WHO aspartame brouhaha | Hacker News Reader

WHO aspartame brouhaha

dynomight.net

123 pointscantaloupe234 comments

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.

It also comes down to the WHO not communicating this sufficiently clearly.

In the end, I consider the WHO as having lost all credibility - it doesn't matter why articles based on WHO statements cannot be trusted (e.g. whether the WHO statements are factually wrong, or intentionally misleading, or being communicated in ways that media are likely to misinterpret without quickly following up when this happens), the result is that any article claiming "WHO says X" is best dismissed as likely misinformation.

It's entirely on the poor journalism. It's not WHO's job (nor is it possible) for them to ensure every global publication regurgitates their press releases accurately.

I mean, sure, you can distrust WHO if you want because of this, but seems kind of a silly reason.

The comment you're replying to is rather hyperbolic but your succinct comment is thought provoking in both sentences:

1. What is success in public health communication for the WHO? An organisation that operates globally, in many languages, at all levels of economic development, and no mechanism of generating its own revenue?

2. If you believe the WHO to have lost all credibility which group of public health experts could you consider credible?

Presentation of medical studies surrounding aspartame (one of the most heavily studied foods in human history) are a perfect canary to determine if an organization cares about scientific accuracy, or appearing in headlines.

> It's not WHO's job (nor is it possible) for them to ensure every global publication regurgitates their press releases accurately.

But the whole purpose of a press release is to communicate accurately with the press. The WHO, being a global organization, is also very much supposed to work with the press globally.

Not to mention, the aspartame story was not coming out of some small paper from Trinidad, it was coming out of major publications in the USA. If the WHO can't even manage to communicate properly to them in its press releases, why bother putting out press releases at all?

The USA is probably the global capital of media sensationalism.

There are plenty of Americans who were properly able to parse the WHO press release. Our corporate media doesn't hire them because they choose more eyeballs with strong emotional reactions (to sell to advertisers) over a well informed audience.

It's naive to think WHO could have crafted the release in a way that US major networks would have reported on it responsibly.

No, it's not naive to think they could have done that. The right press release should have been "no risk of cancer from aspartame as best we can determine. We will continue to fund some research in this area to eliminate any possible doubt."

The one quote I heard from the WHO said precisely this, that it needed further research.

Journalism's job is to convey complex nuanced topics to the populace at large. If journalists aren't doing that, they're failing to do their job. I appreciate at this point that may be a quaint and archaic expectation though.

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.

Some don't take aspartame candies, chewing gum, etc. not due to its possible health effects, but because it takes bitter to them.

I find aspartame has a terrible aftertaste.

I have the opposite problem: I recognize regular soda by its terrible aftertaste. Drinks sweetened with aspartame don’t leave an aftertaste in my mouth.

The rarest of the rares

I dislike plain aspartame, but most soft drinks here (Ireland, this stuff is weirdly regional) now seem to use it in combination with acesulfame K; this mixture is much less objectionable (apparently acesulfame K on its own is also fairly unpleasant; they mask each others' aftertaste).

yes, because if we take one risk, we must take all of the risks. you might as well smoke too by your logic.

Well, no, I think the OP is making a point about the magnitude of the risk. Alcohol is clearly far riskier than chewing gum. (I say this as someone who drinks alcohol and chews gum, though not at the same time.)

If you are going to bring numbers into it, then bring numbers into it. What are the cancer risks of alcohol? How does it correlate with the number of drinks per day or week? How does cancer risk correlate with aspartame? What is the ratio of risk from daily chewing of aspartame gum vs a glass of wine? If you don't know, then your argument means nothing.

And even then I'm only speaking of overall risk. They are additive, not zero sum. If you eat aspartame and drink alcohol your risk is higher than doing either one by itself, no matter what the numbers are.

The cancer risk from aspartame seems to almost certainly be 0. The cancer risk from alcohol is known to be higher 0. Avoiding aspartame for cancer-related reasons while drinking alcohol is non-sensical.

Once again until you provide numbers your argument means nothing. You can't just wave your hands and say "wrong".

Which brands of gum use aspartame? All the ones I have use xylitol.

Mentos sugar free gum (since I have some handy) has xylitol, sorbitol, mannitol, maltitol, aspartame, acesulfame, sucralose and "sucrose fatty acid esthers"

I seem to recall most xylitol gums also have aspartame, but Mentos is the only one I had handy to check.

Most of them don't have both. Xylitol doesn't really sit right with me though. I would eat xocolate all the time(chocolate that used xylitol as sweetener).

It's used in infant tooth paste as well, but I just can't believe that giving 1 year olds a sugar alcohol every day twice a day has no side effects at all.

Every couple of years we find these magical ingredients that solve all our problems and fix our teeth at the same time and then a few years later we find out that they weren't quite as healthy after all.

Fluoride, for example. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3491930/

No mention of that sweet phenylalanine hit you get that doesn't happen with real sugar. A lot of people are hooked on it.

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)

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.

Water gives me headaches...

Try warm water, cold/cool water gives me headaches but warm batter doesn't.

That's called withdrawal. Believe me, many humans in the past survived on water and solid food alone.

I'm trying to do more than survive?

Whatever you're trying to do humans have been doing it successfully for thousands of years before the invention of sodas, mainly with water and alcohol.

You're claiming that humans have been successfully living to 80+ as happy, healthy individuals for thousands of years?

Are you obese? Soda and most forms of liquid calories are bad for you. Most of your fluid intake should be from water.

Not what my doctor says, but I appreciate the medical advice.

It's alright. The primary ingredient in drinks is... water. You're still drinking mostly water even if you don't drink water.

