Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group | Hacker News Reader

Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group

theguardian.com

163 pointscassianoleal145 comments

What kind of journalism is this?

First, The Guardian uses statements from a no-name group "US Right-To-Know" instead of doing fact-finding themselves. Fact-finding is what good journalism is all about.

Second, it is quite bold to assume that any academic who produced a joint industrial-academic report is corrupt. Setting aside the borderline irresponsible generalisation, many universities set strict conditions for such cooperation. The most prominent is a condition not to be paid or remunerated in any other way for the joint work. The Guardian did not even try to check if any remuneration took place.

This makes it impossible for me to form an opinion about the article contents.

Indeed the sourcing is weird. The Guardian is not what it used to be.

Indeed, I just stopped reading half way through, because it's extremely low quality journalism. A conflict of interest doesn't mean full blown corruption, they might still have done the right thing with a conflict of interest. That's the job of the journalist, to properly dig in and find evidence for their case. Instead they just introduced more noise to an already noisy topic full of controversy.

Does this change the scientific consensus? It seems like aspartame is actually safe in the concentrations we use - noted bad effects happen at very high amounts, like the equivalent of 150 cans of diet coke level high. Has anything absurdly changed on this front?

There's studies on it destroying the gut flora that is continuously being ignored.

Also sending "sweet" signals from the mouth can't be good in the long run, - pretty sure it spikes insulin somewhat, and even if not we need to understand diet in a holistic way - if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

That said i've consumed a lot of the stuff in my time and is not that worried.

There's a lot of other things I'm going to die from before I die from artificial sweeteners.

That's an overly simplistic model. The factors leading to your demise are interrelated in a complex way. Diet (including sweeteners) can affect your weight and diabetes risk, which can affect a number of downstream morbidities (heart disease, kidney disease, cancer), any of which can be the one to take you out.

A quip from Adam Eget on one of Norm Macdonald's podcasts: A lot of things would have to go very right for me to end up dying from too much salt.

There are millions of people with cgms that drink soda with artificial sweeteners that see no spike in their blood sugar. There are enough people in this world that would have to deal with serious health complications if aspartame caused BG spikes that we'd know for absolutely certain if it did. And we don't.

Destroying, or changing? I've read these articles in the past, and the wording is careful. Or has this changed recently?

> Also sending "sweet" signals from the mouth can't be good in the long run

Well that's a bold statement based on nothing...

> pretty sure it spikes insulin somewhat,

Pretty sure "pretty sure" isn't the basis upon which to set health or food safety policy.

Funny enough their guesses are backed by recent studies.

Funnily enough 'sweeteners' as a class are so diverse that any claim that 'recent studies' universally show a common effect can be thrown straight into the rubbish bin.

Erithritol, Stevia, and Aspartame are all so wildly different that it is implausible they share a common mode of action.

How would it spike insulin, if it does not contain carbohydrates (or any micronutrient for that matter)?

My psych seems to worry way more about sugar, caffeine, and blue light than she worries about harmful thoughts and habits. I managed to please her by switching to cases and cases of flavored sparkling water. It tastes pretty good.

I don't enjoy drinking a lot of soda, but god, it's so ubiquitous, it's not easy to drink anything else. I mean, I usually choose iced tea instead, but a lot of times, if I go to a restaurant, I have a menu of crap where I choose the least harmful thing possible.

science is finding new significance in the role of the gut biome ; if a food additive is destructive to the ecology of the gut, that may have emotional health implications with real causality

Science is publishing all sorts of papers about the gut biome, and almost all those papers will turn out to be misleading or wrong.

> Does this change the scientific consensus?

No. This "possibly carcinogenic" classification (IARC group 2B) comes from IARC. While nominally IARC is an agency under WHO, in practice IARC is known to operate very independently. Independent of WHO, and independent of scientific consensus.

For example, cell phone radiation is also in IARC group 2B "possibly carcinogenic". While the scientific consensus is that cell phone radiation does not cause cancer.

Also, IARC never classifies anything non-carcinogenic. See the empty group 4 here:

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

Scientific consensus may change, but the odd nature of IARC is somewhat well known. If scientific consensus changes, it will be after some influential new studies, not because IARC has published a report.

I've been deeply skeptical of studies claiming artificial sweeteners to be harmful, because we know refined sugar is harmful. Sugar producers have a lot to gain from spreading FUD about artificial sweeteners.

