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WHO aspartame brouhaha

by cantaloupe on 7/17/23, 6:45 PM with 234 comments

• by nicole_express on 7/17/23, 8:24 PM

  It seems like the primary purpose of the IARC Group 2B list is to identify targets for additional study; from that perspective, and thinking about how widely aspartame is used, it makes sense to want to remove as much doubt as possible.

  Really it comes down to the media not being good at presenting science topics, which is pretty typical unfortunately.

• by nntwozz on 7/17/23, 8:32 PM

  Anecdote, a friend didn't want my chewing gum when offered because it contained Aspartame.

  I was going to mention the Alcohol argument but then I realized I have better things to do with my life.

• by dang on 7/18/23, 3:39 AM

  Recent and related:

  FDA says aspartame is safe, disagreeing with WHO finding - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728033 - July 2023 (145 comments)

  WHO says soda sweetener aspartame may cause cancer, but it’s safe within limits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717961 - July 2023 (10 comments)

  Aspartame Is a Possible Cause of Cancer in Humans, a WHO Agency Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717553 - July 2023 (5 comments)

  The WHO is about to declare aspartame can cause cancer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644185 - July 2023 (26 comments)

  Aspartame: Once More Unto the Breach - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36562739 - July 2023 (199 comments)

  Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942 - June 2023 (565 comments)

• by elzbardico on 7/17/23, 8:26 PM

  When I stopped drinking soda because of the sugar, I entertained the idea of drinking diet sodas. The taste was awful, and even knowing that I would come to appreciate it over time, I decided to go to good old water instead.

  Never looked back.

• by light_hue_1 on 7/17/23, 8:48 PM

  IARC, the organization that produced this mess is doing science communication a massive disservice and it should be reformed. They call category 2B "possibly carcinogenic" when in reality the evidence required for category 2B is basically anything that is as flimsy and hypothetical as possible. No one would refer to anything in category 2B as "possibly carcinogenic" in daily life. At best you might say this category is "worthy of potential future study".

  Their poor communication creates hype and hysteria while discrediting scientists everywhere.

  A few years ago they said "Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B)." https://publications.iarc.fr/126

  The reasoning for this is on page 419. They classified radio as possibly carcinogenic because prior studies weren't as well controlled as they wanted, some analyses they wanted weren't done, and because one very small study that saw a minor correlation that isn't at all consistent with the population level data that we have (which says there's no association).

  That's it. All of this hype for absolutely nothing.

  IARC needs to be fixed.

• by boringuser2 on 7/17/23, 8:28 PM

  Is there any artificial sweetener that has been studied to the extent that aspartame has that definitively does not cause cancer?

  Because, if not, the question isn't between aspartame or some other interchangeable artificial sweetener, but between aspartame and HFCS or regular sweetener, which I strongly suspect contributes more deleteriously to health via obesity than aspartame does via possible carcinogenic affect.

  The thing is, I'm okay with governmental bodies regulating substances (not necessarily the WHO, but that's a different story), but you need to balance different factors including substitution when you make a decision like this.

  For example, the EU recently banned topical zinc as ZP in topical formulations (think head and shoulders) due to being a possible topical carcinogen (the evidence suggested it wasn't, but it is a non-topical carcinogen) because interchangeable formulations existed that also worked.

  Given that it probably isn't possible to subject a substance to the same scrutiny as aspartame without many years of targeted and expensive effort, we're probably just stuck with this sweetener for the foreseeable future.

• by imchillyb on 7/18/23, 12:13 AM

  "Sola dosis facit venenum." Only the dose makes the poison. Everything is toxic. There is nothing in the known universe that is not toxic.

• by sandworm101 on 7/17/23, 8:07 PM

  I drink diet sodas. I have received many emails/calls/texts from friends and family telling me about the "news" of them being a possible carcinogen. To every such person I say: Alcohol is a KNOWN carcinogen. Drinking alcohol causes cancer. So don't lecture me about drinking diet coke until you have given up on beer.

• by ericmay on 7/17/23, 8:51 PM

  The thing that worries my about artificial sweeteners and specifically diet pop consumption is whether or not the constant exposure to artificial sweeteners causes your body to release an insulin response anyway and that then causing problems. If I had to guess we are going to get a big breakthrough study on diet pop that is going to link it to diabetes or something like that. I remain skeptical that there is a free lunch here.

  No medical or scientific basis for this. I don’t really drink pop (once/year maybe?) with or without sugar or artificial sweeteners.

• by ChrisMarshallNY on 7/18/23, 1:16 AM

  I use Equal. I use it in the two cups of coffee that I have each day (7AM and 4PM). I don’t usually drink any kind of soda (on the very rare occasions that I might have one, is is sugar), and don’t chew gum. If I eat candy or sweets (not that often), I use good-old-fashioned-not-good-for-you sugar.

  I don’t drink alcohol, exercise for about an hour, each day, and try not to be too crazy in my diet.

  But I live on Long Island, New York, and I drink a lot of tap water. Even filtered tap water is questionable.

  That probably far outweighs any risk from asparatame.

• by vmoore on 7/17/23, 7:09 PM

  'Possibly' is a weasel word. They need absolute definitions of carcinogens or people can't take their claims seriously.

• by dancemethis on 7/18/23, 3:18 AM

  Probably the first time I see brouhaha being used outside King Crimson's "Elephant Talk".

• by valec on 7/18/23, 12:18 AM

  why has neotame not been pursued? if aspartame is carcinogenic, seems logical to switch to an extremely similar but out-of-patent compound 50x as sweet with an identical flavor-profile.

• by aj7 on 7/18/23, 12:23 AM

  How much methanol?

• by helsinki on 7/17/23, 8:16 PM

  So, can I safely drink Diet Coke or not? I don’t have the ability to give this article my full attention, at the moment.

• by garganzol on 7/17/23, 8:55 PM

  Aspartame is a proven contributing factor of insulin resistance development. And you will get it even faster with aspartame than with sucrose. (Sucrose is a fancy but precise name of the usual sugar)

  Even high fructose corn syrup is better than aspartame when it comes to long-term health consequences. So, consider to avoid aspartame like a plague. If you are into soda than you may find stevia-based formulations which have no side effects.

• by thumbsup-_- on 7/18/23, 12:07 AM

  I live by a simple rule, if it's an artificial chemical or if it's packaged, it's most likely bad for my body while anything natural is most likely good or ok.

  The fact is that humans are bad at long term impact studies. When long term studies reveal something, it's very hard to take that stuff off market (not that we haven't done so. We have with done that with Talc, Asbestos). It's also possible that something is considered safe today but might be proven to be harmful decades later. We think that organizations like FDA are only thinking about health of people but that's not entirely true, they also need to think about economic impact of their actions. Declaring something carcinogen which is billion $ product, it's going to be very hard for them to do so.

  So, my rule is to simply err on the side of caution.