WHO aspartame brouhaha | Hacker News Reader

WHO aspartame brouhaha

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38 pointscubefox59 comments

I don't want sweeteners, and yet in some products, my much preferred sugar is replaced by sweeteners, because producers just don't want to have two products. I suppose people who hate sugar are more numerous than people who hate sweeteners, so the artificial product wins. Like sweet-n-sour pickled herring. Delicious. But off-the-shelf, it's spoiled with sweeteners today, instead of good old sugar.

Pet peeve of mine is trying to buy those packaged cups of pre-cut fruit in liquid. In the US at least, the fruit can be found floating in several subtly different liquids, including:

* a light sugar syrup

* a heavy sugar syrup

* a naturally sweetened stevia syrup

* fruit juice from concentrate (usually/always white grape juice even though there are NO grapes in the product), with no added sugar/sweetener

* the fruit's own juices, not from concentrate, and with no added sugar/sweetener

* plain water and nothing else

The sugary syrups taste fine but I don't want added sugar in my fruit. Stevia doesn't combine well with fruit, because the fruit (peaches, say) is already sweet and the stevia taste clashes badly. Same for the white grape juice from concentrate - why would I want my peaches to taste like grapes?

Only the last two are acceptable to me - I want the fruit floating in _its own juices_ with no modifications made. Water is also fine but is even more rare than juices-only.

Guess which types are the hardest to find at the grocery store? Yeah, the last two, juices-only and water-only.

Similar story for applesauce. There are several different sweetened varieties, but unsweetened applesauce is comparatively rare. The best applesauce is unsweetened with cinnamon added ... mmm! But make sure it's not the type with apple skins floating around in the sauce, that's just wrong.

Well, the one with sugar sell much faster as more people eat them.

People don't read ingredients. They read what's out in front.

As to why it is legal to sell Strawberry Pop Tarts that don't contain any strawberry is beyond me.

The first line should be: ARTIFICIALLY FLAVORED POP TARTS. The subtitle should be Strawberry flavored.

I understand that it is easier (which translated into cheaper) to create a vanilla flavored compound from oil, but as the consumer it must be plain obvious. It must be part of the text that I read when selecting a product, not when I hold a product and look up close.

Going back to the sugar, another pet peeve of mine is: these sugars not derived from sugar cane or sugar beets but agave and then labeled as natural sugars. It's the same thing. For the most part, it is a gigantic dose of calories that are incredibly bad for you. Same with honey [^1].

How is it legal to sell a product that has >50% the daily amount of recommended sugar?

[^1]: ok technically honey has a higher glycemic index

Only reason it is a huge deal is because people absolutely love products with artificial sweeteners. People from all walks of life.

I just never got a taste for them, the sweeteners stand out to me as disgusting. I'd much prefer real sugar and simply regulating my intake.

So in my mind, the fact that it's even being discussed only affirms my decision to stay away from any artificial sweetener. I noticed recently a vitamin drink I sometimes buy as a last resort contains steviol sweeteners which are based on the stevia plant, that's as far as I'm willing to stretch my own rules.

> So in my mind, the fact that it's even being discussed only affirms my decision to stay away from any artificial sweetener.

> I'd much prefer real sugar and simply regulating my intake.

You stay away from artificial sweeteners because there's a remote possibility they might be harmful, and prefer sugar, which is demonstrably harmful. Why is that?

> Why is that?

They answer your question: “the sweeteners stand out to me as disgusting.”

There are some people who sense different flavours differently. Those who preceive cilantro as soapy is a famous example. Makes sense to me that for some artifical sweeteners would taste off too.

Plus our sense of taste is affected by all kind of psychological associations. (For example many people preceive “expensive wine” more flavourfull than the same liquid branded as “cheap wine”.)

But if their decision was only based on taste, how can this discussion affirm it?

> how can this discussion affirm it?