BUT.. there isn't much evidence that Big Sugar is interfering with the science, while there is a lot of evidence that Big Soda definitely is. What I've read is that the WHO was able to say aspartame might be harmful because it's not compromised the way American agencies are. This article in particular:

https://www.vox.com/2023/7/1/23780348/aspartame-cancer-carci...

I think the bottom line is soda is not healthy, diet soda is not healthy.

> I've been deeply skeptical of studies claiming artificial sweeteners to be harmful

Your body has a certain reaction to sugar.

You give it a different "sugar" but it will be fooled.

We don’t really have enough studies to show that artificial sweeteners aren’t harmful, and plenty that show that they are likely at least somewhat harmful re: changes in glucose metabolism and gut flora. But at the same time, we don’t have any concrete evidence that they are significantly harmful, or at least any more than the hundreds of carcinogens we’re exposed to on a daily basis.

Microplastics and PFAS, anyone? Or chromium-6 contamination above recommended limits in almost the entire nation’s water supply?

I might just be tired, but it seems like this article is poorly written. Which contention is tied to the alleged front group? Is Coca-Cola trying to get us to believe that aspartame is dangerous, or are they trying to get us to believe it's not dangerous?

It's not immediately obvious to me that Coca Cola would benefit from either argument. Don't they sell a crapload of aspartame?

The WHO issued two statements against aspartame, then a third saying it was safe. The third paragraph of the article states

That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group, the public health advocacy group US Right-To-Know said in a recent report.

It's pretty obvious in the article? The WHO put out multiple, seemingly contradictory articles a while ago (I remember reading about it, and people were confused at the time). Turns out the one that say it was safe was secretly funded by Coca-Cola.

It's fairly obvious that they would benefit from apartame's potential risks being ignored.

To clarify, without reading the French article, it appears not that the third group was explicitly funded by Coca Cola, rather, many of the members on the committee have in the past been associated (membership on the board, attending conferences, membership in working groups, etc.) with a Coca Cola front group.

yeah the implication is "... clearly Coca Cola is involved".

Aspartame's potential risks, as compared with sucroses?

Because I don't recall hearing about any aspartame-linked deaths ever, while I know that diabetes is a killer.

I was having the same issues. It appears nothing is written directly nowadays.

From the article: > A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a “possible carcinogen”, then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings – people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago, before new science cited by WHO raised health concerns.

So, the second of your ideas is the correct interpretation. In my real layman's take of the timeline it went as such:

1) First report says Aspartame potentially bad.

2) Second report says, yeah, pretty sure Aspartame bad and going to go on the naughty list.

3) Third report comes out contradicting the previous reports, says everything is okie dokie artichokie.

The third report is the one being linked to a Coca-Cola front group.

The food industry in the US is making us sick. Full stop. Combine that with a healthcare industry that cares for anything but health[1] and I can't help but think we may be on the precipice of a set of problems not seen before in society.

1: My wife is a Nurse Practitioner with 20 years of experience. Her and every provider she knows that I have met have, in sadness, agreed with that statement. They got into medicine to help people but the companies they work for only see patients as profit centers.

I'm assuming you're a North American like myself. I find it shocking how attitudes towards health and food in Europe are so different from here. Flying back from France or Italy through the USA is a surreal experience -- obesity is a major problem in America and a pretty bad one in Canada as well.

I am convinced it's not a problem of willpower, but the food just being engineered to be addictive and overly flavourful at any cost.

ahhhh Doritos!

Not even once.

(too late)

Yeah it's difficult, bodyshaming is too much of a thing. Even something as simple as MSG makes you want to eat much more.

MSG occurs naturally in some foods but they tended to be really expensive (e.g. highly matured cheeses) so it was not such a big deal. But now it's added to everything.

It's true that MSG content in e.g. aged parmesan is high... but it's not so low in e.g. cheddar and people tend to use a lot more of that.

Also mushrooms, tomatoes, etc. especially dried.

Mainly staying away from too much processed foods helps, but MSG content isnt' the main problem with them, it's a combination of flavoring agents + very high calorie density.

I don't know, it feels like they are engineered.

Sometimes I'm not hungry at all but I take a small bowl of potato chips with a movie. Then after that I get a real craving for MORE. And I end up eating the whole bag. It's weird. I don't have it before I start.

Maybe other more natural snacks would be better yes but they are just so nice.

That "cheddar" isn't cheddar. It's probably not even cheese. It's a yellow melting slab. Not a lot of people actually eat real cheddar.

True, the cheddar I'd use to get in Ireland was very different than the yellow plastic-wrapped slices you get in the supermarket, or the gooey slabs at McDonald's.

