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Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

theguardian.com

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Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#131

Post by bamfly »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #104
cheekibreeki2 wrote: post #86

Just returned from Ireland and every 'regular' soda was full of disgusting artificial sweeteners. In the usa these would be labeled diet. And of course sucralose was pretty common and we're now finding scary things about its harm to the human body. Sugar really isn't that bad..

Sugar in the amount put in soda absolutely is terrible for you. The problem definitely is with people drinking too much soda, period, but replacing your average Americans's diet soda consumption with sugar soda consumption works out to an average increase of ~73 calories/person/day. Of course, most of that consumption is being done by the subset of the population currently primarily drinking diet soda, which multiple…

It's really weird that we've normalized consuming huge amounts of what's effectively an exceptionally-sweet dessert drink with most non-fancy restaurant or fast-food meals. Shit made a lot more sense when standard serving size was like 7oz and free soda refills weren't a common thing (so: the 1950s or whenever, for the former, and before some time in the '90s, for the latter). 20+oz glasses (and 32oz "medium-size" to-go cups—JFC) and free refills pushed by servers are just nuts. That's so very much sugar.

Imagine consuming a pile of 37 Pixy Stix (sugar equivalent of 24oz of Coca Cola) to accompany a hamburger. WTF. That's plainly nasty as hell, and anyone doing that in public would rightly feel ashamed. And that's not even a large serving of soda, by modern standards.

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#132

Post by jaclaz »

carimura wrote: post #118
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diet Coke is undoubtedly America's biggest source of aspartame. Diet Coke has massive market share.

I had a computer science professor who drank so much diet coke that she had a wall of empty cans stacked up from floor to ceiling in her office. Even then, 20 years ago now, I was so grossed out with that level of artificial intake I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. But that wouldn't have helped my grade.

Not much diet coke, but (JFYI) ...

https://uranus.chrysocome.net/coke.htm

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#133

Post by OkayPhysicist »

taeric wrote: post #122
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar in the amount put in soda absolutely is terrible for you. The problem definitely is with people drinking too much soda, period, but replacing your average Americans's diet soda consumption with sugar soda consumption works out to an average increase of ~73 calories/person/day. Of course, most of that consumption is being done by the subset of the population currently primarily drinking diet soda, which multiple…

73 calories actually sounds misleadingly low? How is that calculated? I think this is what you are correcting in the rest of the post? In that a single soda is typically double that. And many folks drink more than a single soda. Considerably more.

The average American consumes 38.87 gallons of soda year. 43% of Coke sales are Diet, I extrapolated that across the market, since Coke has a pretty dominant market share anyway. That's 16.7 gallons of diet soda per American, or 178 cans of soda. Multiply that by 150 calories/can, divide by 365, you get the 73 calories.

As I mentioned before, that's a side effect of averaging across all Americans, a fraction of who don't drink soda, and a (much larger, in both senses of the word) who drink sugared soda. The population that those calories would realistically be distributed over, the diet soda drinkers, is somewhere between 20% and 40% of the population, hence the "multiply by 2-5".

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#135

Post by kushan2020 »

biomcgary wrote: post #97
cheekibreeki2 wrote: post #86

Just returned from Ireland and every 'regular' soda was full of disgusting artificial sweeteners. In the usa these would be labeled diet. And of course sucralose was pretty common and we're now finding scary things about its harm to the human body. Sugar really isn't that bad..

As a biologist, I can tell you that sugar really is bad. All sorts of nasty effects (e.g., look at the RAGE gene and pathway). Of course, that doesn't mean artificial sweeteners are a good alternative. Limiting added sweeteners of any kind is a good idea, just hard to follow.

You are making it sound like alcohol - where the warning is no amount of alcohol is safe.

Sugar is a naturally occurring substance and is totally safe for consumption. However, purified added sugar is bad for you because in nature you cannot find a fruit that contains that many sugars per gram.

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#136

Post by aio2 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #81

It's always surprising to me how quick we are to go from discovering a chemical to mass-producing it. We're only just figuring out all of the negative externalities of things like PFAS, and they're in absolutely everything (packaging, clothes, pizza box linings, food cans, cookware...)

Yes, "We've" figured out the dangers of PFAS just now, but when companies started producing them back over 50 years ago, company 3M knew it (to say the least) wasn't good.

I'm pretty sure the scientists who dealt with these chemicals even warned against using it, but some higher ups still let it pass

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#137

Post by HarfShnarfGobb »

dimitar wrote: post #98

This is awful reporting. Aspartame has been studied for more than 40 years and no regulatory body in any country has found it to be cancerogenic; it is a risky substance for people with a rare desease called Phenylketonuria. So, the reader will be under the impression that it will cause cancer, which is pretty dubious, all while obesity for which sugary drinks are partially responsible is a very real cancer risk.

> So, the reader will be under the impression that it will cause cancer, which is pretty dubious, all while obesity for which sugary drinks are partially responsible is a very real cancer risk.

Saying it's "partially responsible" in essence is ridiculous, though, when it's also a critical nutrient we eat in virtually every food. Aspartame is not. It's the sheer volume of sugar ingested that's the issue.

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#138

Post by marcosdumay »

dimitar wrote: post #98

This is awful reporting. Aspartame has been studied for more than 40 years and no regulatory body in any country has found it to be cancerogenic; it is a risky substance for people with a rare desease called Phenylketonuria. So, the reader will be under the impression that it will cause cancer, which is pretty dubious, all while obesity for which sugary drinks are partially responsible is a very real cancer risk.

AFAIK, most lists of "possible carcinogenic" are just lists of things people want to cause cancer but the evidence disagrees.

There's something to say about lists where people put substances we don't know a lot, to call attention for studying more. But I haven't actually seen one of those, it's always lists of substances people study a lot, and publication bias set them marginally into statistical relevancy.

Re: Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports

#140

Post by zelos »

mjburgess wrote: post #120
sodathrowaway wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, is it good or neutral for you? I've always felt like these diet drinks were just marketing to make you think everything was fine, feel free to drink as many as you want. I've worked with a few people that would go through 4-6 Coke Zeros every day. In no world can I imagine that that wouldn't have negative long term effects on a human -- all things in moderation, right? Personally, I'll drink a Mexican Coke with…

> In no world can I imagine that that wouldn't have negative long term effects on a human -- all things in moderation, right? Why on earth would you think that? It's carbonated water with a tiny amount of food dye, sweeter and caffeine. The latter of which, iirc, has generally positive effects.

There seems to be some suggestion that the sweetness triggers digestive system changes that could be harmful: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772345/

It’s very vague though

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