Imagine something always tasted vile to you. So you decide to not consume it, but you see that others are consuming it. Then you learn that some signs point towards it being unhealthy. Would that make you think "I knew it! I tasted the poison" (aka affirming your initial decision) or would it undermine it in your opinion?

Neither, it would do "it always tasted bad to me, and, unrelatedly, it also seems to be bad for you".

For me it's that aspartame tastes absolutely horrible. I can always pick it out in a drink. Can't stand it.

Same here, I like it with food, but I can't stand it on its own. It has a disgusting metallic aftertaste.

> prefer sugar, which is demonstrably harmful

Tastes awful, screws up your gut microbiome, causes glucose intolerance in mice.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweete...

If sugar is bad for your health why is it so hard to avoid in foods? And why is it replaced with artificial sweeteners?

Sugar is as natural as a sweetener gets. It's definitely bad for you, addictive, and all sorts of things, but in small doses...

Why is it relevant how natural it is?

Why would it not be relevant? Naturally-occurring materials have a much better chance of being biologically uncontroversial when introduced to the human organism -- not that eg cyanogenic glycosides, which can kill you, don't exist in apricots, but some levels of those dangerous compounds can be processed because they've been a component of the natural world for evolutionary time. The idea that modern science, let alone modern-science-as-influenced-by-capitalism, can't properly perceive the consequences of artificial compounds is what TFA is about, and if TFA isn't convincing I invite you to consider PFAS, BPA, or leaded gasoline.

Also see previous discussion from yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36762301

I've been addressing my glucose intolerance issues through an ultra-low carb diet for over a decade, and while I've cut out almost all products with natural or artificial sweeteners, my two remaining sweeteners of choice are stevia and aspartame. I use a combination of those for the occasional baked good, such as almond cookies or pudding as per diabetic recipes from the 1800s [0]. The recipe calls for saccharin tablets, which were used as a sweetener for almost 100 years; the question I always ask is, "Did bladder cancer rates increase in diabetics using saccharin over almost 100 years?" If the answer is no, then why replace an inexpensive sweetener with Aspartame? If Aspartame has not created a wave of new cancers in its user base, then I ask myself, "Why replace another inexpensive sweetener with sucralose?" When I started my new way of eating, I ordered sucralose drops (because at the time, I wanted to "test" all sweeteners), and while the drops themselves did not increase my blood glucose, to me, sucralose left a very sickly-sweet, unpleasant feeling at the back of my tongue. My pedestrian understanding of the process used to make sucralose is that it takes tons of sugar to create pounds of sucralose – not sure if that contributes to it being sickly-sweet. The WHO is right in cautioning the use of any sweetener (natural or artificial), but it seems silly to single one out at this time. I'm confident that in 40 years, sucralose will be explicitly added to the list (and industry will switch yet again to the latest artificial sweetener).

0: https://archive.org/details/dietinsicknessa00hartgoog/page/n...

I'm going to have a Coke Zero.

The acesulfame potassium does taste a lot better.

Enjoy! I personally think aspartame is crap but I also think worrying about everything can also lead to health issues.

Diet Coke is terrible.

Two months without Coke and I can’t taste the difference between Coke and Pepsi anymore

I, too, cannot taste the difference between beverages I don't drink.

Coca-cola is quite acidic though (pH of 2.52) - almost as acidic as a typical lemon. Those with sensitive stomachs might want to dilute with a meal.

Was suffering a large number of TIAs, and some clots in lungs.

When I stopped drinking a sugar free energy drink that had Erythritol my episodes drastically reduced. From weekly to every few months.

I have Factor 5 Leiden. So I predisposed to clots, but certain chemicals seem make it a lot works.

Any stevia users here? Never liked the taste of aspartame (sucralose is okay) but if the docs start pondering whether or not stevia has links to cancer, I might be nervous. I drink a lot of the stuff.

There's a soda in the US called Zevia that uses Stevia. It's incredible, tastes just like regular soda (they have all the major name brand flavor equivalents), and it's clear which is kinda trippy (something that looks like sparkling water but instead tastes like dark syrupy root beer). It also mixes just like the real thing if you're looking for sugar-free mixed drinks.