Om school I was taught "don't drink calories". It has served me well

Hmm, beer, milk, fresh organic juices, yogurt drinks, fresh eggs. I enjoy drinking calories.

I enjoy wine as well, but not on a daily or even weekly basis. And I do have unsweetened soy milk in my morning porridge.

I heard someone say " drink water, coffee tea and wine. And milk if you are below 5". It was tongue in cheek, but I have taken it to heart.

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.

Any electromagnetic radiation of considerable power and penetrability causes oxidative stress, which in turn causes cellular damage, which in turn increases probability of getting cancer.

So they are kind of right when they say that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic to humans. They are, but to a small degree for the most part.

The statement "radio can possibly cause cancer" is irrelevant if it takes a signal so powerful no human would ever encounter it, let alone produce it. The question is whether radio signals used in telecommunications can cause cancer, especially compared to the waves already present in nature.

The people most at risk would (one would think) be people that have a cellphone glued to their ear all day. But these people would (or: do) also end up with damage to their hearing, so maybe that tempers behavior ?

2B requires evidence of carcinogenicity in animals as well as "strong mechanistic evidence, showing that the agent exhibits key characteristics of human carcinogens."

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.

Sugar alcohols such as xylitol and sorbitol are very unlikely to be harmful. That said, they aren't drop-in replacements. Xylitol cools down when it dissolves, so it gives some candy their trademark "cool" feeling, but it's not something you always want. Plus, when consumed in larger quantities, it has a laxative effect.

>Sugar alcohols such as xylitol and sorbitol are very unlikely to be harmful

According to whom? If people are suspectful of the must studied food substances, why would they trust something that's less studied?

Sugar alcohols are abundant in nature and have been a part of our diets for pretty much all recorded history. They are well-understood and probably don't warrant the kind of intensive inquiry that is appropriate for a completely novel synthetic compound, such as aspartame.

There are more papers on aspartame than on potatoes, but that's not a reason not to avoid the latter, right?

Feeding people laxatives isn't exactly a killer answer to this problem.

They also still contain calories that you're best off not ingesting.

I also found this study that says sugar alcohols cause blood and liver cancer.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7072169/

Alcohols generally have been abundant in our evolutionary history and are still terrible for us.

> Feeding people laxatives isn't exactly a killer answer to this problem.

Sugar alcohols aren't laxatives. They have a laxative effect in high quantities (the line seemingly person-specific)

Ever hear someone complain after eating the entire bag of sugar-free gummy bears? [0]

0: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2JGNJ5ZPJT4YC

> I also found this study that says sugar alcohols cause blood and liver cancer. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7072169/

That isn't what it says at all. Sugar-alcohols occur naturally in the body, and cancer affected liver metabolism to cause it to produce more than normal.

Well, then there’s the studies on Erythritol that was making the rounds recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34960947

> 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.

That is all true, except there is a choice between sweetened drinks and unsweetened drinks.

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

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.

I usually just drink water. You should try it, it’s awesome.

And diet soda, beer, milk, vodka and most every other beverage is technically also "mostly water".

Ugly bags of mostly water?

Deep STTNG cut there.

On my property I have both a well and a spring so that's what I generally use. Recent outing in the city reminded me of the chlorine they use. It was kind of an amusing episode as drinking the water at the restaurant I had sworn maybe the glasses weren't fully rinsed so the waitress brought out another and made sure it was clean.. still tasted of chlorine. So I had her fill my canister up thinking it was just a detergent they were using.. still tasted of chlorine so I presumed it must be the water and remembered that indeed chlorine/chloramine is added to public supplies. I don't know if that will prove to be a problem in the future and most things that claim to be are a bit on the tin foil hat tent that said a recent study does seem to show minimal impact on gut biome (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01101-3) .. whether there is a compounding effect down line who knows.. but could explain some of the issues that differentiate between farm communities and urban dwellings (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kidsallergies/amish-farm-...)

Chlorine is annoying but so is legionnaire disease (which can deadly) or a gastrointestinal infection.

Most wells these days go with uv, not sure if that handles that. Personally I don't bother, but I also pull from creeks and rivers nearby for more tainted water with the intention of exposure. Been doing it for decades now. Wouldn't recommend it. That said, uv might be a plausible answer (I know a few public wells where you pay to fill up which is treated with uv and is all they use).

Most people on well water (are recommended to) test once a year for bacteria, and don't bother with UV filters unless they need to, in my experience.

UV works well but the problem is bacteria can build up in water lines. So you'd have to UV sterilize it at every tap point or at least every house. Chlorine is easier for this.

Makes sense, ie why there can be the centralize well water depots etc. I'm thankful that it's not something I have to rely on indeed.

Monochloramine, on the other hand, is barely perceptible at a couple ppm.

(It also produces less in the way of disinfection byproducts, which is good if the water contains anything that might react nastily with chlorine. And it’s much more persistent, which is good or bad depending on your perspective. You need to take special measures to remove it if you want to water a fish and potentially if you want to brew beer. As far as I can tell, it has no meaningful effect on an established sourdough starter. I assume that the large population of microbes in established starter is able to neutralize the small amounts of chloramine in tap water.)

Chlorine will dissipate after a few hours. Put tap water in a pitcher and keep overnight in the fridge for a cold one later.

True AFAIK, but I would like to see some experimental results made accessible to laymen.

Well, it is a gas at room temperature. Might be a good science project for a student to confirm what we think we know. The taste of chlorine does dissipate and that was good enough for me.

Believe it or not, cancer.

https://www.aaas.org/epi-center/pfas

Soda is made of water too

Water? Like out the toilet?

It's a circular economy

Plain water bores me. It just doesn’t satisfy cravings. I know it’s arguably the best beverage to consume, but I find it really hard to choose water over nearly any other kind of beverage.

