• gregorum@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Aspertame is the most-tested food additive ever. There has never been proven any causal link to cancer, not in the decades anyone has tried, and there still hasn’t— not even in this year-old article.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netOP
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      3 months ago

      I feel like this is a difficult subject, since there’s two sides that are willing to pour money into research that’s biased one way or the other (Big sugar vs the artificial sweeteners).

      The article is perhaps advocating for an overly cautious position. Traditionally, I’ve been pro-artificial sweeteners, and considered aspartame quite safe, but specifically, this part in the article:

      the IARC is more selective in its use of unpublished, confidential commercial data, and it takes greater care to exclude people with conflicts of interest from contributing to its evaluations.

      A few years ago, Millstone and a co-author looked closely at how the European Food Safety Authority had weighed the 154 studies on aspartame safety when it looked to assess the product in 2013. About half of the studies favored aspartame’s safety and about half indicated it might do harm.

      The agency had judged all of the harm-suggesting studies — but only a quarter of the safety-affirming studies — to be “unreliable,” wrote the authors. And the agency had applied looser quality standards to the studies suggesting safety than it had to the studies suggesting harm. Agency reviewers pushed back against Millstone’s assessment. And in any case, aspartame has remained on the European market.

      Was a little concerning.

      The conflict of interest even more so:

      The FDA has rules about who can serve on its advisory committees that are aimed at preventing conflicts of interest. However, a recent investigation by ProPublica found that consultants employed by McKinsey worked for the FDA on drug safety monitoring projects while simultaneously working for pharmaceutical companies directly affected by those projects.

      • gregorum@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        As much as you may try to use a straw man to shift the discussion to governing or regulatory agencies, there is still no actual evidence linking aspartame to harmful effects in humans when used as a food additive.

        Different agencies and studies can irresponsibly throw around words like “maybe” and “possibly” and “might”, but until there’s any real evidence linking aspartame’s use as a sweetener to an illness in a human, then it’s nothing but fear-mongering.

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netOP
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          3 months ago

          I don’t believe I’m straw manning, and I think your characterization of that is a little unwarranted.

          There is no study that conclusively points to it being harmful, that is true. But when there’s a lot of money on the line and conflicts of interest start getting involved, I don’t think it’s entirely out of the question to be at least slightly wary of the ‘official’ recommendation from a verifiably financially biased institution. Regular folk aren’t going to research all 154 studies on a single sweetener, making them inherently reliant on institutions (who can do meta studies) for advice. It’s the quintessential laymen’s quandary.

          The EU seems to be, at least nowadays, a more trustworthy source regarding food safety, and are certainly more willing to reverse previously incorrect assumptions, such as when they reversed the ban on Cyclamate sweetener when it was found to be safe (yet it remains banned in the US). They, so far, also deem aspartame safe, and it’s difficult to see how exactly it could be dangerous.

          Is it safer than sugar, where there are known dangers? I think so, I’d pick a diet soda over a sugar-based one any day. But I think it’s healthy to at least attempt to ensure the answer recommended to us is as unbiased as possible.

          By the way, the article itself doesn’t even suggest that aspertame is that dangerous:

          “My big concern is that I don’t want people saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got to stop diet sodas, I’m gonna get sugared sodas,’ and then they start drinking those and gain weight, which we know is one of the major cancer risks,” said Bevers. “And that has solid data.” A better outcome of the recommendation would be if people who drink a ton of diet soda replaced some of it with water.

          • gregorum@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            Aspartame has been tested by far more than just the FDA and WHO, and nobody has ever found any link to any illness in humans, not ever.

            And if you have any, you’d be the first.

            It’s a straw man to argue your “uncomfortableness” with regulatory agencies as a reason not to trust aspartame. In fact, quite the opposite, as it’s the WHO who is doing the fearmongering.

            And comparing it to any other approval processes is just a false equivalence.

        • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          And there are many daily consumed food items (processed food, alcohol, …) that are known to cause cancer but nobody tries to regulate those.

          • gregorum@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            You need to pay more attention

            Edit: downvoted for pointing out the commentor needs to pay more attention because those things, in fact, are regulated

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netOP
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          3 months ago

          Coke is downstream of Sugar and Artificial sweetener manufacturers. Coke doesn’t care what sweetener you prefer in their products as long as they make a profit.

          Aspertame was owned by Nutrasweet, where as big sugar, is, well, sugar cane and sugar beet plantation owners and processors.

          Both of them were competing with each other for adoption in products and when sold direct to consumer (I.e, equal). They both had a vested interest in slandering the other.

          See this as an example.

    • Melkath@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      Sounds a lot like claims about second hand tobacco smoke.

      Lots of data reviews cherry picking source data to plot a correlation with a large enough population, but no demonstration of causation.

  • weariedfae@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I came in here ready to defend delicious aspartame from people who aren’t science literate and was surprised to see many really good arguments and comments already posted. Lemmy, you’re pretty cool as a community right now.

  • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    One thing I have observed with sodas containing aspartame, is the short shelf life, I think normally they give sodas 1 year but after 6 months the soda starts having an off taste that only gets stronger.

    I have tried drinking a can of zero that was 2 years past the expiration date, and it tasted like cat piss.

    Ps: I guess the aspartame molecules are not very stable in a soda mix?

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Realistically what it means is that millions of people will react with “meh, still gonna use it.” I mean, have you met humans? We knew lead was toxic since at least the Roman era, but that didn’t stop us from using it in everything - including food and drink.

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      And they’ll do that while standing in bright sunlight without sunscreen, drinking beer, eating red meat, processed food, candy with real sugar and driving in fossil fuel cars which are in the same or higher category of cancer risks.

    • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The difference is that you can completely avoid lead poisoning if you eliminate exposure to lead, but you can’t completely avoid cancer even if you eliminate exposure to carcinogens.

      And eliminating exposure to aspartame would have only a minimal effect, at best, on your overall risk of cancer.

    • gregorum@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      There’s still no evidence that it does. Unless, perhaps, you’re injecting gigantic amounts of it into rats or something. But drinking it in a soda? Nobody’s ever proved any evidence that it’s anything but safe.

        • gregorum@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          It isn’t dangerous at all when used as a food additive. And if you have evidence to the contrary, you’d be the first ever to find it.

  • Haagel@lemmings.world
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    3 months ago

    I never trusted the stuff. We use to say this matter-of-factly when I was a kid, about thirty years ago. I’m glad to see that my unfounded confidence and speculation turned out to be right!

    • weeeeum@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Ehhh, not so much. Honestly the rating for carcinogenic substances is very shaky and can be very misleading. Like many things, poison depends on the dose and the same with carcinogens. Bacon is a group 1 carcinogen, and cigarettes are a group 1 carcinogen. Despite the same rating, cigarettes are BY FAR much more carcinogenic.

      For group 2b “possible carcinogens”, it usually coincides with the frequency of the product. For this rating they review what a cancer victim typically eats/consumes/interacts with. Aspartame and many other ingredients, are labeled as possibly carcinogenic, as many victims have eaten them, but there is no strong correlation.

      The problem is however, many of these ingredients are so common that almost everybody eats them. It’s like saying “everybody who drinks water dies, it’s poisonous!”.

    • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Not exactly. In this context “possibly causes cancer” translates to something like ‘we have no credible evidence that it does, but we can’t prove that it doesn’t.’

    • Haagel@lemmings.world
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      3 months ago

      Damn. I’ve got the Mountain Dew drinkers riled up.

      “Possibly causes cancer” is sufficient for me to never the touch the stuff. Please stop drinking these things. They’re literally addictive.