Even the WHO/IARC emphasizes that the evidence is limited. Non-zero, but limited, and as with a number of things that they classify in the lower designations, often it deals with studies that were...
Even the WHO/IARC emphasizes that the evidence is limited. Non-zero, but limited, and as with a number of things that they classify in the lower designations, often it deals with studies that were not conclusive or had confounding factors, or other facets/flaws that prevent the evidence from carrying a stronger weight.
It's likely that one would have to ingest an unrealistic amount of aspertame on a daily basis for it to be carcinogenic but because of the limited evidence so far, I still understand the desire to move its categorization to one that says essentially "we're not sure it's completely safe" (“possibly carcinogenic to humans”)
The problem is that people, and especially news reporting on WHO/IARC classifications, is full of fear-tactic clickbait alarmism as usual. I think the FDA is likely in an okay place here with their stance. I don't damn the WHO/IARC for being extra cautious- it's not their fault their system is completely taken out of context and exaggerated for clicks
For comparison, WHO rates hot drinks as "probably" carcinogenic (below), ahead of the "possibly" they've labelled aspartame as. I agree that the real issue here is science reporting, too often do...
For comparison, WHO rates hot drinks as "probably" carcinogenic (below), ahead of the "possibly" they've labelled aspartame as. I agree that the real issue here is science reporting, too often do articles get taken out of context and sensationalized. While part of the issue is exaggeration for clicks, I have to wonder what degree of it is just due to poor scientific literacy?
The aspartame story was actually based on a leak, so you couldn’t even check the official report at the time there was buzz. I think it’s hard to blame scientific illiteracy, rather is lean...
The aspartame story was actually based on a leak, so you couldn’t even check the official report at the time there was buzz. I think it’s hard to blame scientific illiteracy, rather is lean towards another example of poor communication by the WHO
I would add that not having time to thoroughly review every science article and have requisite knowledge of every field does not make you scientifically illiterate and assuming any significant...
I would add that not having time to thoroughly review every science article and have requisite knowledge of every field does not make you scientifically illiterate and assuming any significant portion of the public has the time and energy to do that is unrealistic. It’s the equivalent of asking normal people to unminify all the javascript on every website they go to to verify what the browser displays is what the code is doing. At a certain point you have to rely on experts to distill information. The solution will never be for everyone to be experts in everything and constantly double check every single thing they read.
At this point why even care anymore, seems like literatelly every single thing in existence is carcinogenic. I'm half expecting oxygen to be labelled carcinogenic in the future. Like, I'm not...
WHO rates hot drinks as "probably" carcinogenic (below)
At this point why even care anymore, seems like literatelly every single thing in existence is carcinogenic. I'm half expecting oxygen to be labelled carcinogenic in the future.
Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to be healthy, but there's just so, so much fearmongering. Feels like a miserable way to live having to follow all these recommendations.
Oxygen is carcinogenic, which is a really good example of why we need nuance around the understanding of the WHO system. Their system is a yes/no system, it doesn’t delve into dose or normal use...
Oxygen is carcinogenic, which is a really good example of why we need nuance around the understanding of the WHO system.
Their system is a yes/no system, it doesn’t delve into dose or normal use or anything like that. It’s not a bad system by any means, it’s actually very helpful if it’s interpreted correctly. The problem is a combination of the WHO not explaining this very well, and journos knowing they’ll get more views if they make their headlines alarmist.
The FDA does take into account dose and normal use, which is why the WHO can says something is possibly carcinogenic while the FDA can say it’s safe and they can both be absolutely correct to say so - it’s just a different classification system.
I would not say that their findings count as fearmongering in the least. The articles written about them, though, are another story. It's counterproductive to say that everything is carcinogenic....
I would not say that their findings count as fearmongering in the least.
The articles written about them, though, are another story.
It's counterproductive to say that everything is carcinogenic. That's catastrophising the situation. If you look at the things that are considered carcinogenic, it's mainly inorganic or highly processed substances, so if you are seriously worried about getting cancer, simply eat more plants and avoid the processed stuff.
