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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

#311

Post by 01100011 »

tracker1 wrote: post #172
malnourish wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitrate-free (or, "no nitrates added") bacon still contains nitrates. About the same amount as standard bacon, and in some cases, more. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos...

Better stop eating celery or anything containing it if you're really concerned about nitrates.

Green leafy vegetables contain a hell of a lot more nitrate than cured meat does.

Sure, there's less protein in vegetables, so less chance of nitrosamines forming, unless you're eating a complete meal, in which case... figure it out.

Also, vegetables contain anti-oxidants and things which offset some of the nitrates, but this just seems like a reason to eat some vegetables with your cured meats.

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

#312

Post by rnk »

uejfiweun wrote: post #305
hunson_abadeer wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is bound to get ya. As we get better at managing other diseases and risks, cancer - which is seldom truly curable - gets a larger share. The progress on other fronts really is staggering. Forget pre-industrial times: global child mortality is half of what it was in the 1980s. The same is true for vehicle deaths in the US.

Well, I'd also say that as society continues to get more complex we're exposed to more and more previously-unknown substances, chemicals, and compounds. Kids used to play in the DDT mist sprayed by trucks. How many DDTs are there right now that we don't know about? I'd guess a whole lot.

Ultra and highly processed foods are terrible for us. Consuming so much more sugar than in nature seems to be bad for glucose intolerance. I love bacon but I try to resist ever having any. Don't buy meats with nitrates.

We do have way more cancers, a big reason we know about is our food choices. We don't even know the impact of hard things to measure yet, like the impact of all these things on our gut biology. It's not a new discovery that eating a lot of sugary foods leads to greatly increased diabetes, and now we are learning more about how artificial sugars have their own impact. So basically, it's increasingly obvious that artificial sugar drinks are not good for you too, maybe in different ways than "natural sugars".

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

#313

Post by rnk »

DanBC wrote: post #250
tptacek wrote: post #233

The challenge you have here is that aspartame isn't just one of most widely studied substances in the food chain, but that it's also one of the most widely and vigorously consumed. People drink a lot of diet soda; a lot of people drink it to the exclusion of all other liquids. So it's going to be tricky to get the epidemiology to match up with the claim here: if aspartame is meaningfully carcinogenic (meaning: more t…

IARC will release it when it's ready, and it'll be here: https://www.iarc.who.int/cards_page/iarc-publications/ (probably here: https://monographs.iarc.who.int/ ) Important to remember that IARC just talks about the quality of the evidence, and not the strength of the effect. If they know that something does cause cancer it'll go into group 1, even if it only causes an additional 1 case of cancer per 100,000 populati…

So we need other dimensions. Thanks for that article you wrote, made it easy to understand 2b etc.

We need something like the danger of getting cancer from it. Tobacco doesn't make everyone get some kind of cancer, but it hugely increases the risk. What are other cancer dangers in terms of some measurable risk, compare that to this new risk.

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

#314

Post by indymike »

grecy wrote: post #291
wkat4242 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I drink a lot of Pepsi Max. I just love it especially in summer. I've drank it for decades. Would this make me worry a lot? Not really. I have worse health risks like being overweight, pfas etc. The "if it was that dangerous we'd see the effect" is a pretty decent argument IMO considering it's been heavily used for almost 40 years.

Cancer rates are rising rapidly. Soon 50% of people will have cancer. I’d say something is going on

From NIH's National Cancer institute:

* Approximately 39.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2015–2017 data). This is no where near 50% of people "having cancer".

* The rate of new cases of cancer (cancer incidence) is 442.4 per 100,000 men and women per year (based on 2013–2017 cases). (.442%)

* The cancer death rate (cancer mortality) is 158.3 per 100,000 men and women per year (based on 2013–2017 deaths) (.158%).

Regardless, these numbers are very scary.

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

#316

Post by tacocataco »

codr7 wrote: post #60
LegitShady wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffeic acid may be a carcinogen but I do not think any decent studies have found a connection between drinking coffee and cancer, and in fact some have found the opposite.

A bigger problem is likely caffeine inhibiting uptake of vitamin D and disrupting sleep.

Plus stress and high cortisol levels from burnout.

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

#317

Post by hedora »

I wish they’d just force all products with a non nutritional sweetener to have a big cigarette-style warning label on the front of the packaging.

I still haven’t gotten over the rise of “organic” artificial sweeteners. That must have involved some N-th level regulatory capture with the product labeling regulators.

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

#318

Post by indymike »

nerdponx wrote: post #23
sgbeal wrote: post #2

The weird thing about this is that i stopped drinking Diet Coke, specifically because of aspartame, after reading this same thing in 1996 or perhaps early 97. WHO's decision to wait nearly 30 years before backing that just makes them look impotent.

As a kid in the 90s I remember seeing health warnings on things like artificially-sweetened chewing gum. I have a very specific memory of asking my dad about it at the local deli.

That was saccharin. I remember the label on my granddad's Tab cola.

It caused bladder cancer in lab animals at high doses, and it was later found that the metabolic pathway that caused the cancer did not exist in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin

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

#319

Post by nostrademons »

tptacek wrote: post #233

The challenge you have here is that aspartame isn't just one of most widely studied substances in the food chain, but that it's also one of the most widely and vigorously consumed. People drink a lot of diet soda; a lot of people drink it to the exclusion of all other liquids. So it's going to be tricky to get the epidemiology to match up with the claim here: if aspartame is meaningfully carcinogenic (meaning: more t…

I remember reading back in the early 90s a number of studies that showed elevated risks of certain brain cancers from aspartame. The evidence was pretty strong - it wasn't conclusive (hence the "possibly" qualifier in this label), but it was enough that I was personally convinced. The link between aspartame and cancer is much stronger than the one between cyclamate (banned in 1970 but legal in the EU) and cancer. My parents never let me chug Sweet'n'Low packets the same way I chugged sugar packets because of it.

IIRC, the only reason aspartame was not banned was because saccharine had just been, and if you banned aspartame there would have been literally no artificial sweeteners on the market. That is no longer the case, with sucralose (Splenda), acesulfame potassium (Coke Zero and other diet sodas), Stevia, sorbitol, and several other sweeteners now on the market.

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

#320

Post by cheekibreeki2 »

grecy wrote: post #291
wkat4242 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I drink a lot of Pepsi Max. I just love it especially in summer. I've drank it for decades. Would this make me worry a lot? Not really. I have worse health risks like being overweight, pfas etc. The "if it was that dangerous we'd see the effect" is a pretty decent argument IMO considering it's been heavily used for almost 40 years.

Cancer rates are rising rapidly. Soon 50% of people will have cancer. I’d say something is going on

And if sweeteners were at play (sucralose also has scary new research) I couldn't see why the food industry, the paid off gov regulators and insurance companies would cover this up and short the involved companies.
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