Gotta disagree there, tried Zevia after hearing this kind of praise but I find it just as bad as typical sugar-free sodas. Ymmv.

Oh no! I've been drinking Zevia daily for almost a year now and it 100% replaces conventional HFCS soda for me. We haven't had Coke in the house since we discovered Whole Foods sells 12-pack cases of Zevia in all flavors. My favorites are cherry cola and Dr. Zevia, with cream soda and root beer very close behind.

Some flavors are caffeinated, others non-caffeinated, and I'm just as subject to caffeine addiction as I am to sugar, so the option to keep some of the spice flowing is nice.

The only flavor that didn't cut it was the mtn dew flavor, can't really replicate that particular beverage without all the bad ingredients so it fell a bit flat.

The other drink that's good are the carbonated sucralose drinks in the tall plastic containers. They sell under a few brands, most often Sparkling Ice or Sparkling Frost.

There is also powdered and liquid drink additive, sold as Stur (stevia), PurAqua (sucralose), and True Lemon (cane sugar + stevia) - no carbonation here, but fine in a pinch.

Hydration comes into play. I drink a lot of this stuff figuring hey, the first ingredient is water, so I probably don't need to drink as much water, right? But my lips still get chapped if I don't have at least one glass of pure water a day.

Felt like the Cola flavor was the worst of them all, maybe I have a too strong bias that a Cola should mostly taste like Coke or something. Anyway, I've settled on sparkling waters like Bubly/Lacroix which hit the fizzy fruity drink thing well enough for me.

Stopped drinking soda 5 years ago. Never drank the diet stuff. Did the diet stuff taste like mild poison to anyone else? Maybe body knows best.

Nice to see the nuanced problem explained clearly.

Didn't we have this exact post yesterday? HN's dupe filter seems broken.

I remember over a decade ago when some of the connections to aspartame and cancer were first coming out. My mom decided to switch from Diet Coke to regular Coke because it was safer. Yet she continued smoking until she got cancer and a bit after until complications from Covid (unvaccinated) finally finished off her lungs. People generally seem to be pretty bad at risk assessment.

Reminds me of being younger and going to music festivals where their would be hippies extolling the virtues of an organic green diet while still smoking cigs.

Pickled vegetables are possibly carcinogenic ? what?

"Possibly carcinogenic" in WHO terms basically means "someone once did a study that may have found a possible link, so we can't prove that it's totally not carcinogenic".

To put it in starker contrast, there is a category that is "probably not carcinogenic." There is literally nothing on that list.

It was a thing a several years ago - a study found an association between higher consumption of pickled foods and some GI cancers.

I knew a man who, when he sliced apple to eat it, he would carefully remove area near calyx (the black part at the bottom of the apple), not just calyx but way more than necessary, maybe 1cm around it. When I asked him why he cut off so much, he said:

"Calyx is the remnant of the flower and when apple is in bloom, it is the most susceptible to pests so that's when the farmers apply the most pesticides. The concentration of pesticides is largest near calyx and it partially diffuses into the body of the apple so that's why I remove so much."

Few years later he died of cancer.

> Few years later he died of cancer.

So he was right to be cautious because he was susceptible to cancer. I dislike when people use anecdotes like this to imply that you should do nothing. What's the point of exercising, looking both ways before you cross the street, if you could get mauled by a dog tomorrow?

Both of you raise good points. The wisdom on the parent is: life is dangerous and there is only so much you can do to avoid death. You probably shouldn't, then, waste time with unusual and extravagant prevention measures like their example.

> You probably shouldn't, then, waste time with unusual and extravagant prevention measures like their example.

I also disagree with this. That kind of thinking leads to less progress in figuring out if/how we can prolong life. Perhaps your kind of thinking is why people like Bryan Johnson get ridiculed for trying.

Trying things and failing/succeeding is how we figure things out.