Even if you don't want to do that, consider the fact that carcinogenic doesn't mean "eat this and instantly get cancer". It's much more frequently "eat this and your probability of getting cancer some time in your long life will increase by this tiny percentage point".
The WHO / IARC information is not aimed at you, the consumer of various products. It's aimed at nation states and the public health departments of those countries who need to make laws and...
The WHO / IARC information is not aimed at you, the consumer of various products. It's aimed at nation states and the public health departments of those countries who need to make laws and regulations controlling (or not controlling) these substances.
Cancer of the oesophagus causes about 400,000 deaths worldwide each year. It's a pretty common form of cancer. We need to understand what causes it, and whether it's reasonable to put controls on the causes. At the moment we know that tobacco smoking and alcohol use are the biggest causes. But we also know that some regions have higher rates of oesophageal cancer, and one common factor in those regions is drinking very hot drinks (over 65c). WHO / IARC wanted to know if there was a causal link.
Agreed both agencies are very nuanced in their information here is the FDAs statement , which does disagree with the WHO but its not like it does so harshly. It clearly is saying they feel the...
Agreed both agencies are very nuanced in their information here is the FDAs statement , which does disagree with the WHO but its not like it does so harshly. It clearly is saying they feel the overwhelming research and evidence put in before they let these sugars come to market shows they are safe when used appropriately. I think it reads more the FDA defending its decision to approve substitutes rather than truly being dismissive of the WHO.
They also call out a sugar substitute not approved that I had never heard of and am going to read more about that now!
The biggest issue with this study is that it doesn't take into account obesity. The majority of people who drink diet drinks, are obese, and it's very well known that obesity is one of the largest...
The biggest issue with this study is that it doesn't take into account obesity. The majority of people who drink diet drinks, are obese, and it's very well known that obesity is one of the largest causes for cancers.
It's the same thing with the vaping and diacetyl. The study that was used for the workers who got "popcorn lung" where also heavy smokers, but the media ran with vaping = popcorn lung and that was that. Everyone assumes that vaping is horrible for you, but no one wants to read that diacetyl is basically non-existent in vapes. Almost all use food grade flavoring approved by the FDA.
So now we have the same thing happening here with the WHO, aspartame is mainly drank in diet drinks from obese people, and obese people are most of the cancer cases now...hence it's gotta be aspartame...signed...the media.
It's not one study. https://monographs.iarc.who.int/news-events/iarc-monographs-evaluation-of-the-carcinogenicity-of-aspartame-methyleugenol-and-isoeugenol/
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), has evaluated the carcinogenicity of aspartame, methyleugenol, and isoeugenol.
A Working Group of 25 international experts from 12 countries was convened by the IARC Monographs programme for a meeting on 6–13 June 2023 in Lyon, France. Four Observers also attended the meeting.
After thoroughly reviewing the available scientific literature, [...]
The Working Group classified both aspartame and isoeugenol as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B). Neither aspartame nor isoeugenol had previously been evaluated by the IARC Monographs programme.
Aspartame was classified as Group 2B on the basis of limited evidence for cancer in humans, limited evidence for cancer in experimental animals, and limited mechanistic evidence.
Can you expand on this, because to a cursory inspection his does not seem to be the case. The list of referenced studies can be seen in The Lancet. Following the link of the first study we find...
The biggest issue with this study is that it doesn't take into account obesity.
Can you expand on this, because to a cursory inspection his does not seem to be the case.
The list of referenced studies can be seen in The Lancet.
