The WHO is about to declare aspartame can cause cancer | Hacker News Reader

The WHO is about to declare aspartame can cause cancer

vox.com

12 pointsactiviation26 comments

This is a dupe and it's only technically true, it's being added to some low impact "possible carcinogen" category that already contains vast swaths of food and human activities. It has no material impact on any health guidance, it's just a clickbait headline.

> only technically true

Good enough for me

Recent discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522471

And to a lesser extent:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36562739

This puts aspartame in the same category as aloe vera. It is classified as less risky than drinking hot beverages or eating red meat.

Healthcare Triage did a review of the research years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf82FfX-wuU tl;dw: artificial sweeteners get a bad rap, multiple studies have found no harm, studies that did find harm were on rats (which often doesn't translate to humans), and the harms associated with excess sugar consumption are numerous, well-founded, and damning.

Previous threads with tons of comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522471

Eventually we will get into meaningless situation like in California with Proposition 65 - Basically everything will be labeled that it can cause you cancer and people will start ignoring it.

As others mentioned it's being placed in a very low risk category, which you probably can safely ignore (and, I suspect, is probably only of interest to researchers)

I wonder how long the diet soda manufactures have been working on this, and preparing for it. I would not be surprised if they already have some thing ready to go to replace it with.

Eh, we know for a fact the nitrates in bacon cause cancer, but how many people stopped eating it?

First time I was in California, visiting partner and their family, their mom saw the California Cancer Warning of Doom label on a restaurant, and wanted to know why they couldn't simply not allow the substances known to cause cancer.

One of those substances is alcohol, and this place sold drinks.

Also she was a smoker at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_list...

Unfortunately I know people who drink diet coke like it's water. If somebody ate bacon at that volume they wouldn't live long enough for cancer to get them.

Also the number of ppl having bacon at every meal is small. The number of ppl drinking diet soda - and consuming diet anything else - multiple times per day is significantly larger, at least in the First World.

In the third world, far more people drink diet soda than eat bacon. In the first world, I wouldn't be so sure.

Nitrates in bacon are essential for making bacon. Aspartame is not essential for making coke.

Bacon isn't an essential food, at least not for humans. You don't need to eat it at all.

Likewise cola, of course.

You can buy nitrite-free bacon - doesn't that mean it's not essential?

"No nitrates or nitrites added" bacon still has nitrites as they are generated by the production method: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos...

In my market in Minnesota, Diet coke with "plant based sweetener" is being sold in small quantities. I'm sure it's a market test, and probably good timing based on this too.

We’ve had that in France a few months (years?) ago too. Never went mainstream. I tested it, I did not like it.

> plant based sweetener

Sounds like stevia?

That one also existed before, it was that green labelled Coke.

If aspartame makes someone’s weight loss program tolerable enough to lose 50+ pounds, then its risks are probably worth it to reduce other risks borne by being obese.

Good, the less profits soda companies have, the better. Its bad for you regardless of the sweetener. 35-40 grams of sugar per 12 oz can. Insanity.

Good!

I'm for banning artificial sweeteners. Something always told me that you can't get away with having a thing that tastes like sugar but doesn't exactly act like it to the body without some wrong thing happening. Either the taste reaction to the body has to do something strange (tastes like sweet so let's react the same way we would to sugar but oops this isn't sugar so now we're all out of whack) or yeah, something like this where it's carcinogenic.

Now mind you I'm not some wacko who is also against MSG and "chemicals". I also understand that some of the population needs alternatives to sugar. But some of these need full unbiased rigorous testing in humans. What do these things do to our bodies and how do our bodies react to them?

“Something tells [you]”? Based on no chemistry/biology knowledge, nor any apparent knowledge of how long aspartame has been used or any studies of that usage? Or even where the WHO recommendation is coming from?

Come on, now.

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