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Comment by nntwozz | Hacker News Reader

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).

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.

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".

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