I know I’m not alone.

Sparkling water has become my go-to. It does satisfy my cravings, and I’m sure it’s immeasurably better for health than my previous go-to Diet Coke.

Try drinking a large amount of water, like a gallon, every day for a week. I did this and my palate changed completely.

> I did this and my palate changed completely.

Mind if I ask: How so?

I dunno about a week, but it only took me about three weeks to switch from regular soda to diet soda, back in the mid-nineties, and I really didn't like the taste of diet soda when I started. After 2-3L a day of diet for several weeks regular Mountain Dew tasted sickeningly sweet and I no longer wanted it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Similar experience here. The sweetness of regular coke bothers me. Diet coke is more tart and sweet.

I also love Diet Redbull for the taste however it still has a small number of calories and carbs so they make Redbull Zero which I can't stand

It's just what the human palate does. It adapts to circumstance. Skip sugar and sweet stuff for a few months and when you try it again everything tastes much sweeter than before. Same with salt. Same with acidity. And surely other things I haven't tried and corroborated with peers.

Water went from boring as dirt to kind of tasty.

Anything carbonated still tastes good but there's a hard limit of one per day.

I still like the usual foods. I also lost 20 pounds!

Did you switch to water from regular soda or from diet soda?

I never liked soda, but my beer and flavoured water consumption fell off a cliff

I felt the same way until I took up regular exercise and my body's hydration preferences changed almost overnight. Now I guzzle the stuff like, well, you know.

It's probably better for your teeth, and, if you're drinking caffeinated soda in large volumes, that's not great. So: the sense in which it's better for health is pretty measurable.

Even if you replace water entirely with diet coke, the caffeine is not enough to cause harm.

> It's probably better for your teeth

So is not eating or sleeping or breathing.

This seems conspicuously like measurement, so I think we agree.

Most soda (not energy drinks) has very little caffeine. 12oz Diet coke has 42mg, black tea is 50mg, coffee varies but I see at least 100mg.

Of course people do seem to drink it mass quantities.

I’ve been using True flavor packs (2 per refrigerated gallon of water), alternating between lemon and lime. It’s just natural crystallized juice. Will likely never go back to just drinking unflavored water.

But yeah, I’ve been drinking water for years, and this has made it much more enjoyable. (I occasionally “splurge” and drink tea or soda, but it probably amounts to less than 1% of the fluids I consume.)

Citric acid isn’t great for teeth, but 2 packs per gallon should have a negligible impact (could possibly do more, but 2 is perfectly fine).

>I know it’s arguably the best beverage to consume

Not arguably, it factually is.

I've also never understood the concept of being "bored" with water. Not everything in life has to be a sensual experience. Why not drink it because its good for you and save the flavoured beverages as treats?

The answer to your question was in the post you replied to

> It just doesn’t satisfy cravings.

Not to mention they said they do drink water - just of the sparkling variety, which does satisfy their cravings.

> I've also never understood the concept of being "bored" with water.

some of us are really bad at doing things, even good/healthy things, unless we get a dopamine response. so 99% of my "water intake" is really coffee, tea, or artificially sweetened soda.

I drink a sparkling water or tea during my boring work. I want to make drinking a bit fun than a boring water.

Squeeze a lemon or muddle some strawberries into it and you’re golden. Tea is nice too.

How the heck do you expect me to do wicked 360 kick flips and other extreme sports activities without soda? Water just doesn't cut it :)

Seltzer water + caffeine pill! /s

I only eat huel 3 meals a day. You should try it, it's awesome. Why enjoy food?

I don't think I've ever seen somebody being convinced by Whataboutism.

And yet it's the single most common rhetorical tactic I see employed by people to defend their own beliefs, especially political ones.

Seems to work on some subset of the population.

I works great for defense, terribly for convincing.

The goal here isn't to convince them, but to get them to go away. The message is "If you want to convince me to drop diet coke, you have to be prepared to discuss your alcohol consumption."

It's not an academic conversation, nor is it meant to be one.

I don't think this is whataboutism, really. Part of it is frustration, but more it's an attempt to get them to recalibrate their idea of "carcinogen". Carcinogens are not some list of ultra dangers to strictly avoid. We're too good at detecting them.

List of things known by the state of California to cause cancer:

https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/proposition-65/p65chemi...

Funnily, Aspartame isn't on there but Aloe vera is... O.o

(my fav is wood dust)

Fine point: that is the list of substances that cause cancer, which is a more narrow set than "things" that cause cancer. The number one thing that increases a person's risk of cancer is age. After age, physical and genetic dispositions (aka family history) are also "things" that elevate cancer risks.

“Age” is more like “time spent exposed to carcinogens”

I mean, wood dust is no joke. Because of its size, you can end up with micro wounds all throughout the respitory system, and those in turn act as something like a nucleation site for infections and cancer. If you're doing a lot of sanding or running a lathe or mill, you can lose decades of your life by not using proper dust control schemes.

It’s also explosive just to add to the fun.

And some woods are poisonous (rosewood for example) to begin with.

And some non-poisonous woods are treated with various chemicals and glues that are themselves separate dangers.

It's actually not that black and white. Wood dust is linked to a statistically significant increase in the occurrence of a very rare nasal cancer. But the thing is, in woodworkers and in the general population alike, it's still a very rare cancer. You're orders of magnitude more likely to die of other cancers, whether you work with wood or not. This should be way, way down your list of risks.

There is a simpler reason to avoid wood dust: it causes allergies, asthma, and other non-cancer respiratory issues in a fair number of people.

