Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 315 posts

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#201

Post by yawaworht1978 »

tomp wrote: post #185
Johnny555 wrote: post #136

I treat artificial sweeteners like I do mask wearing -- I'm not sure how much difference wearing a mask makes for my safety and safety of others, but I wear it anyway because it's a very minor inconvenience and it probably helps. I avoid artificial sweeteners because I'm not sure if they have any detrimental effects, but I avoid them anyway because it's a minor inconvenience, and whether they are actually harmful or…

Ideally you should be avoiding natural sweeteners as well.

I don't think either sweeteners are bad, but I agree, beware of marketing terms like natural, bio etc. The companies are in it for the money and well, heroin is kind of natural too.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#202

Post by xsmasher »

tofof wrote: post #98
MyHypatia wrote: post #87

One of the lowest effort healthy lifestyle changes you can make is to wean your body off of craving sweets. Artificial sweeteners still make you crave sweets. Replace sweetened drinks with unsweetened tea (there are hundreds of varieties, you will find something that you like). Replace desserts with your favorite fruit or berries. Your body, mind, and teeth will thank you.

Ah, yes, replace 'sweets' with 'fruits' which are about 50-75% sugar by non-water mass. Eg strawberries - 100 g is 7.7g of carbohydrates (4.9g sugar), 0.7g protein, 0.3g fat. 56% sugar. Or oranges - 165 g without membrane or peel is 20.7g carbs (14g sugar), 1.5g protein, 0.2g fat. 63% sugar. As opposed to, say, a snickers bar. 9.1g carbohydrates (7.6g sugar), 1.1g protein, 3.6g fat. 55% sugar. Or a kitkat. 27.1g carb…

Your numbers for the Snickers bar seem too small - a 44g candy bar has 11g fat, 20g sugar.

If you meant some smaller bar, then you are comparing a very small candy bar against 100g or 165g or fruit; not very fair.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#203

Post by throwaway98797 »

Semaphor wrote: post #149
vladvasiliu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue isn't just the pure carb content. 100g of strawberries is a lot of strawberries. 100 g of Snickers bars is... two bars. I can easily eat two and then crave another one right away. After 100 g of strawberries, I'm pretty much done for a while. Same with say, apples. I think one thing that is usually overlooked in these discussions is the "feeling" part of it, for lack of a better term. Some things ma…

While I don’t disagree with you in general, I disagree on strawberries. 100g of them is a very small amount and a snickers bar (or in my case, some artificially sweetened protein bar) is far more filling.

You can eat a pound of strawberries and feel full for an hour. Try that with a candy bar.

Volume and digestability is key to eating less.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#204

Post by yawaworht1978 »

lamontcg wrote: post #187
WalterBright wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have diet drinks ever been successful at getting people to lose weight?

No, they stimulate insulin release and make people hungrier. IF you could IN COMPLETE ISOLATION replace sugary drinks with sugar substitutes then it would lead to weight loss. The number of people who can actual accomplish that is probably very small. The majority of people, particularly those with actual weight issues, are going to wind up hungrier and gaining weight through consumption of other calories. They are n…

Everybody can test this with a quick test and see for themselves, there is no insulin spike. Diabetics wouldn't be able to drink diet coke without insulin shots if it were different.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#205

Post by throwaway98797 »

xyst wrote: post #89
kiba wrote: post #4

Note that it is in rodent. Aspartame hadn't been confirmed as a carcinogenic agent in humans. That said, I don't think it's a good idea to subject to ourselves to drinking diet soda as a daily habit. It costs money, may or may not interfere with your blood sugar and the health of your gut microbiomes. As a goal, I limit my intake of any sweet and/or artifically sweetened drinks. Instead of being a chronic diet coke d…

Same. The only times I drink sugary drinks are on the weekends. Otherwise it’s water for me. Unfortunately moderation is lost on most people.

It it isnt lost on people.

Many try and fail to moderate due to mental health issues.

For some substitution is the answer. For other strict elimination.

Different strokes for different folks.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#206

Post by sumeno »

slumdev wrote: post #198
computerphage wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Artificial sweeteners still make you crave sweets. How do you know that this is true?

Artificial sweeteners, from the time that they enter your mouth and encounter your taste buds, cause the release of insulin. This insulin lowers your blood sugar. Because artificial sweeteners provide only the sensation of sweetness and not the energy content of an actual sugar, your blood sugar falls low enough that your unconscious brain is compelled to eat. People who drink diet soda consistently eat more calories…

Studies have not shown any link between aspartame and insulin levels. Artificial sweeteners have shown an increase in blood sugar over long periods of time in mice, but not humans.

Studies haven't found a causal relationship between diet soda and weight gain.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-b...

https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/diet-sodas-and-weight-ga...

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#207

Post by nate_meurer »

ben_w wrote: post #159
RL_Quine wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frying.

I thought oil boiled at 300 °C, how do you get up to 390 °C?

