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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

#451

Post by dcomp »

xpe wrote: post #390
colordrops wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Common writing, even from well-regarded sources, is often unnecessarily vague wrt statistics. Claim: we would benefit by building a culture where basic probability ranges are expected and used. Idea: Serious publications could: A. Set basic guidelines for talking about probability estimates; something akin to what you see in government or business intelligence publications. For example, maps terms to ranges: “highly…

I thought there was already common terminology for probability of side effects [0]

Very common = greater than 1 in 10

Common = 1 in 100 to 1 in 10

Uncommon [formerly 'less commonly' in BNF publications] = 1 in 1000 to 1 in 100

Rare = 1 in 10 000 to 1 in 1000

Very rare = less than 1 in 10 000

Frequency not known = frequency is not defined by product literature or the side-effect has been reported from post-marketing surveillance data

[0] https://bnf.nice.org.uk/medicines-guidance/adverse-reactions...

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

#452

Post by valval »

copperx wrote: post #329
nostrademons wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sucralose (Splenda) has been linked to cancer quite convincingly last week. It's the only artificial sweetener that I used, and now there are no options except sugar alcohols. Monk Fruit has also been linked to cancer.

Why use artificial sweeteners in the first place? Honey is a great sweetener.

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

#453

Post by happymellon »

elif wrote: post #432
XorNot wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cocaine is a natural plant extract as well.

Actually he was recommending stevia to chew with coca leaves at the time. As I said, this was high altitude climbing in Peru where that is a cultural norm.

It's also the cultural norm in Hollywood.

Doesn't make it a good idea.

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

#454

Post by jiggywiggy »

Frost1x wrote: post #392
nostrademons wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to see sugar linked to cancer too. Alcohol already has been (with a much stronger link than aspartame).

Sugar being a readily metabolized energy source is almost undoubtedly a cancer source because increase in energy results in increase in cellular production one way or another, which leads to higher risk of mutated cancerous cells, period. Hence the link of obesity to cancer as well. The fact is that anything that increases the amount of you or the rate of you over time over the bare minimum needed for survival is an…

Diet drink consumption gone up, but doesnt seem to have made a dent in the obesity crisis.

Your point is only valid if it actually lowers sugar and other carbs intake. Which isn't the case for most people.

Next to that. With diet drinks people drink more since they feel like they can get a way with, some do with sugar variants as well, but seems like more people binge drink diet versions which could lead to higher exposure relatively.

The has been processing sugar for millennia, these chemicals are pretty new.

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

#455

Post by valval »

Frost1x wrote: post #392
nostrademons wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to see sugar linked to cancer too. Alcohol already has been (with a much stronger link than aspartame).

Sugar being a readily metabolized energy source is almost undoubtedly a cancer source because increase in energy results in increase in cellular production one way or another, which leads to higher risk of mutated cancerous cells, period. Hence the link of obesity to cancer as well. The fact is that anything that increases the amount of you or the rate of you over time over the bare minimum needed for survival is an…

Eating fruit and honey alone for anything “sweet” has worked great for me. Never get any cravings for anything else. It seems to me like these things truly are the carb sources we are “meant” to eat.

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

#456

Post by tomcam »

freshpots wrote: post #434
tomcam wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was low-quality humor. I figured the midi-chlorian reference gave it away, due to the high density of Star Wars fandom on this site. Sorry to trigger you. I added a joke indicator, and I hope your blood pressure will decrease. https://www.starwars.com/news/so-what-the-heck-are-midi-chlo...

It was obvious. Don't waste everyone's time talking way outside your level of expertise and then trying to make jokes when you're called out. It's juvenile.

Man it seems like you’re having a rough week. I hope you can enjoy your weekend! Cheers.