Yes. IPF and friends are more of a death sentence than nasal cancer. Nasal cancer at least has a meaningful treatment outside of "double lung transplant" (which itself only has like 50-60% 5 year survival rate, and is essentially unavailable to most people with IPF due to age).

I'm aware of the stage 3 pipeline for IPF. I would still rather have cancer in most cases.

IPF = Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

I don't know why people so much care about cancer than other illness/injury. Why is a dedicated cancer insurance a thing? Is there any historical reason?

Never heard of it before, but I would guess almost certainly due to exclusions in non-specific policies.

> nucleation site for infections and cancer.

Asbestos is like that. It's not inherently carcinogenic, but there is some kind of mechanical process associated with asbestos fibers that activates cancer.

(you really shouldn’t breathe wood dust)

So is Testosterone. And Titanium dioxide, which is one of the main ingredients of almost every wall paint.

You don't have much to worry about from wall paint as long as you aren't sanding or eating it.

OTOH, it is a very economical colorant, so it is in a ton of foods (FDA still has it approved under 1% by weight of the food item), toothpaste, makeup, skin creams, white tattoo ink, and so on.

Wood dust is absolutely not something to mess with. Chips - what most people think of as "sawdust" - aren't the scary part. The scary part is the too-small-to-see stuff that has a physical structure remarkably similar to a number of things that are extremely Not Good To Breathe.

Also, as a sibling notes, the stuff (chips and dust alike) can contribute to some really memorable conflagratory experiences.

There used to be a site that listed everything that the Daily Mail (a low-quality British newspaper) had claimed could cause or prevent cancer (and often both): http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2009/09/07/kill-or-cure/

Now all I can find is this partial list: https://www.anorak.co.uk/288298/tabloids/the-daily-mails-lis...

Seems like at this point it would be easier to have a list of things unknown to the state of california. it feels like it would be smaller.

It wouldn't and they only list things that have shown some minimal amount of research.

Not updated yet, perhaps. Aspartame is in the same WHO group (2(b)) as aloe vera.

Whataboutism is fun!

Car exhaust is a KNOWN carcinogen. So don't lecture me on beer until you've given up on fossil fuel.

Calling it whataboutism is disingenuous, they're specifically talking about hypocrisy.

The point is relative risk, in particular the poster's friends are warning them about Aspartame, while drinking alcohol, which has significantly larger confirmed health risks. If they believe drinking alcohol is safe in the quantities that they do (and given that most health authorities now point out there is no safe level of alcohol to drink), then it's irrational to worry about Aspartame.

The comment doesn't make any point about relative risk. They're only mocking their friend for telling them about something unhealthy when their friend also does unhealthy things. As if it somehow cancels out.

It’s implied.

> 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

The poster compares the risk of aspartame being a « possible carcinogen » to Alcohol, which is a « KNOWN carcinogen », specifically comparing the different classifications.

But relative risk is irrelevant. They still don't somehow cancel out. My aspartame consumption poses some risk to me, and that risk doesn't depend on the habits of the person telling me about the risks of aspartame.

That’s not the point, there’s no claim it cancels out. The point is about the risk tolerance. We all take risks in our life, and the risks posed by aspartame are lower than that of alcohol.

I hope next time my friends or family point me to something I do that's potentially harmful I won't justify it by pointing to something that they're doing that's harmful.

I hope the next time my friends watch a fear piece about something unproven to be harmful, they'll understand my frustration about their hypocrisy when they continue to participate in activities that are proven to be harmful.

There’s a pretty big gap between alcohol which we highly regulate and keep away from minors due to the pretty obvious harm, and aspartame which is pretty commonly cited as the “most studied food additive”. [0]

One is really clearly signalled as “bad for you”, even if it is extremely common. The other one is basically seen as an inert implementation detail. I can totally see why people put more fear behind the evil they didn’t even know existed vs the evil they choose to ignore.

[0] https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/aspartame-....

> One is really clearly signalled as “bad for you”

I cannot easily express in words how stunningly false this is. Alcohol is signaled over and over and over and over across all forms of information as fun, relaxing, sexy, festive, appealing, exciting, luxurious, and sometimes even healthful in moderation. Any notion of it being bad for you is relegated to small print messages specifically about pregnancy and driving.

Yeah of course, there’s advertising. There’s also advertising for cigarettes.

Stunningly false is a bit strong.

What I mean is: no one thinks consuming alcohol is good for them. At worst they might think it’s health-neutral in the amount that they drink, but the majority of people know it’s bad for them.

It’s been effectively communicated, by laws and culture around booze, that it’s a thing for adults to choose to do, and accept consequences from. (Hangovers, drunk driving, abuse, and many other societal ills that are pretty cliche and well known) Just because the people making it, leave off the consequences, doesn’t mean everyone is brainwashed.

> There’s also advertising for cigarettes.

Notably there's a LOT LESS advertising for cigarettes than for alcohol in the US. Cigarette ads are banned in most media here. But sexy night club intrigue alcohol TV spots still abound.

> it’s a thing for adults to choose to do, and accept consequences from. (Hangovers, drunk driving, abuse, and many other societal ills that are pretty cliche and well known)

This is true, but I think the strongest statement we can make is that everyone believes that the good vastly outweighs the bad, otherwise we'd all stop.

> What I mean is: no one thinks consuming alcohol is good for them.

Even with very specific and reductionist notions of "good for" we have decades of "red wine is good for you" reports. Beyond that, relaxation and fun are good for you. We know this because we also have a lot of media telling us.

> the majority of people know it’s bad for them

Like a billion people out there think that God actually talks to them and tells them what to do on a daily basis, so I bet you're significantly overestimating.

