Playing baseball is associated with oral cancer. But I would guess it's probably the chewing tobacco and not the baseball.
Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
21–30 of 49 posts
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#22The obvious objection to almost every study of this sort is that associated with doesn't imply causality, and it could be that some third factor like "propensity to consume highly-processed food products" is responsible for the observed correlation. But from the abstract: > Associations between sweeteners and cancer incidence were assessed by Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, sex, education, physical…
> some third factor like "propensity to consume highly-processed food products" is responsible
Even with the significant controls in the study, I still completely believe this is the case. People who avoid artificial sweeteners likely make many other health-promoting decisions (healthy user bias) that are far too granular to control against using simple factors like weight and smoking status. The HR is only 1.15. Are you really confident enough in the controls to see this as a real association?
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
They link directly to the study >Compared to non-consumers, higher consumers of total artificial sweeteners (i.e., above the median exposure in consumers) had higher risk of overall cancer (n = 3,358 cases, hazard ratio [HR] = 1.13 [95% CI 1.03 to 1.25], P-trend = 0.002). In particular, aspartame (HR = 1.15 [95% CI 1.03 to 1.28], P = 0.002) and acesulfame-K (HR = 1.13 [95% CI 1.01 to 1.26], P = 0.007) were associated…
As far as breast cancer is concerned – they said that there is an overrepresentation of women in the study: > Debras highlights that 78.5% of the participants included in the analysis were women
That doesn't necessarily mean that breast cancer can be dismissed. It seems that there are increased numbers of women in both the control and artificial sweetner/cancer populations.
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes the first three "more artificial", in your view?
They are made in a lab and not from an actual fruit or plant?
well considering there's a million different plants or fruits that will kill you quite easily, im not exactly sure that is something worth caring about.
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#25The obvious objection to almost every study of this sort is that associated with doesn't imply causality, and it could be that some third factor like "propensity to consume highly-processed food products" is responsible for the observed correlation. But from the abstract: > Associations between sweeteners and cancer incidence were assessed by Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, sex, education, physical…
There is research showing artificial sweeteners can spike insulin, so even if not the cause but coincidentally associated with highly processed foods which are more closely linked to the cause of cancer itself, by triggering insulin spikes artificial sweeteners would feed/enlarge cancer cells.
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#26Worth noting the artificial sweetners found to have correllations with increased risk of cancer are aspartame and acesulfame-K.
Sucralose, stevia, and others were not found to have an increased risk, but they were only present in a much smaller segment of the population (i.e. 10% used Sucralose) so they may not have enough representation to be ruled out.
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#27The obvious objection to almost every study of this sort is that associated with doesn't imply causality, and it could be that some third factor like "propensity to consume highly-processed food products" is responsible for the observed correlation. But from the abstract: > Associations between sweeteners and cancer incidence were assessed by Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, sex, education, physical…
"how effective are these sorts of statistical methods?"
Exactly they are so many variables to take into account that each population subset is becoming very small. I would love to have the insight of a stats nerd on the study.
Btw if you look at the raw data, they are for instance less cases per subject in the high consumer than in the low or none consumer (table 2), but they get a higher hazard ration, meaning that other correction were taken into account. It is very difficult to interpret such results.
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#28Any reason L-glucose could cause cancer compared to R-glucose? I know it's incredibly hard to isolate and distill L-glucose, but to me that seems like the ideal artificial sweetener because it's chemically the same as natural glucose, just with a different geometry that prevents it from being metabolized.
Allulose seems to work fine for many, and is widely available.
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#29While I choose a very different path (sysadmin) I came from a II generations of doctors, and I hear about stomach cancers increased by both artificial sweeteners and junk food for decades, the refrain was: until few years after WWII stomach cancers were common, then they almost disappear than came back when artificial sweeteners and junk food came to life.
Long story short: it's nothing new, only for many years industry needs and desire have prevailed (read also the equally recent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30793352 so to speak) now something start to pops up.
The issue I suspect it's not only Bad Capitalism©®™ but also a practical issue: we (humans) are many and natural sugar production while far expanded since the colonial era is still far from sufficient to satisfy the demand. Similarly for many junk/ultraprocessed foods: in part they exists to satisfy food industry interest, in part because we can't satisfy the demand of quality products...
Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk
#30The study appears to focus on aspartame, sucrolose, and acesulfame-k, which to my mind (which is admittedly uneducated in this domain) seem heavily artificial, and the findings are not surprising. What about plant-based sweeteners such as stevia, monkfruit etc, or sugar alcohols?
stevia, monkfruit etc are not "artificial", are just different -ose sources. Sugar is C₆H₁₂O₆ the rest are just "impurity", there is no difference between sugar from sugar beet, sugar cane, fructose, ... they are the same C₆H₁₂O₆ + extras.
Artificial sweeteners are byproduct of petroleum refining, witch means they do not contain C₆H₁₂O₆ + something but completely different molecules that happen to taste like it for us.