You don't, at least not on purpose. At 390 C you're filling your kitchen with smoke, and if you're cooking on gas you probably already have a grease fire on your stove.

However, it is shockingly easy to get a pan this hot by accident, with no more than a few minutes of inattention. I've seen people burn the non-stick coating off their pans on a couple of occasions after getting distracted by the phone.

It's risky to use nonstick cookware the same way you use bare metal pans, by heating the pan up to searing temperature before adding oil and food. I tell people to treat nonstick as though the food is already in the pan before they turn the heat on: don't turn the heat up high enough to burn the food, and the coating will stay safe.

It's worth pointing out that there isn't really any good evidence that fumes from burning PTFE cause permanent damage. There have been very few cases of verifiable PTFE "fume fever", in spite of the fact that lots of people burn up their nonstick cookware, and lasting effects haven't been obvious as far as I know.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#208

Post by pengaru »

renewiltord wrote: post #190
pengaru wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is saying it's impossible to eat enough fruit to be fattening. We've arguably evolved to do exactly that, since fruits are seasonal crops with brief periods of availability before rotting and vanishing until next season. We binge when they're available (and love sweets accordingly), storing some energy for the coming period of scarcity. But it's true that intact fruits include soluble dietary fiber. The solubl…

Right. That makes sense and is what I am familiar with. Is it evidence-backed as a causative mechanism? I like the Insulin Index page. That seems like reasonable evidence.

> Is it evidence-backed as a causative mechanism?

My understanding of the role soluble fiber plays in fruit digestion comes entirely from talks by ucsf professor of pediatrics Robert Lustig. There's a bunch of his stuff on youtube, you may have heard of the famous one Sugar: The Bitter Truth. In some talks he goes more into the role of soluble fiber, but I don't recall which, and it's a bit of a rabbithole to go digging through again. Plus it's been years since I spelunked this particular hole, it's presumably even deeper now.

I'm sure if you do some digging you could find reliable info on the subject. It's not my impression that we're breaking new ground here, pretty sure dietary fiber's effects on digestion are at least partially understood scientifically at this point.

Unfortunately you'll still encounter a lot of folks fixating on "the physics" and calories in vs. calories out, which ignores the fact that your body is full of living organisms. The composition of your food largely determines how much of its calories get taken up by your body vs. your guests vs. simply pass through.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#209

Post by IAmGraydon »

tofof wrote: post #98
MyHypatia wrote: post #87

One of the lowest effort healthy lifestyle changes you can make is to wean your body off of craving sweets. Artificial sweeteners still make you crave sweets. Replace sweetened drinks with unsweetened tea (there are hundreds of varieties, you will find something that you like). Replace desserts with your favorite fruit or berries. Your body, mind, and teeth will thank you.

Ah, yes, replace 'sweets' with 'fruits' which are about 50-75% sugar by non-water mass. Eg strawberries - 100 g is 7.7g of carbohydrates (4.9g sugar), 0.7g protein, 0.3g fat. 56% sugar. Or oranges - 165 g without membrane or peel is 20.7g carbs (14g sugar), 1.5g protein, 0.2g fat. 63% sugar. As opposed to, say, a snickers bar. 9.1g carbohydrates (7.6g sugar), 1.1g protein, 3.6g fat. 55% sugar. Or a kitkat. 27.1g carb…

Gotta love the internet, where you can find people trying to convince themselves that a candy bar is healthier to eat than fruit by posting the nutritional contents of a Snickers bite sized mini. The confirmation bias is strong with this one.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#210

Post by jader201 »

tofof wrote: post #98
MyHypatia wrote: post #87

One of the lowest effort healthy lifestyle changes you can make is to wean your body off of craving sweets. Artificial sweeteners still make you crave sweets. Replace sweetened drinks with unsweetened tea (there are hundreds of varieties, you will find something that you like). Replace desserts with your favorite fruit or berries. Your body, mind, and teeth will thank you.

Ah, yes, replace 'sweets' with 'fruits' which are about 50-75% sugar by non-water mass. Eg strawberries - 100 g is 7.7g of carbohydrates (4.9g sugar), 0.7g protein, 0.3g fat. 56% sugar. Or oranges - 165 g without membrane or peel is 20.7g carbs (14g sugar), 1.5g protein, 0.2g fat. 63% sugar. As opposed to, say, a snickers bar. 9.1g carbohydrates (7.6g sugar), 1.1g protein, 3.6g fat. 55% sugar. Or a kitkat. 27.1g carb…

Hasn’t it been proven many times that fruits are healthy, period? Let alone comparing fruits to processed/refined sugars?

I never understand these claims of fruits being unhealthy — or an unhealthy substitute for processed/refined sugars — yet there are many sources stating that fruits are fine/healthy [1].

There’s more to the story than just comparing the amount of “sugar” from nutritional facts between fruits and candy.

Yes, juices aren’t great. But be clear that whole fruits and fruit juices are vastly different, and shouldn’t be thought of as equally unhealthy.

[1] https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2016/08/natural-...

Post reply on HN