We're talking about in comparison to aspartame though. I'm sure there's people who have the same reverence for booze as their choice of god, but:

My point in the GP post is that someone isn't going to be convinced to stop drinking because drinking is bad for them, they know it's bad for them. They had to wait till they were old enough to buy it, and maybe they've had a few hang overs, they know what liver cirrhosis is, and have seen a TV show featuring an alcoholic. They ignore those things, because they like drinking. They'll hand wave away why their drinking isn't a problem. Even with bunk click-bait articles like "red wine is good for you". We're on the same page there!

Sugarfree gum, feels pretty inert. There's no laws around the sale or packaging. There's no health warnings. There's no TV shows where someone's life is irreparably destroyed because of their gum habit.

So the root comment's family, I think were just being concerned.

"Inert thing you don't think about gives your family member cancer" is a scary thought! Of course I'm going to talk to ${familyMember}!

"Alcohol gives you cancer, along with a lot of other bad diseases" is a "well I still like a cheeky glass of red winkwinkwink" sort of thought.

> My point in the GP post is that someone isn't going to be convinced to stop drinking because drinking is bad for them, they know it's bad for them.

You're taking an extremely niche information set and generalizing it broadly to the public. Have you actually met the public? The average person knows approximately nothing and gets along fine because in practice knowing nothing doesn't significantly affect outcomes.

> "Alcohol gives you cancer, along with a lot of other bad diseases" is a

I bet you most people do not know or believe that alcohol causes cancer or any other disease, especially not when consumed in the amounts that they personally consume. At worst they believe that nonspecific "too much" alcohol will damage your liver in ways they don't understand but that not too much alcohol is fine because your liver heals itself and the amount that is "too much" is abstract and far off in the distance.

Don't you just feel like you're getting nothing in return from diet soda?

It just tastes wrong and you're ingesting chemicals you probably don't need.

A relative of mine who drank diet coke daily just had her bladder out due to cancer and she never really drank alcohol and took awesome care of herself. She suspected her diet-coke habit and in light of this news, she might be right. I get it, this is HN, I need numbers, not anecdotes, but it sure is curious.

Diet Coke doesn't cause bladder cancer.

Sometimes I drink diet soda, it is more of an acquired taste after a while but is fine.

> Don't you just feel like you're getting nothing in return from diet soda?

That’s how I describe water. Unless I’m really thirsty, water is just … nothing. Diet Coke has crisp, light flavor. And the aspartame only tasted weird way way back when I switched from sugar soda.

On just taste alone I prefer Diet Coke to the regular kind and to Coke Zero.

I probably should reduce or eliminate it, but it’s just so good.

I think about this too. I can drink a cup or two of water over a couple hours... unless I squeeze a little bit of lemon into it, in which case I can drink myself hyponatremic. It's the same, to an extent, with things like Diet 7-Up. If being super well hydrated is a good thing, then I guess what I get out of flavored drinks is ultrahydration?

I don't know why this is. Seltzer doesn't do it. I assumed it had something to do with sodium, but, then, the lemon works too.

then I guess what I get out of flavored drinks is ultrahydration

This is not something that exists unless you talking about a marketing term for hair conditioner.

Sorry, I meant to say megahydration.

I appreciate your commitment to precision in language.

I think you're confusing medical terms with supplement names.

Tap water is boring, I live near a natural spring with quite sweet water, which is really pleasant to drink.

When I'm stuck with tap water, I just "chug" a few large glasses (600ml) every few hours. Makes it easier.

> My relative drank diet coke and got cancer

> I get it ... I need numbers, not anecdotes, but it sure is curious.

No, it is not curious. The IARC finding found limited evidence linking aspartame to liver cancer alone[0], no other types. You have a 1/28 (male) or 1/91 (female) chance of developing bladder cancer in your lifetime[1].

Please do not post comments that sound like Tucker Carlson rhetoric.

0: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/aspa... 1: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/bladder-cancer/about/key...

Please do not post comments that sound like Tucker Carlson rhetoric.

Please do not be so fragile. It is curious to me, so what?

There are many, many things we've been told are ok for us and it turned out they weren't the most striking example for me recently has been PFOAs. In our area, firefighters used to spray down kids with "harmless fire retardant foam" and choppers would dump it into the forest by the ton. Now rivers near us are completely forbidden to go near because of the contamination.

I dislike TC as much as anyone else, but he is successful because some of these "conspiracies" can turn out to be true or partially true. Sorry but it is just a fact.

Is this a troll? Am I on Facebook somehow?

Who cares where you are, this is the internet, some people have different ideas and opinions. So what? Deal with it.

> Don't you just feel like you're getting nothing in return from diet soda?

diet coke is highly caffeinated, this comes with pretty obvious physiological effects.

My favourite chart for this situation is Everything causes and cures cancer[1].

[1]: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3523382/Me...

What's going on with the x-axis?

relative risk in terms of a ratio: <1.0 means less, >1 means increased risk compared to the control group. E.g., one study showed that beef reduced risk of cancer by 50%, another showed that it increased risk by 500%

In the chart is beef causing cancer or preventing it?

Either, depending on which study you accept.

The question is the problem. The answer is not a yes/no, but a point on a scale of multiple dimensions. Most of these studies don’t answer the question asked here, but a completely different question. And also most of these studies don’t answer the same question. Heck, it’s even a good guess that none of these studies answers the question asked here, because it’s rather difficult to make a double blind test about such questions.

Yes.

This chart is the epitome of modern "science".

We need to tweak our process, because this is clearly not working.

What makes you think there are tweaks that would improve "this"? You might be startled to learn "this" (the scientific method) is the best possible way of discovery that humans know of.