It was more crumbly and a darker orange colour. Also much stronger taste.

They had it in the supermarket but it was not the wrapped-slice stuff but sold in bricks.

I'm surprised they're allowed call that stuff Cheddar actually.

If I recall correctly, the MSG content in both is not inconsiderable, so this isn't really a counterpoint.

Obesity is a major problem across Europe increasingly [0]. Britain is nearly as obese as the US now for example.

Australia and New Zealand have similar obesity problems as the US and Canada.

Europe is just catching up to the mistakes the US has made since the 1980s. Some nations are faring better due to their culture (strongly ingrained behaviors) holding back the mistakes, such as eg France.

[0] WHO report: Europe can reverse its obesity “epidemic” | https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/03-05-2022-new-who-repo...

"The report, launched at a press event on 3 May and presented at the European Congress on Obesity, reveals that in the European Region, 59% of adults and almost 1 in 3 children (29% of boys and 27% of girls) are overweight or living with obesity. Obesity prevalence for adults in the European Region is higher than in any other WHO region except for the Americas."

While Europe is not immune (and obesity is rising), I suspect the EU will have a much more pro-active attitude towards stemming the rise.

It's hard to find data, but America had an early, meteoric rise in obesity starting in the 90s (after a slow rise in the 80s) that I believe is far worse than what Europe saw. Europe is catching up, however, and I imagine there's at least some "americanization" of food to be blamed here.

One little data point. Until like 10 years ago you never got sauces with your food (except fast food), and especially not in your salads here.

Now there's a full sauce menu everywhere and I suspect coleslaw defeats the point of having a salad completely.

Particularly the way coleslaw is presented in the US. You can make a perfectly delicious and healthful coleslaw without mayonnaise or cream (or sugar!)

I just looked at the ingredients of a premade coleslaw (Safeway). The second and third ingredients are mayonnaise and sugar respectively.

Mayo in the US is poison, you couldn't pay me to eat it.

I think it's the rise of transported from afar cheap vegetables. Since they are more sturdy, they are cheaper, it's more lucrative (and budget friendly when cooking at home) to get bland supermarket tomatoes and make a salad with them, by adding sauce.

Locally sourced vegetables can be much more flavourful, reducing the need for additional sauces. I always enjoy making a "tomato, cucumber, olive oil" salad and watch foreigners coming to Bulgaria ask "oh wow what sauce did you use" and I go - none, that's how those veggies are supposed to taste.

But you only get those kind of supplies by going to a bazaar/market and pick them out individually yourself.

Unfortunately, obesity trends in Europe are catching up with the US (in many countries, at least): https://www.obesityevidencehub.org.au/collections/trends/adu...

I think it is willpower and the food itself. The food taxes willpower, which is a finite resource, and the food industry is winning.

I know the debate between big and small government is endless, but there are some cases of choice removal that are good.

The recent headlines that "CA are banning Skittles"[1] are emblematic of the power of the food lobby. They are in no way banning Skittles. They are banning 3 chemicals, 1 of which is banned for putting on your skin but not in your stomach. All are banned in the EU (I believe).

Google results for the quoted string above are littered with results that don't say one thing about the truth.

[1] https://www.today.com/food/news/california-bill-ab418-skittl...

I don't think you can or should blame willpower here. If the carrying capacity of an environment is finite and you overwhelm it, you blame the stressor, not the capacity.

I agree that the industry is too good at setting the narrative and "flooding the zone" in the US, however.

I agree with your point about stress, but I have a more charitable read of GP's post.

As someone who has had these kinds of issues in the past, I think it's important to acknowledge the effect food has on "willpower". I wanted to eat less, but some foods made it nigh impossible to stop once I'd started. And I've noticed that they also make you not want to eat anything else, so when you run out, you'll buy the same crap again.

This compounds in other areas of life, too: I was a lazy slob because I had no energy to do anything, even though I was consuming massive amounts of calories.

So in that light, I think GP very much blames the stressors: the companies overwhelming the willpower.

You did a better job of explaining what I meant. Thanks.

I have struggled with a sugar addiction my whole life. I've read that sugar is in nearly every packaged food. It's just too hard to avoid, unless you make all your own food from scratch.

Also, sugar is everywhere. Trying to avoid it is nearly impossible. People bringing sweets to work, going to the store, bakery (obvious, but sometimes you go to pick up bread), coffee shop, etc. It's literally everywhere.

Companies definitely intentionally overwhelm our willpower.

