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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

#441

Post by theshrike79 »

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…

My anecdata is that at one point Aspartame and/or Asesulfame K did something to my gut flora.

Now both or either one (can't say which) give me gas. And not funny gas but "this is a war crime" -gas.

Sugary drinks don't do this. Also this is how I discovered that Scandinavian Pepsi started replacing sugar partially with Aspartame. Took me a while to read the label and find out. I switched from Pepsi to Coke (still full sugar) and the issues went away.

Even though a substance is studied extensively, there might still be adverse effects that people don't attribute to it. I'm not afraid it would give me cancer but bioweapon levels of gas is something I can't live with. Sadly it's getting harder and harder to find drinks that don't have Aspartame in it...

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

#442

Post by tptacek »

elif wrote: post #440
selcuka wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is really a wholesome plant extract instead of something chemists have invented which leads me to have confidence in its (so far as we know) lack of carcinogenicity. This sounds like the naturalistic fallacy [1]. A naturally occurring substance is not automatically less carcinogen, or harmful, than a manufactured one. Coffee is associated with elevated risk for bladder cancer. Cycad trees are known to be highly…

I don't think it's a fallacy to conclude generally that consuming plants which coevolved with humans is safer than consuming chemicals which are completely exogenous to any stage of the human body's development. It would be a fallacy to suggest that one group or the other were unconditionally safer, but I find no dilemma in generalizing that the human body is more capable of processing plant-based substances. Just li…

Tobacco coevolved with humans. So did areca nuts. And bracken ferns.

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

#443

Post by alfiedotwtf »

colordrops wrote: post #381
kortex wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other big challenge is from a SAR (structure-activity relationship) point of view, it's completely benign looking from just about any way you look at it. It's two peptides, and a methanol (which yes, gets converted to formaldehyde, but so does fruit pectin). There's nothing zany about its structure, it's not particularly lipophilic, no receptor bindings of note, no spicy reactive groups, no alkylators, no interca…

You can get cancer from not getting enough sleep. There are plenty of innocuous substances that look fine chemically but disrupt sleep. It doesn't have to be directly mutagenic to cause cancer.

What? That's the first I've ever heard of this... dang

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

#444

Post by checkyoursudo »

AnomalousBean wrote: post #303
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.

Well, aspartame has been shown more recently and by studies not funded by the food industry to impair glucose tolerance in obese people. And soda cans are lined with plastic, so there's your PFAS intake.

Have you seen the maps that show where there is PFAS contamination in ground water and surface water? You would be doing reasonably well if soda cans were the primary source of your exposure to PFAS.

Also, here in Germany, I can get my aspartame in glass bottles, fortunately.

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

#445

Post by hgomersall »

astrange wrote: post #360
tjohns wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Monk Fruit has also been linked to cancer. Do you have a citation for that? Google search is telling me the exact opposite, that it seems to reduce cancer growth.

That's not a good reason to eat something either - reducing cancer growth typically means something is poisonous.

Or it's an immunomodulator in some sense.

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

#446

Post by erfgh »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #295
grecy wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

You're seeing half the picture. Cancer is, in the large majority of cases, a preventable disease. It is caused mainly by environmental factors, i.e. the modern way of a sedentary obese lifestyle.

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

#447

Post by boxed »

xpe wrote: post #388
headwayoldest wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're telling me there's a chance? Warnings like these quickly hit the Prop 65 problem - the notices are so ubiquitous you go blind to them.

These notices are ineffective to say the least. Saying “everything causes cancer” is pointless because it ignores the key questions of “how often?” and “with what severity?”

Or maybe they are extremely effective, because the purpose is for the companies who sell REAL cancer inducing chemicals to muddy the waters so they can keep doing business.

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

#448

Post by tech2 »

antod wrote: post #414
xpe wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the name of sanity, let’s all avoid “biweekly” and “bimonthly”. Just say twice a X to be clear. Pretty funny how the dictionary claims to be largely neutral by only reflecting the cultural ambiguity. I want an f-ing opinionated dictionary that says: avoid this ambiguous word!

If you mix the definitions, biweekly and bimonthly can even be the same timeframe!

Or, since we have a word already, we could use that... Fortnightly. Biweekly needs to mean, specifically, twice a week.

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

#449

Post by Natsu »

elif wrote: post #440
selcuka wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is really a wholesome plant extract instead of something chemists have invented which leads me to have confidence in its (so far as we know) lack of carcinogenicity. This sounds like the naturalistic fallacy [1]. A naturally occurring substance is not automatically less carcinogen, or harmful, than a manufactured one. Coffee is associated with elevated risk for bladder cancer. Cycad trees are known to be highly…

I don't think it's a fallacy to conclude generally that consuming plants which coevolved with humans is safer than consuming chemicals which are completely exogenous to any stage of the human body's development. It would be a fallacy to suggest that one group or the other were unconditionally safer, but I find no dilemma in generalizing that the human body is more capable of processing plant-based substances. Just li…

I believe that more when humans have had a long history of consuming the thing without noticeable problems. And even then, sometimes traditional ways of preparing it turn out to be rather important:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

It makes me wonder if some of the things like, e.g. the supposed success of the Mediterranean diet, are due to bits of food culture like this that we've lost or never fully understood.

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

#450

Post by logicchains »

gnulinux wrote: post #4
lkuty wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got to stay actively informed to be eating good stuff way sooner than the official position of the government about various foods. There are so much bad stuff in the typical supermarket. One way is reading the "right" books.

How can a layman determine the right book? Anti-vax kooks also think they're reading the right sources.

You mean papers like https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v... , which show being "up to date" with covid vaccinations actually increases one's chance of getting covid, are not the right sources?
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