You may be even more startled to learn the scientific method is clear as an abstract concept, you know, those circle diagrams with "observation -> research -> hypothesis -> experiment -> analysis -> conclusions", but the details are always in flux and vary between countries, universities, publications and in time.

And the details are absolutely crucial for the end result. You come in here acting like a religious defender of the scientific method against the evil of rejecting science, but I'm not that guy. I'm not rejecting science, I'm just pointing out the obvious: modern science is producing literally noise, as seen in this chart, because of misaligned incentives and a broken peer review process, among others.

Do you even know what the "replication crisis" is? Hints of it in this very chart. And if you do, it's completely disingenuous to come attacking me for even mentioning we have a problem. And if you don't, you're not informed well enough to speak about the scientific method.

The "scientific method" should be applied to the "scientific method". Meaning when you see evidence that falsifies it, seek the causes and correct them, don't dig in your heels and go religious.

Everyone knows about the replication crisis, and everyone knows the flaws in the incentive structures around publishing research, but none of that is what you referenced.

What we need are people with level heads making calm decisions, not bombastic polemics demanding the system get blown up.

What did I reference? It was a very short message, so probably you saw what you wanted to see, or what you could see. But all I said is that a lot of modern studies are noise like that, and it's actively harmful, and the process which produces these studies should be modified.

Modern researchers have insane incentives to churn out papers based on superficial or questionable data, without isolating variables. The result is predictably noise. Or even worse, noise shaped by cultural bias and prejudice, which has been a long term problem with the scientific method, because in the end, we can talk about facts and evidence and data, but the judge jury and executioner on what is a fact, evidence and data are people, and people are always subjective by definition. The best we can hope is to all be subjective in the same way, hoping our shared subjectivity is more objective taken together. That doesn't always hold up.

None of these studies are produced via the scientific method. They are looking at statistical correlation and plucking them out of thousands of complex, confounding, dynamic variables in a very chaotic environment.

What about the chart leads you to that conclusion?

So it’s obvious how a study would support the notion that X causes cancer, but how would a study support that X prevents cancer? Too many confounding variables methinks.

I'm not sure I see how one is easier than the other. In studies where they find that wine, say, causes cancer, they aren't looking at some molecular chain of events, they're simply doing a large (hopefully) study and looking for correlations, while attempting (hopefully) to factor out confounding variables and incorrect direction of causation.

In some of those studies, the wine drinkers get more cancer. Red dot to the right. In some they get less. Red dot to the left.

I would think the effects of confounding variables are reduced the larger the sample size, so you can say "everyone in group A does not drink wine, and everyone in group B does drink wine". Some from both groups will get cancer because of some confounding variable, but they would cancel each other out- a non-related cancer case in Group A would be cancelled out by a non-related cancer case in Group B.

Conversely, if you have a similar study aiming to prove that wine prevents cancer, how do you prove that wine is the reason a person did not get cancer? It seems much more difficult, because now you are saying X did NOT happen because of Y rather than Y caused X. I'm struggling to articulate this. Maybe you're right.

Well, two things:

First, a confounding variable doesn't work like that. It's a hidden variable that's linking that independent and dependent variables that you didn't account for. So, for instance, if you look at the correlation between ice cream and sunburns, you might see a strong correlation, and you might naively think that one causes the other if you don't account for the confounding variable of hot summer days.

In the case of population-wide studies on food, there is always the danger of confounding variables: if you are just comparing the wine drinkers vs non, who are these non-wine drinkers? What makes them non-wine drinkers? As a whole, do they tend to be more heath-conscious? Is that why they're less likely to get cancer? Etc etc.

Second, my point is that in both studies that show foods causing cancer vs those protecting against cancer, it's almost always populations studies. So in an ideal experiment, they have two identical populations, one of whom just happens to eat more chocolate. If that group gets more cancer they say they the chocolate is causing cancer. Similarly, if they get less cancer, they say it's protecting them from cancer.

You don't have to prove that individual X would have gotten cancer if it weren't for the chocolate. All you have to show is that the standard, base-line amount of cancer you'd see in any population is reduced in this group.

Lovely. I wish this had low-dose ionizing radiation on it as well to cover the radiation hormesis hypothesis.

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

There used to be a site with a handy database too https://web.archive.org/web/20121115101540/http://kill-or-cu...

I quit sugar sweetened drinks in my early 20s. All sweet drinks in my late 20s.

In my 30s I have cut my alcohol consumption down hugely but for my little rat brain the risk reward vs sweetness is a different balance.

I think one of the most valuable things through my quest to eat right was people challenging my behaviour vs my knowledge. I made a lot about the fact I quit sugary drinks after writing a lit review on their health effects. My friends pointed out that I had deliberately excluded artificial sweeteners from my lit review and my knowledge.

Then I was challenged about my love of dessert.

I think being called a hypocrite and told I was stupid and coming to agree with the underlying criticism has been a big part of my growth as a person.

But if drinking drinks sweetened with aspartame is your only vice then you're doing pretty well.

Well, it is known to change one's gut biome, which is not good either since gut bacteria control your mood, appetite, digestion capabilities. Nothing beats clean, non-tap water at room temperature.

I mean, a lot of things beat it, if your priorities are something other than "drinking the healthiest thing possible."

True, my granddad is 96, worked at a coal coking factory, recently overcome COVID, and is still a totally capable person. Like his body doesn't give a damn about challenges.

Why can't they lecture you until they stop drinking alcohol?

Oxygen is a known carcinogen.

I drink alcohol to get plastered in social settings. I know it's unhealthy and the risks associated with it. I don't drink every day, mostly on social settings which happen like once or twice every couple of weeks.