That's what I've also noticed. What helped me a lot, was that during university I wasn't particularly social, so I was able to stop eating sweets (by not buying them, and not being in a place where they were offered freely – think parties and such).

This worked to the point that I stopped identifying those as food, and would actually not want to eat any when encountering them, although two years prior I'd buy Snickers bars by the truckload.

Of course, later I more or less relapsed, by trying just this piece of cake when eating out. Which became more and more regular. Of course, eating out is terrible for this, as I'm pretty sure they put tonnes of sugar in their sauces. Otherwise, I can't explain why eating a steak in a restaurant will make me hungry two hours later, whereas eating the same-sized steak at home, but without the sauce, will have me satiated until evening.

> I am convinced it's not a problem of willpower, but the food just being engineered to be addictive and overly flavourful at any cost.

This is where I'm at with our processed food in the US, and I agree with this as an actual recovering addict (opioids). Massive lucrative businesses have been built on addiction and making things more addictive. We allowed this trend to continue in our culture by voting with our dollars, and I suppose wr could point fingers all day, but I also land back on the question of how do we, as a society, fix it and do better moving forward?

The world works on money. Socialized health care in Canada so if obesity and related health issues such as diabetes and so many other issues brought on by decreased mobility as seen with obese people costs the system too much money there will be an incentive to change it. We already are starting to see sugar taxes. Corporations and citizens can be taxed more just like cigarettes to help pay for healthcare costs and programs. Subsidies for gym memberships could be offered. Schools could include more health and fitness. Reduce taxes on qualified health foods. And ultimately an attitude shift. We have so many “influencers” promoting extremely obese body types as natural and okay. I would never body shame anyone but let’s get real about things and praise more healthy role models.

> I am convinced it's not a problem of willpower

This is an interesting thought. I agree, but I also agree, in a sense, when people say we need to have more willpower in order to overcome the problem. Yet, I agree with it in the same way I agree I need to have stronger muscles if I want to beat a grizzly bear in a wrestling match. Of course I do. But is it practical or even humanly possible? Not really and almost certainly not. I'm worried that the engineering we're doing to food is essentially that grizzly bear, and we're at a point where it's becoming borderline inhuman to tackle that problem.

Humans are not islands, and as individuals, we depend immensely upon the decisions others make around us in order to thrive. At the moment, our food industry expressly undermines our ability to thrive in order to ensure it thrives instead. In terms of health outcomes, it appears to me that some of the best things that can happen to you as a child are a) not being exposed to much sugar, thus not developing much of a taste for it, b) not having access to convenience foods such as fast food, instant meals, to-go items, etc, and c) being introduced and accustomed to whole foods early in life such that they're appealing and gratifying later in life. In North America, we seem to actively work against this happening.

I know people have a lot of willpower. We've survived this far because of it. Today we still have as much as our ancestors did, but our attention and energy is so broadly divided and absorbed so intensively. The project of not eating unhealthy food is—bizarrely—an intensive and demanding one for those of us who have been pulled into its grip. To say no to the craving, or to delve into the science of what's harming us and how, or why such delicious food is unhealthy even though so many people insist otherwise, is a serious job in and of itself. Frankly I don't fault anyone for struggling in that battle.

So, sure, willpower would help. But most of us are tapped out. We need to reduce the need for willpower at a systemic level. Suggesting otherwise often ignores one's good fortune of not needing that willpower in the first place, or having the opportunity to focus one's willpower for one reason or another. This good fortune is rare for many, many people.

its because to make everything 'low-fat' they reduced flavor, so everything now has sugar added to it.

Low-fat also means no satisfaction. You can eat a ton of rice cakes to no avail. Try a salad with no oil or cheese. Ugh.

> the food just being engineered to be addictive and overly flavourful at any cost.

Not only. Highly palatable foods are also designed to bypass and confuse our satiety response so that we consume vastly more of it than we would if we were eating "regular" food.

Mandatory for profit economy results in inhumane outcomes. Full stop.

The world is incomparably better than pre-capitalism. Yes, the healthcare system in the USA sucks. Doesn’t invalidate the rest of the thing.

Sure, it has been better since the economy switched away from serfs and slaves to wage labor.

It does, though. Same shit can be seen everywhere. Food for profit? Addictive poison. Health for profit? Ineffective care with prolonged suffering and excluded populace. Cars for profit? Emission cheating, subscriptions. Farm equipment for profit? War on independent repair.

