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Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

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Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#31

Post by ars »

anthonypasq wrote: post #24
Melatonic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not it. If it's made by a plant it's more likely your body has enzymes and pathways to metabolize the item (the chemical structure is "familiar" or "compatible" with yours if you will). This means it doesn't build up and cause low toxicity over time. i.e. it's pretty obvious if it's poisonous.

Not so with lab created stuff - your body may not have the ability to do anything with it, so it either sits and causes slow damage, or gets excreted very slowly, and can cause hard to detect damage.

For example acetone is not very toxic because the body can metabolize it.

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#32

Post by nonameiguess »

weberer wrote: post #6
ProjectBarks wrote: post #2

How much more risk? Is this a hit piece by big sugar or something? This article is so sparse on details. Exposure to the sun increases the risk of cancer. Emissions let off by cars increases the risk of cancer. I’m just curious… The HR has fairly large bounds... 1.03 to 1.25 so there is increased risk but this still does not tell you if people who consume a lot of sugar substitutes also exhibit behaviors that increas…

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…

Note that if you divide the total cases by the number of study participants, you get a total cancer incidence rate of 0.0326. If we assume roughly equal numbers of participants using versus not using artificial sweeteners and solve for AVG(x, 1.15x) = 0.0326, we get 0.0303 for non-users and 0.0348 for users. So your risk goes from about 3% to 3.5%.

Not nothing, but I'm not sure that really ticks off a worry box for me. Though I don't personally eat much sweetened food at all, artificial or otherwise (work from home and enjoy cooking, so I make most everything from raw ingredients).

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#33

Post by hedora »

It's probably worth mentioning that they also cause weight gain (vs a subjectively equivalent amount of sugar). Some are psychoactive and interfere with e.g., seizure drugs. Some cause migraine headaches in a subset of the population.

If it weren't for diabetics, I'd argue they all should be summarily banned (even, and especially, the "natural" / "organic" sugar alternatives, since those are mostly being produced in labs and are just enabling deceptive labeling).

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#34

Post by cinntaile »

hedora wrote: post #33

It's probably worth mentioning that they also cause weight gain (vs a subjectively equivalent amount of sugar). Some are psychoactive and interfere with e.g., seizure drugs. Some cause migraine headaches in a subset of the population. If it weren't for diabetics, I'd argue they all should be summarily banned (even, and especially, the "natural" / "organic" sugar alternatives, since those are mostly being produced in…

How can they cause weight gain when they contain no or a tiny amount of calories?

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#35

Post by Firmwarrior »

cinntaile wrote: post #34
hedora wrote: post #33

It's probably worth mentioning that they also cause weight gain (vs a subjectively equivalent amount of sugar). Some are psychoactive and interfere with e.g., seizure drugs. Some cause migraine headaches in a subset of the population. If it weren't for diabetics, I'd argue they all should be summarily banned (even, and especially, the "natural" / "organic" sugar alternatives, since those are mostly being produced in…

How can they cause weight gain when they contain no or a tiny amount of calories?

They don't satisfy your hunger or craving for sweets, so you end up eating more

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#36

Post by layer8 »

slymon99 wrote: post #14

I can never really take the results of nutritional epidemiology studies too seriously. How can you possibly control for all the confounding variables? People who are avoid artificial sweeteners likely make many other decisions in their diet and lifestyle. It's a healthy user bias. The study controls for some factors like weight and smoking but there's just no way to control for everything, you need randomization - es…

If anything, it shows that there isn’t a huge effect.

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#37

Post by cinntaile »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #35
cinntaile wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can they cause weight gain when they contain no or a tiny amount of calories?

They don't satisfy your hunger or craving for sweets, so you end up eating more

But he compared it with a subjectively equal amount of sugar,so no additional food is eaten.

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#38

Post by philg_jr »

umvi wrote: post #16

Any 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.

According to a reference to a NASA article on the Wikipedia page for L-glucose, it was too expensive to make in large quantities.

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#39

Post by xtracto »

copperx wrote: post #15
Melatonic wrote: post #10

I think I'll stick with low sugar or Monkfruit for now

If I remember correctly, Monkfruit was more highly associated with cancer than artificial sweeteners in early studies. I've been avoiding it since.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12893428/

This and other studies contradict your assertion. Do you have a reference?

Re: Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk

#40

Post by hedora »

cinntaile wrote: post #37
Firmwarrior wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't satisfy your hunger or craving for sweets, so you end up eating more

But he compared it with a subjectively equal amount of sugar,so no additional food is eaten.

The involuntary part of your brain gets confused because it received an "I ate" signal from your mouth but not your stomach. It responds by panicking: lowered metabolism and increased appetite.

Both effects have been shown separately. For instance, mice on fixed calorie diets become lethargic and gain weight if artificial sweeteners are added to their water.

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