Fully adjusted multivariable Cox proportional hazards models (main model) were adjusted for age (time scale), sex (except for breast and prostate cancer), BMI (continuous, kg/m^2), height (continuous, cm), percentage weight gain during follow-up (continuous), physical activity (categorical International Physical Activity Questionnaire variable: high, moderate, low, missing value), smoking status (categorical: never, former, current), number of smoked cigarettes in pack-years (continuous), educational level (categorical: less than high school degree, ≤2 years after high school degree, >2 years after high school degree), number of 24-hour dietary records (continuous), family history of cancer (categorical: yes, no), prevalent diabetes (categorical: yes, no), energy intake without alcohol (continuous variable: kcal/day), and daily intakes (continuous, g/day) of alcohol, sodium, saturated fatty acids, fibre, sugar, fruit and vegetables, whole-grain foods, and dairy products. Breast cancer models were also adjusted for age at menarche (categorical: <12 years old, ≥12 years old), age at first child (categorical: no child, <30 years, ≥30 years), number of biological children (continuous), baseline menopausal status (categorical: menopausal, non-menopausal), oral contraceptive use at baseline and during follow-up (categorical: yes, no), and hormonal treatment for menopause at baseline and during follow-up (categorical: yes, no). In addition, all models were mutually adjusted for artificial sweetener intake other than the one studied.
It's not called out but this is basically saying super unhealthy obese people (physically active/diabetes part) were the main consumers of it. This is completely ignoring the obesity issue. Even...
Compared to non-consumers (unadjusted descriptive comparisons), higher consumers tended to be more often women, younger, smokers, less physically active, more educated, and more likely to have prevalent diabetes. They had lower energy, alcohol, saturated fatty acid, fibre, fruit and vegetables, and whole-grain food intakes and higher intakes of sodium, total sugar, dairy products, sugary foods and drinks, and unsweetened non-alcoholic beverages. The main artificial sweetener was aspartame, contributing to 58% of intakes, followed by acesulfame-K (29%) and sucralose (10%) (Fig 2).
It's not called out but this is basically saying super unhealthy obese people (physically active/diabetes part) were the main consumers of it. This is completely ignoring the obesity issue. Even with the study trying to account for it. These studies cannot use their main portion of their control as the healthly part of the population and then the majority of their cases be obese. We're talking about health here, and obesity is a major driver of cancers. Hell they even call it out in the paper multiple times.
Limitations of this study include potential selection bias, residual confounding, and reverse causality,
Aka we tossed out things we didn't think should be in the study because it didn't give us the answer we wanted and we had errors that we couldn't account for so we left them in.
though sensitivity analyses were performed to address these concerns.
Which only pulled out 6k people of the 108k they initially had.
I want to see a study done with a healthy control group and a healthy case group. This won't happen because it'd have to be done with a subset of the population that is healthy and basically forced to swap to artificial sweeteners. Until this is done, these studies which use any methods to rip out what they don't like or try and add in stats to counter act the level of bias are just educated guessing at best.
The bolded claim is blatantly false with respect to the study I looked at, and which you quoted above. Table 1. Baseline characteristics of the study population, NutriNet-Santé cohort, France,...
Compared to non-consumers (unadjusted descriptive comparisons), higher consumers tended to be more often women, younger, smokers, less physically active, more educated, and more likely to have prevalent diabetes. They had lower energy, alcohol, saturated fatty acid, fibre, fruit and vegetables, and whole-grain food intakes and higher intakes of sodium, total sugar, dairy products, sugary foods and drinks, and unsweetened non-alcoholic beverages. The main artificial sweetener was aspartame, contributing to 58% of intakes, followed by acesulfame-K (29%) and sucralose (10%) (Fig 2).
It's not called out but this is basically saying super unhealthy obese people (physically active/diabetes part) were the main consumers of it. This is completely ignoring the obesity issue. Even with the study trying to account for it. These studies cannot use their main portion of their control as the healthly part of the population and then the majority of their cases be obese. We're talking about health here, and obesity is a major driver of cancers. Hell they even call it out in the paper multiple times.
The bolded claim is blatantly false with respect to the study I looked at, and which you quoted above.