Profit motive worked when the market was regulated, there were not many monopolies, excessive profits were progressively taxed, research has been sufficiently well funded, worst jobs were outsourced to colonies and most importantly markets were not saturated and there was an organic demand for new and better products.

Also, "the world" is literally burning.

Healthcare isn't the only market where under-regulated capitalism has essentially corrupted it. Politics and finance are two others.

The issue at stake isn't healthy profit-seeking that happens in a regulated market - but the rent-seeking that occurs when markets break down (logical endgame of capitalism).

I think there are markets where competition creates wealth and markets where supply and demand is inherently dysfunctional. I recommend reading about "market failures" where a free market does not leave participants better off. (There are four broad categories of market failures). So the free market works where it does and doesn't in other cases.

Decent description below: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp

Replying to my own comment. If you are wondering why healthcare is specifically a market failure related to

1) Information asymmetry. Patients do not generally know how to select and shop for their treatment without medical expertise.

2) Adverse selection. Unhealthy people want good healthcare, which drives up the risk pool of "good plans". While insurance companies in general want healthier patients, which often leads to insurance firms to compete to offer plans that only appeal to the healthiest people. (I.e who can offer the most restrictive, and cheapest plans) see insurance death spiral. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_(insurance)

3) Perverse incentives. Profitable treatment does not always align with best treatment decisions. This both comes from providers and insurers. See information asymmetry.

4) Monopolistic characteristics: A Monopoly is generally defined by a firms ability to restrict output to reach the profit maximizing production (absent of meaningful competition). Try seeing a specialist on an HMO and you can figure the relation to healthcare. Significant regulatory and market capture makes avoiding with health insurance impossible (including your providers insurance), leading to spiraling costs.

This doesn’t have anything to do with capitalism.

> Mandatory for profit economy results in inhumane outcomes. Full stop.

How have the non-"Mandatory for profit economy" in communist states worked out?

You're misrepresenting the parent comment's viewpoint as a binary choice. There is a massive spectrum between shareholder-value-above-all and the "communism boogeyman".

What communist states? They all stopped at the bloody "revolution" and became dictatorships.

Sorry but I don't find many differences between large capitalist corporate hierarchical structure and the SSSR one. Do you?

Just stop subsidizing large businesses, revert regulatory capture and give incentives to start new businesses as coops for instance.

I get that most people have been brought up in the "greedy by default" mode, but that's no excuse to give up and just transact ourselves to oblivion.

Let's rediscover different ways of association.

If there were one food & safety item the Biden Administration should put its focus on, it's destroying the US addiction to sugar generally and high fructose corn syrup specifically. It would be an immense contribution to roll that backwards. And fix the mistake of proclaiming fat in general to be the problem decades past, by pushing national education on healthy / unhealthy fats. The US Government has a budget to put ads everywhere just focused on this matter.

And regarding the healthcare industrial complex. For the US scenario, there is only one approach that will work at this point: California needs to build its own universal healthcare system from the ground-up, and that includes utilizing the UC university system to train / educate its labor just to build that up. It's already understood how to model it, there are numerous good example nations to choose from (there are obviously multiple variations of a universal system that will work, and far better than what the US is doing now). California has scale and can control many aspects of a healthcare system that a smaller, weaker state can't (including manufacturing its own generic drugs if necessary).

Many prominent politicians keep trying to force universal healthcare as an idea, as though we can just slap it on top of our existing cost structure. It doesn't work right now due to the extreme cost of US healthcare (unless we want to instantly go broke nationally). You have to be able to start over from first steps and contain the cost correctly from day one. California is one of the few places that can do that, and it has the best shot at it overall (some money, majority favors universal healthcare politically, UC system, etc).

Sugar is really tough because a lot of popular items have much more sugar than most people realize. Consider this label of 2% Kroger milk[0]. That's 12g of sugar in one cup. If you stick two cups in your cereal, that's nearly 2/3 of the way to a can of coke and that's before you even consider how much sugar is in the cereal itself.

[0]https://www.kroger.com/product/images/large/left/00011110416...

Agreed. There are over 50 different names for sugar that the FDA will accept on the ingredients list and you can bet your ass the food manufacturers will take advantage of that.

I saw a popular granola bar once that listed four different kinds of sugar as the first four ingredients. Of course, the rest of the packaging touted the bar as being "healthy"

Wow just checked my brand of milk and it is the same. I never paid attention or realized that before.

Have a look at your peanut butter. That's right. The major food manufacturers add sugar to peanut butter.

