Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation • Hacker News Board

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#251

Post by Gigachad » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #53

Gigachad wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we have introduced so many new chemicals recently and have seen so many unexplained changes to health. Its virtually impossible to work out which thing did what. I'm not going to stress over aspartame though. Plastics, PFOA, PTFE, processed meats, and air pollution are way above on my concern scale. If I was concerned about cancer from aspartame, I would never touch any form of alcohol again.

O? What’s alcohol got to do with aspartame?

Its that there are so many thing we _know_ cause cancer in high rates that we still consume. So I wouldn't waste mental energy on something that maybe might cause it before cutting out everything we know causes it first.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#252

Post by vlod » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

gscott wrote: post #246

zosima wrote: post #107

From the abstract this study does not bear any resemblance to the headline and makes very little sense to me. They reevaluated tumors from a 15 year old study in rodents, to prove that the original work was correct and that there wasn't any traces of mycoplasma. And so, I presume, they argue that the cancers were caused by aspartame. But that in itself does not prove whether or not the original study was flawed, and…

Mice tend to be so inbred they all die of cancer. They should redo the study on a different animal that has less incidence of cancer normally... like Rabbits.

Isn't a control group used to negate this?

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#253

Post by nate_meurer » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

ruined wrote: post #236

nate_meurer wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

there are many pet horror stories of bird deaths from PTFE pans, typically from accidents, but occasionally from normal use. one may assume that it happens quite often without a canary in the kitchen so to speak, and thus goes unnoticed. also, damaging the coating is known to lower the temperature at which PTFE will pyrolize. anecdotally i don’t think i’ve seen a single teflon pan in anyone’s home that didn’t have so…

The bird thing has attained mythological status, but I'm not convinced. The story appears to have been popularized by the 2003 "Canaries in the Kitchen" article from the Environmental Working Group. It should be noted that every one of the citations in this article is an anecdotal story. Nowhere do they cite any research showing that sub-pyrolytic heating of PTFE can kill birds in realistic environments.

One problem with the anecdata here is that birds can be killed by all kinds of other fumes and smoke, including ordinary cooking fumes, which makes it impossible to isolate the variables in a non-laboratory setting. Shit, you can kill birds with just the natural gas from your stove, or with the vaporized mineral oil burned off a new toaster.

As for burning up a nonstick pan, sure, I don't think anyone doubts that's lethal to birds. But I don't believe birds are harmed by nonstick cookware under normal conditions. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.

> damaging the coating is known to lower the temperature at which PTFE will pyrolize

Overheating can definitely impair the coating's adhesion to the cooking surface, which makes it more vulnerable to flaking in the future, but the breakdown temperatures of the coating system components aren't changed. They are what they are.

I have many well-used nonstick pans, some nearly a decade old, and on the inside they're flawless like the day I bought them. Except the one I gouged with an immersion blender. I use silicone, nylon, and wood utensils, and I don't overheat them.

> it would be very hard to verify or test for that specific cause.

It's not that hard to get good retrospective data. There are many thousands of workers who have spent years working in the fluorinated chemical industry, and as far as I know there's no evidence of higher cancer rates among that population.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#254

Post by lovemenot » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

vlod wrote: post #252

gscott wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mice tend to be so inbred they all die of cancer. They should redo the study on a different animal that has less incidence of cancer normally... like Rabbits.

Isn't a control group used to negate this?

Assuming both your parent and your comment are correct (and no other controls), then the experiment tells us the effects of the substance on populations that are disproportionately predisposed to cancer. Surely, not very infourmative in a cancer study.

Note, I don't know whether these assumptions actually hold. Just taking it on its face.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#255

Post by tptacek » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 11:35 PM UTC

theon144 wrote: post #250

Semaphor wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aspartame seems to be particularly popular in the USA (diet sodas), and less popular the further away you go. At least in Germany, it’s very similar. Most diet sodas here are aspartame sweetened.

Right, but how popular is diet soda? Anecdotally, there's huge differences between soda consumption in USA and Europe.

If that were true, it makes the epidemiological case for an aspartame link clearer, because you'd simply be able to compare cancer incidence between countries by aspartame consumption and see the evidence. It's the most studied additive in the history of the food industry, and that link has not been found.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#256

Post by lovemenot » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 11:39 PM UTC

eurasiantiger wrote: post #139

dls2016 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is what a lot of “food science” is these days.

Not to mention all the effort that goes into studying how different food constituents affect human consciousness and behavior, which results in products that are habit-forming and increase impulsive buying. I’ve often wondered how many secondary impulse buys are made because someone makes an extra trip to the store to satisfy their primary craving for tobacco, coffee, energy drinks or just sugar.

In retailing those are known as magnet products and are more promoted within the store.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#257

Post by jacobmischka » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #105

tofof wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

100g of strawberries really isn't that much strawberries. I eat 400g of berries each morning with breakfast and would gladly eat more if calories didn't exist and that already weren't too much fruit at once.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#258

Post by jyounker » Sun, Aug 15, 2021, 12:04 AM UTC

azdle wrote: post #216

dls2016 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make you want to keep on eating Junk food recipes are a/b tested and statistically evaluated just like in ad tech.

To be fair, so is all of our fruit these days. Just through a couple thousand years of selective breeding.

Our fruit is tested for many things other than simply, "can we get you to eat more of this." One of the most common being, "does is stay shiny while we ship it," as opposed to, "does this taste good?"

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#259

Post by deeviant » Sun, Aug 15, 2021, 12:07 AM UTC

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…

Fruits have fiber which moderate the glucose release, so they are generally a healthy alternative to sugar. A simple sugar content comparison does not tell the full story.

Fruit juices or any sort of fruit product where the fiber is removed, however, is just as bad as sugar.

Re: Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

#260

Post by manachar » Sun, Aug 15, 2021, 12:13 AM UTC

azdle wrote: post #216

dls2016 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make you want to keep on eating Junk food recipes are a/b tested and statistically evaluated just like in ad tech.

To be fair, so is all of our fruit these days. Just through a couple thousand years of selective breeding.

At this point, most of our fruit is much more recent vintage than a few thousand years.

Strawberries, as we know them, only came into being in the 18th century.

Also, fruit is being actively manipulated to fit consumer's tastes and producer's profitability. The Honeycrisp apple is one of the biggest recent success stories.