Table 1. Baseline characteristics of the study population, NutriNet-Santé cohort, France, 2009–2021 (n = 102,865)
Characteristic
All Participants
Non-consumers
Lower consumers
Higher consumers
Body mass index (kg/m^2), mean (SD)
23.69 (4.48)
23.29 (4.17)
23.79 (4.49)
24.96 (5.20)
The mean BMI of the higher consumers is (just barely) within the "healthy" range of 18.5 - 25, lower bound inclusive. Obesity is clinically defined as ≥30 BMI. Assuming a normal distribution within each group, we have that the prevalence of obesity within each group is approximately
Characteristic
All Participants
Non-consumers
Lower consumers
Higher consumers
Obesity rate
7.9%
5.4%
8.4%
16.6%
Sure, maybe that has an effect, and maybe they didn't account for it even though they state they did, but you are not exactly discussing in good faith the way you are exaggerating your claims and being hyperbolic.
No it's not, even you're post shows it's not. The 2nd table you quoted, shows that the low consumers are nearly double that of the non-consumers/control and the high consumers are over 3Xs that of...
The bolded claim is blatantly false with respect to the study I looked at, and which you quoted above.
No it's not, even you're post shows it's not. The 2nd table you quoted, shows that the low consumers are nearly double that of the non-consumers/control and the high consumers are over 3Xs that of the non-consumers/control. This means they aren't really taking into account obesity rates for their sample size.
I.E people who are consumers of artificial sweeteners are more likely to be obese.
Sure, maybe that has an effect, and maybe they didn't account for it even though they state they did, but you are not exactly discussing in good faith the way you are exaggerating your claims and being hyperbolic.
But I'm not exaggerating anything, and your second table from their own study shows that I'm not.
When the high use cases are 3Xs higher than your control and combined (low and high) almost 5xs that of your control...yes... You really going to tell me that ~25% of the case study being obese is...
When the high use cases are 3Xs higher than your control and combined (low and high) almost 5xs that of your control...yes...
You really going to tell me that ~25% of the case study being obese is as good as the control who is only ~5%? And say that the study accounted for it? And that it had no effect on the outcome, even though it's well known scientifically that obesity is now the number one cause for cancer...in a study... about artificial sweeteners causing cancer?
I will give this site the courtesy of being informative in my response. The combined (lower and higher consumers) rate of obesity is not almost five times that of the non-consumers group. It...
I will give this site the courtesy of being informative in my response.
When the high use cases are 3Xs higher than your control and combined (low and high) almost 5xs that of your control...yes...
The combined (lower and higher consumers) rate of obesity is not almost five times that of the non-consumers group.
It appears you have added the percentages together for the lower consumers group (8.4%) and the higher consumers group (16.6%) and claimed that that sum (25.0%) shows that the obesity rate in those two groups combined is approximately five times the obesity rate of the non-consumers group (5.4%).
That's not how statistics work.
The groups are mutually exclusive. Each participant is in one and only one of these groups. If about 1 in 12 people (8.3%) in the lower consumer group are obese, and approximately 1 in 6 people (16.6%) in the higher consumer group are obese, the rate of obesity in the two groups combined would have to be somewhere in between those two values.
Specifically, let's use the group sizes from table 2 as linked before.
Group
Participants
Estimated obesity rate
Estimate of obese participants
All Participants)
102 865
7.9%
8 126
Non-consumers
64 892
5.4%
3 504
Lower consumers
18 986
8.4%
1 595
Higher consumers
18 987
16.6%
3 152
Note that the sum of the estimate of obese participants in each group (8251) does not sum to the estimate of obese participants among all participants (8126), as these are only estimates. The error is marginal, and about what could be expected from this type of estimate.
If we look at the rate of obesity among both lower and higher consumers, we have to take the fraction of obese participants from both groups, and put that in relation to the number of participants in both groups together. Or, in other words:
You're right, my bad on the math, jumped the gun, but this still doesn't make what I've stated untrue. That's more than double the control. This one study had a very weak link to artificial...
You're right, my bad on the math, jumped the gun, but this still doesn't make what I've stated untrue. That's more than double the control. This one study had a very weak link to artificial sweeteners, since it tested 3, having your case have higher rates of cancer than the control, without even throwing in artificial sweeteners, is not a strong enough argument that artificial sweeteners are potentially cancerous.
It means your initial statement that it was "a majority of cases" was false, as that means more than 50% of the cases. That would be an even stronger exaggeration than your mistake here lead to!...
