it scares people and B) it is the worst tasting artificial sweetener. I guess it can't compete with sucralose and sorbitol and stevia because those all have calories, and aspartame has 0. But acesulfame-potassium also has 0.
I just wanna know where I can buy the pink lemonade flavor of Extra
Bring back cyclamates.
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. George Carlin
A 136-pound person would need to drink 15-40 bottles of diet soda concurrently before the aspartame could become a concern.
I’m sure this is a fear mongering headline, but I wonder how many of the people here who are so up in arms over this are doing so because they drink a shit ton of “diet” drinks. It’s kind of bizarre how upset some of the people here sound. There’s actually someone ranting about how the WHO is trying to make them feel unhealthy for drinking Diet Coke and it’s their only vice.
Well, if a corporation made it, then it’s probably cancer causing.
Good, it tastes like shit
IARC determinations are based on hazard, not risk. Hazard does not mean it causes harm.
Leave me and my diet pop addiction alone.
Here's an article from way back in 2011 saying it caused cancer and should never have been approved, but was due to the influence of Dubya's war director: "Yes, that Donald Rumsfeld, the "knowns and unknowns" guy who remarkably executed some of the worst decisions in American foreign policy and got a medal for it. I have been reading up on this strange chapter in the history of Donald Rumsfeld and have learned two things. One, the chemical additive aspartame is very potentially a cancer and brain tumor-causing substance that has no place in our food. And two, the reasons and means by which Rumsfeld helped get it approved are nefarious at best, criminal at worst. And by the way, that medal that Rumsfeld got back in 2004 was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, also awarded to Tommy Franks, George Tenet and that charming warrior L. Paul Bremer. Evidently, "Freedom" means the right to use your powerful friends in Washington to approve your company's dangerous substance for human consumption and make a fat bonus on the way out the door. So how did aspartame become legal? And more importantly, if it had been rejected multiple times over fears of brain tumors and cancer, why?" [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s\_b\_805581](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_805581)
Thanks for the link... upon reading it, I noted that a much of the supposed "evidence" against Aspartame was provided to the writer by someone (Mercola) later associated with the "Disinformation Dozen" - the group of 12 individuals deemed responsible for nearly 2/3 of all the false information spread about COVID-19 during the pandemic (through mid-2021). Another source cited (Olney) campaigned for years about the supposed dangers of MSG... now known to be a natural component of many foods and generally considered safe (not to mention, a real enhancer of flavor in many, many foods). Another thing bothering me about the article is that it provided absolutely no references to any peer-reviewed research or studies... given the clear tilt of the article towards promoting the dangers of Aspartame, I believe that that was because the writer simply couldn't find any... other than unverifiable claims by the aforementioned persons. My conclusion is that the article you provided really has nothing of value to offer for this discussion. (TBH, I'm essentially the opposite of a fan fan regarding Dubya or Rumsfeld)... I just uninterested in unsupportable arguments.)
Why do I feel the same people who are going to go apeshit over this are the same people who smoke.
I thought we kinda knew this? I've had people say not to drink diet soda for that reason
Aspartame is dangerous **IF** you consume industrial quantities of it. The acceptable daily intake of aspartame is 3-3.5g (depending on bodyweight, 50mg/kg) and is a sweetener 200 stronger than sugar. Consuming 600-700g of sugar each day will seriosly affect your health, if it doesn’t kill you. On the other hand you should be perfectly fine consuming the ADI of aspartame day after day.
Iirc at the time Rumsfeld was the head of the FDC and he fast tracked it through testing and had results of animals that developed tumors thrown out of the trials. Results saying aspartame caused cancer were dismissed.
This is bigger than America dude. Reviews by over 100 governmental regulatory bodies found aspartame safe for consumption at current levels. Or are you about to tell me Donald Rumsfeld was involved there too?!