One of the best peanut butters I've ever tasted was Crazy Richard's. Here's the ingredients list verbatim:

Peanuts. (No, seriously. That’s all.)

If you like milk, ultrafiltered milk (Fairlife is the big national brand, though I think there are some smaller brands) may be a good option here; its more expensive, but has less sugar (and not with any substitution).

Many products have a great deal of added sugar, but the sugar in milk is naturally occurring lactose. It would be better to remove the breakfast cereal from your diet than the milk.

Naturally occurring sugar is still sugar.

And wait until you find out what's in fruit juice.

It's a distraction. America isn't obese because milk has naturally occurring sugars.

This is so true, and so wrong. We will look back and see it as outright barbarism.

I think we're headed towards a major Constitution revision (or a sequel to the Declaration of Independence) within a couple of generations, and the "rights" we will enshrine will include things like "health care whose PKI is health outcomes and not profit" and "money cannot be a factor in elections".

Of course, voter education has to go right along with that.

Wait until you find out about the US cosmetics industry

https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-products-ingredients/...

And that includes additives strongly suspected of being carcinogenic like specific estrogen-agonistic parabens

Why did you cherry-pick the sentence that confirms your thesis? For the record, here is the full paragraph that adds way more context:

> The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act does not require cosmetic products and ingredients to be approved by FDA before they go on the market, except for color additives that are not intended for use as coal tar hair dyes. However, they must be safe for consumers under labeled or customary conditions of use. Companies and individuals who market cosmetics have a legal responsibility for the safety of their products and ingredients.

You clearly missed "however" that could undermine your thesis.

For example, here is what FDA says on parabens (something people often freak about needlessly): https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-ingredients/parabens-...

> Are parabens safe as they’re used in cosmetics? Are they linked to breast cancer or other health problems?

> FDA scientists continue to review published studies on the safety of parabens. At this time, we do not have information showing that parabens as they are used in cosmetics have an effect on human health. Here are some of the questions we are considering: (...)

Everything is carcinogenic. It's the dose that is a poison not the substance. That's what scientific evidence over long years of research shows.

> Everything is carcinogenic. It's the dose that is a poison not the substance. That's what scientific evidence over long years of research shows.

Definitely not my area of expertise, but I think this statement of yours is plain wrong. There are indeed certain substances (mutagenics) that are known to be carcinogenic where are others that are not. I think it doesn't depend on the quantity but on the substance itself.

> For example, here is what FDA says on parabens (something people often freak about needlessly)

1. Parabens aren't homogenous

2. There is very concrete evidence now that SPECIFIC parabens induce an identical or near-identical effect as an excessively high estrogen level, which includes breast cancer and cervical cancer.

3. There is also mounting evidence that SPECIFIC parabens accumulate in vitro and hence circumvent the metabolism.

4. There is recent evidence that it's a lot easier to cross the daily threshhold of topical paraben application than expected because consumers apply larger amounts of products.

> Everything is carcinogenic. It's the dose that is a poison not the substance

Of course, life itsself is carcinogenic but that doesn't mean all substances are equally dangerous, which is the whole point here.

> The food industry in the US is making us sick

Food industry everywhere is making everyone sick. The difference is culturally, we don’t care in the US. How many people in the US make food at home? And by make food, I don’t mean heat frozen meals or throw ready made pasta on pasta? That makes a huge difference on how sick we get.

While I agree with the truth of your first statement, your view seems rather black and white. Companies don’t only see patients as profit centers, most investors probably do. Anthropomorphizing corporations is of little value, arguably a dangerous abstraction.

Ever been to a medical provider (MD, NP, PA) and have them breeze in, mumble some questions to you, type some things on their computer while barely looking at you, and then breeze back out, all within 15 minutes?

That's because they are required to see as many patients as possible. One company my wife worked for required her to see 21 a day. She had bonuses tied to increased volume. Not their improved health outcomes. How many patients she saw.

Having bonuses tied to the number of patients she saw was something she experienced at every company she has worked for as an NP except one.

Now, tell me again how companies don't see patients as profit centers.

I agree with you that investors surely do. However, all but one of those companies she worked for were private companies--one was a family-owned practice.

No need to bring in a distracting discussion about private vs. public health system. In Europe the public health systems are doing terrible, too.

Things I've been told by doctors in USA and Europe: "Hospitals are full of obese and old people." "A significant chunk of the budget goes to a small fraction of extremely unhealthy people who keep coming back."

Boomers are getting really old and are starting to overload the system. Anything done to make them healthier counts.