You're right, my bad on the math, jumped the gun, but this still doesn't make what I've stated untrue.
It means your initial statement that it was "a majority of cases" was false, as that means more than 50% of the cases. That would be an even stronger exaggeration than your mistake here lead to! Unless the study straight up lies, it's blatantly false that more than 50% of the participants - in any of the groups or in the study as a whole - were obese.
That's more than double the control. This one study had a very weak link to artificial sweeteners, since it tested 3, having your case have higher rates of cancer than the control, without even throwing in artificial sweeteners, is not a strong enough argument that artificial sweeteners are potentially cancerous.
I'm having trouble parsing exactly what you are trying to say here.
A difference in obesity rates can be accounted for, which they claim they did. In general, this means accounting for how the difference in BMI distribution between the different groups would contribute to the cancer rates and factoring that out. Specifically, the study states:
The main analyses were adjusted for the following covariates: [...] anthropometric characteristics (body mass index [BMI], height, percentage weight gain during follow-up) [...]
This means that the results presented are what is left even when accounting for the difference in BMI between the groups. Your assertion that it is impossible to account for this difference is at best unsubstantiated.
Oh now this is going to be entertaining: watching the large state organizations bet their reputation on something as stupid as a sugar replacement. I don't know who's going to lose, but any time a...
Oh now this is going to be entertaining: watching the large state organizations bet their reputation on something as stupid as a sugar replacement.
I don't know who's going to lose, but any time a federal agency gets egg on their face we all win.
I'm not exactly sure I understand. I don't see the logical connection in I mean, if the FDA is mistaken, and aspartame causes cancer, I would... not consider to a win for "us"? I'm not sure I get...
I'm not exactly sure I understand. I don't see the logical connection in
but any time a federal agency gets egg on their face we all win.
I mean, if the FDA is mistaken, and aspartame causes cancer, I would... not consider to a win for "us"? I'm not sure I get the connection in general; I prefer my federal agencies to be correct, to be honest... The WHO is also not a US agency ("federal") by any means.
I also don't think it's stupid - aspartame is big business, and many consumers ingest quite a lot of it. It's important to know whether or not it's safe.
Put more simply: You would prefer your federal agencies to be correct, I would prefer my federal agencies to be non-existent. So any time they fight I cheer. That's a cynical and jaded opinion, I...
Put more simply: You would prefer your federal agencies to be correct, I would prefer my federal agencies to be non-existent. So any time they fight I cheer.
That's a cynical and jaded opinion, I know, but it's so rare to see large groups like WHO/FDA differ on an issue that I'm honestly very surprised. I expected them both to be completely bought out by industrial interests - or perhaps they still are, but they've each chosen a side.
In either case, aspartame is still the same chemical. Just like BPA and pthalates and a dozen others, the official opinion of these regulatory behemoths has little if any impact on our day to day lives.
I don't believe they're making our lives better. When was the last time you heard about a federal decision and thought "ooooh good, I'm glad that's getting done?"
I don't believe they're making our lives better.
When was the last time you heard about a federal decision and thought "ooooh good, I'm glad that's getting done?"
All the time... The infrastructure bill off the top of my head. Support for Ukraine. Student loan refinancing options. And a lot more. Then there are all the mandated recalls due to unsafe food....
All the time...
The infrastructure bill off the top of my head.
Support for Ukraine.
Student loan refinancing options.
And a lot more. Then there are all the mandated recalls due to unsafe food. Safety regulations, etc.
Also if we're going to just focus on fda let's talk thalidomide, I'm thankful they denied it access in the US. Who knows what our lives maybe like without that oversight.
Also if we're going to just focus on fda let's talk thalidomide, I'm thankful they denied it access in the US. Who knows what our lives maybe like without that oversight.
As far as the WHO goes (which isn’t a federal agency, it’s a UN agency, but it was brought up…), the eradication of smallpox, the near eradication of polio, and malaria and TB containment efforts...