I drink soft drinks more often than alcohol. I hate artificial sweeteners not just because of the taste, but all my life I've heard the fact that those sweeteners are carcinogenic, especially the cheapest ones (like aspartame).

Honestly, it doesn't help that most studies that say artificial sweeteners are safe were funded by the drinks companies themselves and obviously they will be biased towards what makes them have most profit from it. I think adding the sweeteners to this list of potentially carcinogenic and asking for more neutral, unbiased studies is a step on the right direction.

If a soft drink contains sweeteners, I simply refuse to drink it. Honestly, I'd rather have a beer which tastes worse than a coca-cola, for example, than to have to drink diet cola.

Basically all established science indicates that your behavior is exactly wrong.

I find it a healthier alternative than to blindly believe artificial sweeteners (which are cheaper and chemical products) are actually healthier.

There's nothing healthy about sugars and alcohol. If you want healthier, science indicates you should skip those along with whatever else you are skipping for whatever reason.

Artificial sweeteners contribute to obesity. It seems that they trigger carbohydrate cravings and cause sugar crashes in the body, albeit with an absence of sugar. The body receives that sweet taste and expects calories and carbs, but what to do when they don't materialize? We weren't designed for artificial sweeteners, carcinogen or not.

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.

I had read this hypothesis before, but a quick scan suggests a number of studies vindicate diet drinks, e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27934644/

Thanks for sharing!

I used to drink a fair amount of diet and mostly quit because of the caffeine and the possibly tooth enamel damage.

It was surprising the amount of concerned friends who were convinced the stuff would kill me. I really looked for any hint of evidence that it might, and aspartame keeps winning.

I'm off it now anyway, but it does seem to just be nicely flavored (slightly acidic) caffeine water.

>pop

Soda.

>Soda.

Coke.

Good sir, please see my response to a sibling comment. I shall not repeat myself here. Good day sir, I said good day!

> Soda

Pop. Much nicer.

Pop is a concession, a retreat, a capitulation to the massive marketing machines of modern commerce. It began as a branding effort, while soda is descriptive of the chemical properties involved. Do not give in the the manipulation of corporate interests, even those whose roots are over a century old! (The abominable practice of others to call all sodas, generically, "coke" is similarly flawed although that name at least, in addition to marketing, has some basis in the chemical makeup of the drink that began its inception)

I've had insulin responses before, but I believe there is an anticipatory response at play there.

When I was on a relatively strict ketogenic diet in the past, the recommendation was to test your blood sugar level after consuming a larger-than-average amount over the course of 1-2 hours to see if there were spikes or troughs from a hormonal response.

Unless you have type 2 diabetes, any problem from a sugar-free insulin spike would likely be hunger.

> 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

The Twin Cycle Hypothesis[0] predicts that many common cases of type 2 diabetes are from fat accumulation in the liver spilling to the pancreas and interfering with beta cell production of insulin. I wouldn't anticipate artificial sweeteners, even triggering an insulin response, to be able to do that without sugars also being consumed in tandem.

> I remain skeptical that there is a free lunch here.

Sugar-free gummy bears have quite the reputation because of how the gut reacts when you have a large quantity of sugar alcohols.

It doesn't _have_ to be a cancer or a chronic illness. It can be more acute.

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23075228/ (arbitrary first hit)

I mean I worry from time to time. But really its the processed foods and the high fructose corn syrup that worries me more.

I try not to eat those. but its hard, its in everything.

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.

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

Good luck coming up with absolute definitions:

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-...

Absolute definitions are hardly ever useful. Even for mundane things. How do you determine if something is ‘wet’?

Roll her around in flour.

That's only hard because "wet" has a bunch of meanings.

For whether something is a carcinogen it's like asking if it's "humid", and we have very clear and precise ways to communicate that.

The WHO is not asking anyone to change their actions due to this new research.

It seems expected for the WHO to have a list of things that experiments might indicate are carcinogens. They never recommended to stop consuming aspartame, or claimed it was definitely dangerous in the current consumed quantities.

WHO did recommend to stop consuming non-sugar sweeters (all types not just aspartame, and based on multiple factors, not just this research)[1][2]

[1] https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-...

[2] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073616

I did not know about that.

Interestingly, they specify their advice is conditional on using it for a specific purpose?

>the use of non-sugar sweeteners to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain and diet-related noncommunicable diseases in adults and children.

As in it does not sound like they are writing stay away from it period.

"climate change" is a weasel term. They need absolute definitions of the changes coming or people can't take their claims seriously.

[edit to explain myself: the above was meant to critize the parent for using the same non-logic that the climate denier movement uses: requiring an impossily high standard of evidence)

The evidence presented by scientists to demonstrate climate change is much stronger than "possibly."

For "absolute" anything, try religion. For everything else, there's science.

Absolutes are much easier to follow for humans hence why religion has them.

Drink in moderation is a much harder sell than don't drink at all. We suck at moderating anything without going cold turkey.

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

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.

> why has neotame not been pursued? if aspartame is carcinogenic

I think you just answered your own question.

no, I didn't. it was approved by both FDA and EU regulatory agencies, and, assuming similar carcinogenicity, would be a much better option considering it's 50x as potent as a sweetener. in other words, less cancer per unit sweet.

and there's no reason to believe this potency as a sweetener (how strong it binds to and activates very specific gpcrs on tongue) correlates to carcinogenicity

How much methanol?

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.

Yes, the evidence of actual harm from aspartame consumption seems very limited.

I'm guessing the evidence of actual harm from aspartame consumption is also orders of magnitude lower than the damage from sugar-induced diabetes.

Probably not, but not because of this article. There've been a number of studies that show that artificial sweeteners have a similar effect on building up insulin resistance as actual sugars. We'll have to wait another 20 years for the evidence to overwhelm the moneyed interest.