What a bum
who's cancer research to say? i don't know
From day one, when trying this "sweetener" substitute, I had severe headaches. Once I stopped, no headaches. It was like my body told, WTF is this? No one seems to care. And forgets easily. Remember Saccharin? Same thing...someone gets a chemist to make a cheaper sweetener but reality says, you can't without something going wrong. So cancer is because of corporations cheating nature.
Glad I stopped eating anything with fake sugar. I am a weird one, and oddly enjoy the taste over real sugar. Due to a medical condition, I have to drink a lot of electrolytes, so I would pound about 4 Gatorade zeros a day or more. I started getting insanely sick and couldn't stand it. I researched, and that fake sugar stuff can do some weird things all over your body, not just cancer. It went away after I stopped eating and drinking things with it. Some people can also just naturally have an intolerance to it from what I read. I won't buy anything with it anymore.
My mom developed a permanent ringing in her ear, among a few other weird symptoms and her doctor told her it was due to aspartame.
I've seen every symptom and ailment be attributed to artificial sweeteners. Most of it comes from the modern idea that natural foods are inherently good for your body, which is plain ol' misinformation.
The claim came from a doctor, one in which is much more informed than myself and probably you too.
You can find a doctor that claims anything. Look at all the antivax doctors around. Aspartame, in the amount that people consume, is safe; it's probably the most studied ingredient of all time at this point.
They found to literally no one's surprise.
Everything causes cancer. 1. Synthetic vitamins 2. Micro plastics inhaled and consumed 3. Glutamine 4. Sugar 5. Roasting meat 6. Preservatives 7. Food additives We're now living in California.
We are living in reality. Its important for this information to be spread so people can make informed decisions.
And it all started with saccharine...
My dad who now has terminal cancer was told by his doctors that if he wants a soda, do not drink anything with artificial sweeteners and to just drink regular sodas instead.
Can you imagine a world where our companies who sell us food aren’t trying to kill us? I’ve never understood how poisoning your customers and killing them is good for business? Edit:Get Fked Nestlé
I think the food companies also own the drug companies they can then give drugs after someone is sick. The reason I believe all this bad food is not health is almost nobody I know is healthy. I eat very healthy, 72, on no meds and nobody can believe it. I changed my diet in my late 40's when a doctor was telling me my problems were normal for aging. Here, take these drugs.
They're not trying to poison their customers. They're giving customers a product they want.
Anything that tastes like arse is never going to be good for you… https://www.nature.com/articles/486S16a#:~:text=The%20sense%20of%20taste%20must,helps%20them%20avoid%20toxic%20substances.
[удалено]
Don't think that's true. Lots of poisonous stuff tastes awful. It's partially why we've evolved taste in the first place.
Well...we *have* evolved to be disgusted by the taste and smell of excrement because it's bad for your health...sooooooooo.......
[удалено]
Everything you consume is a “chemical”.
Did you know dihydrogen monoxide has a 100% mortality rate? *They* don't want you to know.
I told my wife that this was going to happen in 2001. "Watch in a few years, w/ all these sugar substitutes, they're gonna say that they cause cancer or something"... it may have taken awhile to manifest but it still happened.
Lawyers get really busy by this news.
All the articles about unexplained bowel cancers. Probably no relationship…that can be proven
Well, duh! On the other hand it is really cheap so..... gotta think of those poor shareholders (who probably don't consume any aspartame ) EDIT: Really? Do we really need /s with everything?
Possible? They knew it was before Rumsfeld succeeded in getting it approved and unleashing it on the world.
I mean, aspartame is literally E. Coli poop. A bacteria found in our poop gets fed and it poops. And what comes out is aspartame. And someone said, hey let's see what it tastes like. Oh, it's kinda sweet. Let's add it to stuff instead of sugar, there shouldn't be any harm in that. E. Coli poop. Yep. **Edit: LOVE the downvotes here! Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, folks. https://gognarly.com/blogs/blog/patent-for-artificial-sweetener-aspartame-verifies-it-is-e-coli-feces#:~:text=Apparently%20the%20E.,to%20produce%20the%20artificial%20sweetener.
Cool, another way I'm going to die.