As far as the WHO goes (which isn’t a federal agency, it’s a UN agency, but it was brought up…), the eradication of smallpox, the near eradication of polio, and malaria and TB containment efforts come to mind.
Even the WHO/IARC emphasizes that the evidence is limited. Non-zero, but limited, and as with a number of things that they classify in the lower designations, often it deals with studies that were not conclusive or had confounding factors, or other facets/flaws that prevent the evidence from carrying a stronger weight.
It's likely that one would have to ingest an unrealistic amount of aspertame on a daily basis for it to be carcinogenic but because of the limited evidence so far, I still understand the desire to move its categorization to one that says essentially "we're not sure it's completely safe" (“possibly carcinogenic to humans”)
The problem is that people, and especially news reporting on WHO/IARC classifications, is full of fear-tactic clickbait alarmism as usual. I think the FDA is likely in an okay place here with their stance. I don't damn the WHO/IARC for being extra cautious- it's not their fault their system is completely taken out of context and exaggerated for clicks
For comparison, WHO rates hot drinks as "probably" carcinogenic (below), ahead of the "possibly" they've labelled aspartame as. I agree that the real issue here is science reporting, too often do articles get taken out of context and sensationalized. While part of the issue is exaggeration for clicks, I have to wonder what degree of it is just due to poor scientific literacy?
https://time.com/4369809/very-hot-drinks-are-probable-cancer-trigger-says-who/
The aspartame story was actually based on a leak, so you couldn’t even check the official report at the time there was buzz. I think it’s hard to blame scientific illiteracy, rather is lean towards another example of poor communication by the WHO
I would add that not having time to thoroughly review every science article and have requisite knowledge of every field does not make you scientifically illiterate and assuming any significant portion of the public has the time and energy to do that is unrealistic. It’s the equivalent of asking normal people to unminify all the javascript on every website they go to to verify what the browser displays is what the code is doing. At a certain point you have to rely on experts to distill information. The solution will never be for everyone to be experts in everything and constantly double check every single thing they read.
At this point why even care anymore, seems like literatelly every single thing in existence is carcinogenic. I'm half expecting oxygen to be labelled carcinogenic in the future.
Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to be healthy, but there's just so, so much fearmongering. Feels like a miserable way to live having to follow all these recommendations.
Oxygen is carcinogenic, which is a really good example of why we need nuance around the understanding of the WHO system.
Their system is a yes/no system, it doesn’t delve into dose or normal use or anything like that. It’s not a bad system by any means, it’s actually very helpful if it’s interpreted correctly. The problem is a combination of the WHO not explaining this very well, and journos knowing they’ll get more views if they make their headlines alarmist.
The FDA does take into account dose and normal use, which is why the WHO can says something is possibly carcinogenic while the FDA can say it’s safe and they can both be absolutely correct to say so - it’s just a different classification system.
I would not say that their findings count as fearmongering in the least.
The articles written about them, though, are another story.
It's counterproductive to say that everything is carcinogenic. That's catastrophising the situation. If you look at the things that are considered carcinogenic, it's mainly inorganic or highly processed substances, so if you are seriously worried about getting cancer, simply eat more plants and avoid the processed stuff.
Even if you don't want to do that, consider the fact that carcinogenic doesn't mean "eat this and instantly get cancer". It's much more frequently "eat this and your probability of getting cancer some time in your long life will increase by this tiny percentage point".
Go about your life and be happy.
The WHO / IARC information is not aimed at you, the consumer of various products. It's aimed at nation states and the public health departments of those countries who need to make laws and regulations controlling (or not controlling) these substances.
Cancer of the oesophagus causes about 400,000 deaths worldwide each year. It's a pretty common form of cancer. We need to understand what causes it, and whether it's reasonable to put controls on the causes. At the moment we know that tobacco smoking and alcohol use are the biggest causes. But we also know that some regions have higher rates of oesophageal cancer, and one common factor in those regions is drinking very hot drinks (over 65c). WHO / IARC wanted to know if there was a causal link.
https://www.iarc.who.int/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-news-mono116/
Agreed both agencies are very nuanced in their information here is the FDAs statement , which does disagree with the WHO but its not like it does so harshly. It clearly is saying they feel the overwhelming research and evidence put in before they let these sugars come to market shows they are safe when used appropriately. I think it reads more the FDA defending its decision to approve substitutes rather than truly being dismissive of the WHO.
