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.
So, I can keep drinking my beloved zero mountain dew?
There are other things in that which are bad for you.
prove it
I would if I weren’t going to bed. Feel free to ignore me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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the IARC is more selective in its use of unpublished, confidential commercial data, and it takes greater care to exclude people with conflicts of interest from contributing to its evaluations.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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like you didn’t even read my response besides the first sentence.
Found the aspartame spokesperson.
And there are many daily consumed food items (processed food, alcohol, …) that are known to cause cancer but nobody tries to regulate those.
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
Big sugar vs the artificial sweeteners?
They’re the same companies.
Coke vs Diet Coke.
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.
Thank you for correcting me.
I apologise for being so flippant about it.
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.
And that sounds a lot like a false equivalence based on pure speculation with zero evidence to back it up.
And there was always a lot of evidence of the damage caused by second-hand smoke that tobacco industries simply paid politicians to ignore. Hell, all you had to do was look at the walls and curtains of a smoker to see the tar and smoke stains. It was clear as day.
For decades studies from all sorts of institutions, both big and small and independently-funded have failed to find any evidence at all that aspartame is unsafe for human consumption as a food additive.
Show me the causation.
I can’t prove a negative.
I can go and learn exactly peer reviewed causation between mesothelioma and asbestos.
“Second hand smoke causes cancer” has no biological evidence. It has mountains of data reviews and a behemoth of propaganda aired daily.
“there was always a lot of evidence of the damage caused by second-hand smoke”
Produce the landmark peer reviewed biological study that proved this.
You can’t. Because it’s War on Drugs, it’s propaganda, and it is an absolute ocean of spurious correlation manuscripts and absolutely no proof.
You got lung cancer from sucking up burnt dinosaur goo during rush hour, not because a dude had a smoke in your general viscinity.
Lmao
lmao you can’t be serious. Smoking affects everyone around you
So does B.O.
Body odor doesn’t increase the likelihood of cancer for the people around you.
Neither does second hand tobacco smoke.
Again, cite that landmark study that ever proved that.
Trillions of dollars into a carpet bomb of MTV commercials and data studies.
Still no solid science that can make tobacco more of a cancer causer than refined sugar.
Only cherry picked data reviews that claim tenuous correlation.
Let’s trade sources. Here are mine.
Edit: I also did the work for you and checked some of the references in those sources. Here’s the 1986 landmark surgeon general report.
Every source from the propaganda machine, the US Government. None peer reviewed scholarly research.
Does it have atomic mass? Then it probably can cause cancer.
This is a good rule, especially for things that change their own atomic mass.
Does it interact in any way whatsoever with the electromagnetic spectrum?
Yeah that’ll give you cancer alright
I have atomic mass … am I … Doctor Manhattan?
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.
So according to WHO, aspartame is more cancerous than glyphosate
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?
Good to know, I’ll stick to sodas full of sugar, no problem can come from that 👍
The article says that sugar based drinks are far worse for your health than diet versions.
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.
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.
Don’t forget cell phones, which are in the same risk category as aspartame.
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.
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Your dad has been wrong for almost 40 years.
Depends on if he made the statement in California or not.
In California sand has a warning label.
To be fair, eating, drinking, or inhaling sand is not great for you.
Oh crap, now what am I going to have for lunches.
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.
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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.
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!
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!”.
“possibly”
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.’
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.