Aspertame got US FDA approval in 1974, after being discovered in 1965. I'm not ready to anticipate a shocking revelation in another 20 years after heavy investigation for 50+.

You can - if you can tolerate the taste.

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.

I'd love to see a citation for this. I've seen a lot of literature saying "it might" but nothing that is conclusive. As a type II diabetic, this matters a lot to me. If there were a link between aspartame and type ii (insulin resistant diabetes) the lawsuits would make asbestos look like small claims.

If you experience adverse effects of T2DM like neuropathy, you may find that symptoms worsen after the intake of a diet coke with aspartame. But if you are not on the edge yet, you will feel nothing extraordinal.

That's not a citation, that's even more claims that need backing.

There is a cause and effect, and they always have a relation. If aspartame worsens insulin sensitivity by increasing insulin resistance [1] then this will eventually lead to neuropathy [2]. This is a simple logical chain to follow, but I understand that not everybody is made for it.

But the real drama occurs when a person finally hits T2DM and starts to develop dementia. Only then they will start to learn, listen and study medicine (maybe), but for the most part it is already too late. See, in this condition, the brain suffers from tissue hypoxia, so the individual has dim chances of properly doing their medical homework, if any work at all. And they won't get a proper help at the usual clinic outside of palliative care, unless they go to a place specializing in neuroendocrinology which is often a cost-prohibiting option not available to everyone.

I know, the link between T2DM and dementia may come as surprise to you as well, so here is a citation [3]. "But it's only affecting older people, I'm fine!" - wrong. It affects anyone but the incidence rate is indeed correlated with age.

But before all that happens, one can enjoy one more cup of a thirst quincher with aspartame, of course! All those mad naysayers suck, you know.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28571543/#:~:text=Result%3A%....

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359792/

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9052006/

> But before all that happens, one can enjoy one more cup of a thirst quincher with aspartame, of course! All those mad naysayers suck, you know.

I suspect the real issue with aspartame is people drinking two 82oz ultra big gulps a day.

If it worsens insulin sensitivity in a significant way, but that's not established in your links.

And you claim that symptoms will often worsen after a drink, right? That sounds like an aggressive effect that would be super easy to test.

I've only seen correlation, not causation. Which makes sense; you likely don't start off drinking Diet Coke - you switch to it once you have some sort of health concern.

FWIW, there are studies that a low calorie, low carbohydrate diet can reverse type ii diabetes (or rather, put it in remission)[0]. The underlying hypothesis came about I believe to explain why people who had a gastric reduction surgery would also sometimes see a remission in their diabetes.

I use a telemedicine[1] which was involved in one of these studies, and which I believe has started to see some insurance coverage because of the savings related to reduction in insulin used by patients. I'm personally maintaining pre-diabetic levels (but have never used insulin).

0: https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/doi2.00...

1: https://www.virtahealth.com

I don't believe this is true. If it is, provide a source.

It is absolutely a lie that corn syrup is better for you than aspartame. That is absolutely 100% false.

Corn syrup "only" causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, while aspartame has a potential to cause a systemic oxidative stress. Both conditions contribute to insulin resistance development, but systemic oxidative stress is more dangerous in my book because it leads to more immediate neurological and cardiovascular complications. Don't get me wrong, both ingredients are terrible for one's health, and they both seem to cause similar defects in varying proportions with lots of intersections. If the question is what ingredient degrades health faster, then I have no answer. A few control groups, anyone?

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.

There are a bunch of natural carcinogens that occur in unpackaged ordinary food, some of which have clear epidemiology, which is something you can't say about any artificial sweetener, or even drinking pure RoundUp. Avoiding packaged food can be a good rule for other reasons, but it's not a divining rod for carcinogenicity.

> but it's not a divining rod for carcinogenicity.

True, but what they said was:

> it's most likely bad for my body while anything natural is most likely good or ok.

...as a guiding principal it is probably right.

Do not eat anything that your great grand aunt would not recognise as food.

My mom is in her sixties and doesn't recognize escargot or offal as food and believes sushi and medium rare pork are unacceptably risky.

The further you go back the more reliance you find on preservative techniques other than refrigeration. That means a lot of salt, or smoking, which is a known carcinogen.

Anything natural is most likely OK? So by your estimation if you were lost in the woods, at least 50% of everything you'd see would not just be edible but actually good for you? I mean, just to cite an example, if you chew the seeds of apples and swallow them you're eating amygdalin, which is a chemical that reacts into cyanide in the stomach. Asbestos is a naturally-occurring mineral.

If anything, entirely the opposite is true. Most things in the world are either inedible (in the sense that they're immediately mechanically harmful to eat) or toxic in some way or another, at least without some "artificial" processing.

You are reading between the lines and assuming that in every situation my only decision making criteria are there rules. Anyways, I knew while writing there will be people making such comments

Well, you did start your comment with "I live by a simple rule".

I think rules like this can be useful. I'm also wary of new things, as in freshly popular materials, like a new type of coating on non-stick pans. Another "rule" is that the more processed something is, the more removed it is from the original thing, then it probably lost its useful quality, no matter how much it resembles the original thing.

Regarding artificial vs natural, looking for natural stuff can be a good rule of thumb, but the "appeal to nature" is a logical fallacy for a good reason. Lots of natural things are bad for us, and because we already live in a pretty artificial environment, other things need to be adjusted too, because natural ways sometimes only work in natural environments.

Substitutions, like diet coke, can also be a trap. When the premise is that I can just do away with harmful X, by substituting it with Y, and have basically the same thing, then I'm always watchful. Usually there's no free lunch.

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