They also call out a sugar substitute not approved that I had never heard of and am going to read more about that now!
The biggest issue with this study is that it doesn't take into account obesity. The majority of people who drink diet drinks, are obese, and it's very well known that obesity is one of the largest causes for cancers.
It's the same thing with the vaping and diacetyl. The study that was used for the workers who got "popcorn lung" where also heavy smokers, but the media ran with vaping = popcorn lung and that was that. Everyone assumes that vaping is horrible for you, but no one wants to read that diacetyl is basically non-existent in vapes. Almost all use food grade flavoring approved by the FDA.
So now we have the same thing happening here with the WHO, aspartame is mainly drank in diet drinks from obese people, and obese people are most of the cancer cases now...hence it's gotta be aspartame...signed...the media.
It's not one study. https://monographs.iarc.who.int/news-events/iarc-monographs-evaluation-of-the-carcinogenicity-of-aspartame-methyleugenol-and-isoeugenol/
It's 4 studies for humans the rest in mice or rats, it still doesn't discredit what I have stated.
Can you expand on this, because to a cursory inspection his does not seem to be the case.
The list of referenced studies can be seen in The Lancet.
Following the link of the first study we find "Artificial sweeteners and cancer risk: results from the NutriNet-Santé population-based cohort study" in PLOS. In the results, we look at table 2 which contains entries for "fully adjusted" measures, noting that
It's not called out but this is basically saying super unhealthy obese people (physically active/diabetes part) were the main consumers of it. This is completely ignoring the obesity issue. Even with the study trying to account for it. These studies cannot use their main portion of their control as the healthly part of the population and then the majority of their cases be obese. We're talking about health here, and obesity is a major driver of cancers. Hell they even call it out in the paper multiple times.
Aka we tossed out things we didn't think should be in the study because it didn't give us the answer we wanted and we had errors that we couldn't account for so we left them in.
Which only pulled out 6k people of the 108k they initially had.
I want to see a study done with a healthy control group and a healthy case group. This won't happen because it'd have to be done with a subset of the population that is healthy and basically forced to swap to artificial sweeteners. Until this is done, these studies which use any methods to rip out what they don't like or try and add in stats to counter act the level of bias are just educated guessing at best.
The bolded claim is blatantly false with respect to the study I looked at, and which you quoted above.
Table 1. Baseline characteristics of the study population, NutriNet-Santé cohort, France, 2009–2021 (n = 102,865)
The mean BMI of the higher consumers is (just barely) within the "healthy" range of 18.5 - 25, lower bound inclusive. Obesity is clinically defined as ≥30 BMI. Assuming a normal distribution within each group, we have that the prevalence of obesity within each group is approximately
Sure, maybe that has an effect, and maybe they didn't account for it even though they state they did, but you are not exactly discussing in good faith the way you are exaggerating your claims and being hyperbolic.
No it's not, even you're post shows it's not. The 2nd table you quoted, shows that the low consumers are nearly double that of the non-consumers/control and the high consumers are over 3Xs that of the non-consumers/control. This means they aren't really taking into account obesity rates for their sample size.
I.E people who are consumers of artificial sweeteners are more likely to be obese.
But I'm not exaggerating anything, and your second table from their own study shows that I'm not.
Are you honestly claiming that describing 16% as a majority of cases is not an exaggeration?
When the high use cases are 3Xs higher than your control and combined (low and high) almost 5xs that of your control...yes...
You really going to tell me that ~25% of the case study being obese is as good as the control who is only ~5%? And say that the study accounted for it? And that it had no effect on the outcome, even though it's well known scientifically that obesity is now the number one cause for cancer...in a study... about artificial sweeteners causing cancer?
I will give this site the courtesy of being informative in my response.