Suppose aspartame is actually toxic. Wouldn’t that have population-level effects by now? It’s been in beverages for decades.

Other factors may have made any effect less obvious.

I'd imagine it would.be really hard to discover correlations for this. Doctors ask if you're a smoker, not a diet coke drinker.

At least some studies have shown correlation between increased artificial sweetener intake and BMI:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/

I personally avoid the stuff, preferring to just limit sugar.

Well most people who drink diet soda are fat. Why else would you drink it?

They say correlation does not imply causation, but have you noticed how often sentences with the word "correlation" also have the word "causation"?

When I drink Diet Coke, I choose to drink it to avoid ingesting 40g+ of sugar. And I also prefer its taste to compared to sugar. And I am the opposite of fat.

There's a reason that students are taught on day 1 of Statistics 101 that observational studies can only establish correlation, NOT causation. Otherwise we might as well just admit that cancer causes smoking.

It's one of the most pervasive and blatant errors seen in the news and social media.

The problem is we've been eating a bunch of other new industrial foods as well. There are a bunch of unexplained population-effects over the last 50 years such as increasing obesity, allergies, autism, different cancers, etc. It's just impossible to make the link between each new chemical and each new disease.

Well we've seen hockey stick shaped population level increases in obesity[1] and colon cancer[2] in the last 40 or so years. Doesn't go to say it was caused by aspartame, but I don't think it can be argued we haven't seen population level effects of something.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/hestat/obesity_adult_07_08/obe...

[2] https://gut.bmj.com/content/gutjnl/68/10/1820.full.pdf

Maybe that something was the explosive availability of added sugar and other carbohydrates.

There's a hilarious theory that it's due to the success of stamping out smoking. Nicotine being an appetite suppressant after all.

Might be the dawning of the age of aquarius. Not really enough evidence in any direction right now.

Colon cancer is correlated to red meat and processed meat consumption. Processed meat(eg:bacon and lunch meat) is a known carcinogen and red meat is a probable carcinogen.

We eat more eat meat than previous generations.

I don't think that's a convincing explanation of this type of broken trend line, unless there was some event in the early 2000s where everyone suddenly decided to eat 10 times as much processed meat...?

It's also not solid logic. Granting that processed meat increases colon cancer risk, that does not go to demonstrate that an observed increase in cancer risk is caused by processed meat. That's affirming the consequent.

Colon cancer has been dropping since the 90s.

https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/colorect.html

See the reference above.

There could be population level effects right now.

I think the better question is wouldnt research have uncovered something more damning by now. Its very well researched and the conclusions at this point are fairly benign. Yeah, dont drink 100 cans a day or you might have problems. That basically means its harmless. That makes it less dangerous than kale or spinach which you actually can eat concerning amounts of.

Wait, I want to hear more about the kale and spinach concerns. I love kale and spinach. What research should I read?

Ill see if I can find it. It was an article on HN yesterday about green smoothies. I think the concern with kale is thyroid problems and with spinach it’s kidney problems.

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37168142

Not the most self-contained reference for what Im referring to but its what prompted my comment. There are more details in the comments and should provide plenty of fodder to follow up on.

And this one puts the upper limit at 2.2lbs of kale per day https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/can-you-eat-raw-kale

So I guess its still unlikely that youd reach that but seems like a lot lower threshold than dangerous aspartame levels.

On another note, a friend of mine tried eating massive amounts of ginger to help his body heal from two years of heavy chemotherapy. The science behind his experimentation was sound and the cancer doctor confirmed that it might well work - without of course endorsing the approach.

He ended up with a platelet disorder. Anyhow... back to kale and spinach.

Population-level data, when combined with aspartame consumption, is enough to give us an approximate upper limit on how toxic aspartame is. The largest issue with estimating the upper level of toxicity would be if another unaccounted for population change decreased the risk of cancer at the same time aspartame increased the risk. Then, it's unfair to assign aspartame the entirety of that increased risk. There's probably hundreds of things introduced in modern life that have some impact on health but aren't fully accounted for in population level data.

All of this is to say, if aspartame caused cancer at the same rate as smoking, then we'd probably know about it by studying population-level data. There is a level of health impact that we should be concerned about but could get lost in all the other things happening to the population.

Obesity rates start dramatically rising around the time aspartame came to market in 1993. CDC's data isn't very granular[0], but there is a slight upward trend until 1976-1980, the next data point 1986-1994 is significantly higher and continues to rise at a much higher rate. Obviously correlation, but obesity is a contributing factor to a significant number of diseases and health issues.