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

#457

Post by guerby »

creamyhorror wrote: post #401
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…

Might be this paper from Mar 2022, which got me to reduce my aspartame & acesulfame-K consumption when it came out last year: Artificial sweeteners and cancer risk: Results from the NutriNet-Santé population-based cohort study https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... n=102,865 adults were followed for a median 7.8 years, using 24-hour dietary records collected via web including some photographi…

If you look at page 15 of the S1 annex of the study

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003950.s002

Figure C: Cancer risk associated with the combined exposure to artificial sweetener and sugar intakes, NutriNet -Santé cohort, France, 2009-2021 (n=102,865)

For me the two interesting cases are:

"Sugar above nutritional guidelines" and "no artificial sweetener" => 1.09 (0.97 - 1.22) P=0.158

"Sugar below nutritional guidelines" and "high artificial sweetener" => 1.12 (1.00-1.25) P=0.046

nutritional guidelines are 10% max energy intake from sugar, about 50 gram of sugar per day for a 2000 kCal diet (62 gram for 2500 kCal for adult male).

A 330ml coke can has 35g of sugar, so we're talking one or two max per day to keep below the guideline.

If I read this correctly if one makes the switch from sugary beverage to artificial sweetened ones and it lowers your total sugar intake below the dieteray guidelines then your relative risk factor doesn't change (at about +10% vs low sugar and no articial sweetener).

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

#458

Post by abhaynayar »

glonq wrote: post #156

A few of the conspiracy nutters that I know firmly beleive that "Big Aspartame" is responsible for suppressing information about its dire negative effects. But when you consider: - how many doctors and scientists are personally/professionally motivated to research this - how many gov't organizations are concerned about this - how many industry competitors would benefit from discovering this - how many lawyers would g…

It's kind of similar to finding a trivial security bug in a critical piece of software after a decade of it being introduced into code. You would think it would not be possible because the software is being used everywhere for extremely important stuff, and so many highly-skilled security researchers would have already looked out for it due to incentives. But there are many examples of this happening. I have heard of many instances where a critical security bug was already reported many years ago, but no one bothered to look at it and fix it until someone else rediscovered it.

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

#459

Post by newaccount74 »

xormapmap wrote: post #209
IshKebab wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's like saying "sandwiches are just ground up wheat, plus a ton of delicious filling to make them taste good"

Most bread you get from a supermarket (even outside the US) is highly processed garbage, as are many common sandwich fillings (mayo, salami, margarine). The typical sandwich is probably up there with many of the other least healthy things you could eat, so yeah, ground up wheat with filling to make it taste good is probably fair.

I'm so tired of people using "processed" as a negative attribute.

First of all, it implies that industrial processes are less healthy than manual processes. But in my opinion, it makes no difference if sodium nitrate is added in a meat processing plant, or by an artisanal butcher on locally sourced hand made organic bacon. The health effects are going to be the same.

Secondly, it implies that there is something bad about "processing" in general, whatever is meant by that. But I think that most people would agree that pasteurizing milk is a good thing for our health, even though it is a form of "processing".

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

#460

Post by saiya-jin »

penneallagricia wrote: post #223
LarsAlereon wrote: post #8

To clarify, this doesn't mean aspartame in food is harmful, it means that in certain circumstances it's possible for the chemical to cause cancer. For example, workers exposed to extremely high levels during manufacturing, or breakdown products formed during improper storage.

What about the mass of people who in order to drink liters of soda every day ingest large amounts of aspartame? Is it about "circumstances" or concentration?

It literally doesn't matter if its causing cancer or not, that's outright a very bad decision to do so, you will 100% fuck up your health long term. It doesn't matter what type or brand of given soda, if it has calories its bad for you. What else do you need to not do so?

Nobody apart from maybe sales folks ever claimed these things are safe to drink in such amounts regularly. Just like nobody ever claimed that consuming say 100g of pure salt every day would be OK, yet you can buy endless amounts of 1kg bags if you want.

Do folks really need some government agency to come to them personally to tell them how to live their lives, babysit every single decision they make, steer them away from their addictions on sugar etc? That's not how game of life works.

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