The combined (lower and higher consumers) rate of obesity is not almost five times that of the non-consumers group.
It appears you have added the percentages together for the lower consumers group (8.4%) and the higher consumers group (16.6%) and claimed that that sum (25.0%) shows that the obesity rate in those two groups combined is approximately five times the obesity rate of the non-consumers group (5.4%).
That's not how statistics work.
The groups are mutually exclusive. Each participant is in one and only one of these groups. If about 1 in 12 people (8.3%) in the lower consumer group are obese, and approximately 1 in 6 people (16.6%) in the higher consumer group are obese, the rate of obesity in the two groups combined would have to be somewhere in between those two values.
Specifically, let's use the group sizes from table 2 as linked before.
Note that the sum of the estimate of obese participants in each group (8251) does not sum to the estimate of obese participants among all participants (8126), as these are only estimates. The error is marginal, and about what could be expected from this type of estimate.
If we look at the rate of obesity among both lower and higher consumers, we have to take the fraction of obese participants from both groups, and put that in relation to the number of participants in both groups together. Or, in other words:
In other words, in the combined group of lower and higher consumers, we estimate that about 12.5% or 1 in 8 of the participants were obese.
You're right, my bad on the math, jumped the gun, but this still doesn't make what I've stated untrue. That's more than double the control. This one study had a very weak link to artificial sweeteners, since it tested 3, having your case have higher rates of cancer than the control, without even throwing in artificial sweeteners, is not a strong enough argument that artificial sweeteners are potentially cancerous.
It means your initial statement that it was "a majority of cases" was false, as that means more than 50% of the cases. That would be an even stronger exaggeration than your mistake here lead to! Unless the study straight up lies, it's blatantly false that more than 50% of the participants - in any of the groups or in the study as a whole - were obese.
I'm having trouble parsing exactly what you are trying to say here.
A difference in obesity rates can be accounted for, which they claim they did. In general, this means accounting for how the difference in BMI distribution between the different groups would contribute to the cancer rates and factoring that out. Specifically, the study states:
This means that the results presented are what is left even when accounting for the difference in BMI between the groups. Your assertion that it is impossible to account for this difference is at best unsubstantiated.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728033
Oh now this is going to be entertaining: watching the large state organizations bet their reputation on something as stupid as a sugar replacement.
I don't know who's going to lose, but any time a federal agency gets egg on their face we all win.
I'm not exactly sure I understand. I don't see the logical connection in
I mean, if the FDA is mistaken, and aspartame causes cancer, I would... not consider to a win for "us"? I'm not sure I get the connection in general; I prefer my federal agencies to be correct, to be honest... The WHO is also not a US agency ("federal") by any means.
I also don't think it's stupid - aspartame is big business, and many consumers ingest quite a lot of it. It's important to know whether or not it's safe.
Put more simply: You would prefer your federal agencies to be correct, I would prefer my federal agencies to be non-existent. So any time they fight I cheer.
That's a cynical and jaded opinion, I know, but it's so rare to see large groups like WHO/FDA differ on an issue that I'm honestly very surprised. I expected them both to be completely bought out by industrial interests - or perhaps they still are, but they've each chosen a side.
In either case, aspartame is still the same chemical. Just like BPA and pthalates and a dozen others, the official opinion of these regulatory behemoths has little if any impact on our day to day lives.
But why would you want them to be non-existent?
I don't believe they're making our lives better.
When was the last time you heard about a federal decision and thought "ooooh good, I'm glad that's getting done?"
All the time...
The infrastructure bill off the top of my head.
Support for Ukraine.
Student loan refinancing options.
And a lot more. Then there are all the mandated recalls due to unsafe food. Safety regulations, etc.
Also if we're going to just focus on fda let's talk thalidomide, I'm thankful they denied it access in the US. Who knows what our lives maybe like without that oversight.
As far as the WHO goes (which isn’t a federal agency, it’s a UN agency, but it was brought up…), the eradication of smallpox, the near eradication of polio, and malaria and TB containment efforts come to mind.