The kind of thinking that leads to more progress would have to involve a scientific approach to understanding cost/benefit of death prevention measures, not random activities such as "let me cut 1cm away from the stem because I won't get cancer".

Is this even true? Is 1cm the right gap? How many people get hurt by this extra measure? Are we overlooking other death prevention measures while focusing on this (which could be seen with a control group)? Reminds me parents obsessing about micro toddler safety while overlooking the swimming pool in the backyard.

Anecdotal death prevention measures will likely lead to shorter, not longer lifespans.

Or maybe he would have died 10 years earlier without it.

This story is the equivalent of "I know a guy who wore a mask every day and still got covid"

Daily reminder that aspartame is a really bad migraine trigger, this comment will get downvoted as usual, but hopefully other people suffering from it see this.

We should post everything that could be a migraine trigger

Sunlight, artificial light, weird smells, etc etc

Well, the article and the post are about aspartame specifically.

Has there been any study into the mechanism of this? I'm not finding it but it seems pretty cemented by migraine sufferers that it will trigger them.

Most of what I'm finding about the association also lists alcohol as a much bigger trigger, which I hear (unsurprisingly, I guess) less anecdotally among migraine-suffering friends of mine.

Note (per my other comment) the connection between aspartame and migraines is not extremely strong. Nonetheless, I've found one source that labels possible formaldehyde sensitivity.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/579335 (http://whilesciencesleeps.com/pdf/328.pdf)

If this is the actual mechanism, it would suggest that those people should avoid formaldehyde-containing foods in general, like apples, bananas, grapes, onions, carrots, seafood, beef, and poultry.

Why would this get downvoted "as usual"? I suffer from migraines and did not know this so I appreciate the info very much. I will do just about anything to avoid a migraine as will likely most who suffer from them would. I don't get why HN would be against spreading this info?

Because people not suffering from migraines did not have firsthand experience and assume it is the same as other conditional triggers such as sunlight or anything that induces vasodilation or especially vasodilation after vasoconstriction (workout + caffeine comedown into a hot shower can do you in easily).

But you are running off of sample size 1. That's why people don't like your comment.

There is a massive difference between "Aspartame causes migraines" and "Aspartame causes migraines for me"

I haven't voted on that comment, but it's overconfident, it jumps to conclusions too quickly.

It's possible aspartame is bad for migraines. Given that migraines are really bad, then you might as well avoid aspartame, it's not like you're losing much compared to the potential gain.

But what's very bad is to talk like we know for sure. Maybe cheese causes migraines, maybe alcohol causes migraines, maybe not enough cheese causes migraines. Maybe we'll think something completely different a few years from now, because collecting good information is just incredibly hard.

The truth is medical science hasn't figured it out yet. It's okay to try things and see if it works for you, but do it with care and humility. There's no secret knowledge being censored here. But overconfidence ends up doing more harm than good, so we should be more careful than that.

I think your phrasing is much too strong. Research shows that about 8% of migraine sufferers self-report that they believe that aspartame triggers their migraines [1]. Placebo-controlled studies show mixed results, and only at high doses (Along the lines of what you'd get from drinking 10-14 cans of aspartame-sweetened soda per day), and only for a subset of the migraine-suffering population, and only for those who don't suffer from cyclical migraines or status migrainosus [2].

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2708042/ 2: https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...

Unfortunately, psychosomatic migraines are just as painful as ones with material causes.

Alcohol consumption is explicit and alcohol is a known vasodilator. Aspartame consumption is often unsuspected because you have to specifically check if you are ingesting it (accidentally or otherwise) which would skew data from self-reports.

Possibly cause, sure, but that stance is not the reason this comment will be down-voted.

Guy I know used to drink diet coke decades ago. In the 80's he started getting bad reactions. Terrible migraines with tunnel vision. He'd be useless for hours. He was told at the time "it rots your brain." He stopped but it would continue if he ever accidentally consumed aspartame.

I never really knew what to make of it, and always wondered if there was a connection with PKU disorder.

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