this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry
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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.
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:
Was a little concerning.
The conflict of interest even more so:
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.
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.
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
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:
I think the takeaway from this article should be "Aspartame is probably pretty safe, but holy shit one of the main institutions we have in charge of determining that, along with a bunch of other substances, is basically corporate captured, so get your advice elsewhere."
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.
Found the aspartame spokesperson.
lmao you can't be serious. Smoking affects everyone around you
Body odor doesn't increase the likelihood of cancer for the people around you.
Let's trade sources. Here are mine.
Secondhand smoking may increase the overall risk of cancer for never smokers, particularly lung and breast cancer, and especially in women.
Does secondhand smoke cause cancer? Yes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Toxicology Program, the U.S. Surgeon General, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer have all classified secondhand smoke as a known human carcinogen (a cancer-causing agent) (1, 3, 7, 9)
Twenty years after secondhand smoke was first classified as a cause of lung cancer in lifetime nonsmokers, the evidence supporting causation continues to mount (USDHHS 1986).
Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke among nonsmokers increases lung cancer risk by about 20 percent. Secondhand smoke is estimated to cause approximately 53,800 deaths annually in the United States. Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home is also a risk factor for asthma in children.
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.
All of these studies are extensively peer reviewed. What source do you have that proves they are unreliable? Let's pretend that it's true, what purpose is served by fabricating this data?
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.
Lmao
So, I can keep drinking my beloved zero mountain dew?
The "zero" beverages are usually sweetened with Sucrolose primarily. Not Aspertame. Though I've seen some with primarily Sucrolose and also Aspertame as a secondary ingredient.
Mountain dew has aspartame
The original selling point was partly that it wasn't aspartame, but I think that's changing to the mixture since some people react poorly to sucrolose.
Was it? I thought it was just an angle to use a better tasting sweetener than Aspertame. Sucrolose tastes much closer to sugar than Aspertame does, probably because Sucrolose's chemical structure is very close to sucrose.
Yeah some of the Diet brands were running as "aspartame free" when it was gaining popularity
You should switch to Diet Baja Blast. It’s healthier because it’s tastier or something.
Green means healthy!
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)_/¯
It's pretty interesting how many walls of text you'll write to defend an unnecessary additive but not to prove you should just drink water
Another straw man.