40
votes
Aspartame sweetener used in Diet Coke a possible carcinogen, WHO’s cancer research agency to say - sources
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Jennifer Rigby, Richa Naidu
- Published
- Jun 29 2023
- Word count
- 1159 words
The IARC does some weird stuff and their proclamations shouldn't really cause anyone to lose sleep over their diet beverage choice... Aspartame has been tested for decades at this point and most of the fearmongering has been debunked. If you're consuming tons of it a day, that's one thing... But otherwise, this is the IARC doing IARC stuff. From the article:
...
While technically true that aspartame might lead to some minuscule increase in cancer in humans when consumed in excess, IARC doesn't take quantity consumed into account. I get very tired of these types of "reports" that just raise anxiety levels and eventually determine literally anything you do increases your risk for cancer. Which is kind of true, but also not very helpful without specific parameters.
This is what I was thinking too. The reporting feels kind of irresponsible. It’s got a really inflammatory headline but most of the article is spent saying “no, it’s not actually that bad”, in the meanwhile it doesn’t actually say what the reasoning or research was that lead to this decision and is based on sources that are undisclosed. They really should have waited until they had all the details before writing this article.
Exactly. And their "justification" for this is to "increase research efforts" like...what? If you call something carcinogenic people are just gonna freak out.
It reminds me a lot of the Prop 65 stuff in California. Great idea, until they got stupid with it. Now a lot of manufacturers basically include a Prop 65 sticker on anything sold in California because of the massive scope of "carcinogens" they now have listed.
And also, it's cheaper to label something as a potential carcinogen than to confirm it is safe, further increasing the noise:useful ratio of the warning.
I dunno, the IARC system feels pretty clear to me. They're only talking about the quality of the evidence, but they make that very clear. It's up to other people to talk about the increased amount of cancer, or to talk about what people as individuals should do with the data.
I talk about the IARC classifications here: https://tildes.net/~food/1774/aspartame_may_be_declared_a_possible_carcinogen_by_iarc#comment-8zkj
IARC's paper on night shift working is here - did you have any specific criticism of it? It's over 300 pages long, it's actual science that's not funded by the people selling aspartame, and it feels a bit dismissive to just say "IARC does weird stuff".
One of the points of IARC's work is to highlight gaps in research and also national law. Here's an example from the nightshift document:
That feels important to me. I'm not clear why this work is weird stuff.
Wasn't this kinda always known? It just felt like most artificial sweeteners have always been in that carcinogen group. The only thing that makes me weary of studies like these is that it's hard to control for. A large portion of people who drink diet sodas, are obese, and it's well known that obesity is a risk factor (and a quite large one) for cancer. So how to control for artificial sweeteners being a cause for something like this.
Biologist here (not a chemist or nutritionist....and I really should be writing my manuscript...), from my understanding, no. Aspartame has had this reputation in the media and culture for being "bad" but you're right- this declaration is somewhat misleading because the science just doesn't agree completely.
This meta analysis found no correlation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24965331/
This study on rodents found increased cancer risk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33845854/
This review has a great point
and continues with:
and eventually concludes:
The study in the Reuters article shows a significantly higher BMI in the "high aspartame consumer" group (24.96) than the "non consumer" and "low aspartame consumer" groups (23.69 and 23.79).
At the end of the day, if you're someone who consumes a lot of artificial sweeteners, maybe consider cutting back, but don't go in a panic thinking you're going to develop a brain tumor or something in the near future. Focus on fiber intake, water, and regular exercise.
Well said, everything in moderation is fine, excessive eating seems to be now the number one cause of death, even though they don't want to attribute it to our epidemic of obesity.
That's not a lot of difference. For someone with a body 5'9'' (175cm) that's the difference between 169 lbs (76 kg) and 160-161 (73 kg).
Was just pointing out the stats, a significant difference is a significant difference ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In a scientific context “significant” doesn’t mean “a lot” like it does in general speech, it means “meaningful” ie unlikely to be coincidence or statistical noise
Also in the 90s the sugar industry pushed hard to make aspartame sweetener downright evil compared to sugar. I have a relative who worked in the industry at that time who confirmed it. I've always been weary about aspartame but the research around it and motivation behind said research have always been questionable to me.
Bear in mind here I'm extending "sugar industry" to include High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). I'm also extending aspartame to include other artificial sweeteners (non HFCS) used for sugar replacement.
Let's nor forget the massive amount of time, money, lobbying, influencing journals, scientists they paid off for beneficial research and papers resulting in a highly successful shift away from sugar to focus on fat being a far worse health hazard. I believe they successfully steered the whole food and medical industry to concentrate far more heavily on fat than sugar.
Having said that I spent a few years (a long time ago) using Aspartame and Saccharin until I became aware of the carcinogenic association and dropped all of them. I've had mildly sweet coffee and tea since I started drinking them and do now use sugar instead.
Luckily I don't have a sweet tooth so don't crave and eat too many cakes, desserts, pastries, etc. I still have room to cut down of course. I will reduce the sugar in tea and coffee to wean myself off it slowly though.
The thing that worries me is I'm not careful at all about checking ingredients for artificial sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup and the like and we know how devious and obtuse these companies still are hiding and deflecting the use of such things and persuading the food industry into using them extensively .
Absolutely. That was the core strategy and it worked.
Are we talking US as well? Our sugar industry was basically killed by the gov./corn industry.
To much Sugar in general is just bad for you, it's not like salt/sodium which we need and can regulate via water intake(if you have a proper functioning set of kidneys). HFCS is in everything here, it's basically forced sugar out, which sucks.
Likewise, it's forced sugar in.... to our bodies, whether we want it or not.
I don't know about the US but like you said it seems so in their own way.
No idea if it’s true, but I remember my dad telling me that those studies came from testing on rats. They gave them like their weight in aspartame multiple times, then they developed cancer.
I’m a high fructose corn syrup man, myself.
I remember this being reported in conspiracy rags such as Nexus Magazine around 20 years ago now. I always took what they reported with a grain of salt but it looks like there was some truth to this after all?
At this point I don't even know what the hell to trust anymore, food items keep being called dangerous, then non-dangerous again. I still remember a year or two ago when people started saying that sugar was even worse than sweeteners, can't wait for them to backpedal and say sweeteners are the spawn of Satan instead.
It's hard to go wrong with locally produced, whole, non-processed foods. It is, of course, also kinda hard to do for a variety of reasons.
Yvette d’Entremont, aka SciBabe, has written a rebuttal entitled: Diet Coke is not killing you: It also won’t make you gain weight or cause depression.
I'll continue to enjoy an occasional Diet Coke or three. :-)
I rarely drink soda anymore but I've been wanting to try Coke that is sweetened by Stevia, if it's still around. Any reviews?
I believe it depends where you live. The online information around Coca Cola with stevia seems to be inconsistent. ie Wikipedia says it’s discontinued but our local grocery store has it in stock. It’s a red can with a green band around the very top.
Haven’t tried it myself.