There's a Quora answer that suggests aspartame was banned in France in 2015, but aspartame searches are so astroturfed on Google that I can't find anything that confirms that. There also doesn't seem to be any obvious obesity studies with data from France after 2010, if that's true.

At least one study suggests artificial sweeteners break satiation leading to increased consumption[1].

Aspartame may not be directly toxic, but there seems to be increasing evidence that it negatively affects dietary habits of some portion of the population, and that it does not contribute to weight reduction in human consumers[2].

0 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-adult-17-18/obe... 1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/ 2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817779/

As your own summary of the chart you're reading shows, there doesn't seem to be any causal link between the introduction of aspartame and obesity, since sharp rises in obesity predate the introduction of aspartame.

My original comment should say 1983, not 1993. We apologize for the error.

Edit: Removed my previous diatribe about graph interpretation because I realized it was my mistake that caused confusion.

Is it possible for a US federal organization to settle the science question sufficiently, in a timely manner?

And for US regulatory authorities to take any appropriate action based on that?

Also, whenever it's found that a company is knowingly creating a public health hazard, including by suppressing and falsifying scientific research, do we yet have federal mechanisms to smack that down while it's happening?

If PFAS compounds are any indication, no. Industry will successfully stall and sow doubt on the science question for decades. Regulatory authorities will act after that, at which point they switch to a similar compound and the clock resets. Fifty years later, there'll be a settlement far lower than the accumulated profits that doesn't begin to cover the damages.

I'm conflicted about this story. I fully believe that Coca-cola and other megacorps would have front groups undermining health research, but I'd normally expect it to be arguing against sugar replacements.

The linked report is done by a group that has previously found the front group working to undermine warnings about sugar and soda taxes (which despite the name are generally sugar taxes, and don't apply to low sugar sodas):

> ILSI sugar study out of ‘tobacco industry’s playbook’

> In 2016, public health experts denounced an ILSI-funded sugar study published in a prominent medical journal that was a “scathing attack on global health advice to eat less sugar,” reported Anahad O’Connor in the New York Times. The ILSI-funded study argued that warnings to cut sugar are based on weak evidence and cannot be trusted.

But I guess it's possible that both Sugar and Aspartame are bad for you and they'll just try to undermine any possible health risk from the so-called "food" industry.

> WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a “possible carcinogen”

Not WHO. IARC declared [1]. WHO itself took a more nuanced position [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Agency_for_Resea...

[2] https://www.who.int/news/item/14-07-2023-aspartame-hazard-an...

The accusation (it's clearer if you read the linked report that the Guardian story is reporting on) is that the more nuanced position was the result of the people making the decision having hidden links to Coca-cola.

It seems to me that at this point there are certain topics that trigger both superstitions and defensive reactions from industry that a totally different funding model is needed. How could we fund proper scientifc research on topics like sweeteners, Roundup or GMOs?

Wild idea: what if we evaluated research on its merits, looking at things like methodology, controls, and reproducibility?

Nah bruhh we just want to read headlines from the Daily Mail that tell us how to interpret complicated stuff

Ah, there must be a face-saving campaign on too, because when I see YouTube ads, I've been seeing a lot of content insisting "ASPARTAME IS SAFE."

no conflict = no interest

reproduce the science and publish the results or move on

it serves nobody to pretend as if some random group of people are going to organically put their resources into a specific study, and then act surprised when someone that is professionally familiar with the subject matter for money eventually is doing the studies

Aspartame has been a boogeyman for literally decades, and yet no solid experimental study has shown evidence of carcinogenic activity nor of any negative health effects at realistic quantities.

Any risk posed by aspartame is completely overshadowed by the risks posed by the sugary alterative.

Sugar in general is one of those topics where otherwise intelligent people will suddenly lose the capacity for critical thought-- espousing the use of fructose-based sweeteners (agave) in lieu of HFCS over some concern over fructose, or opting for "natural sucrose" over a non-caloric, zero GI option like erithrytol.

Asking questions about who is funding the research is valid but anytime someone starts coming for the non-sugar option it should raise red flags about the motive for doing so; I would argue that the sugar lobby is far more concerning than the sweetener lobby. Diabetes, not aspartame overdose, is the real killer today.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230818145647/https://www.thegu...

I would love to be a fly on the wall to find out about the infighting that happens between various sweetener manufacturers.

You can catch more flies with honey than with ORBIT® Gum

You mean the BS report that more confuses than helps people? That puts it as a “possible carcinogen” (list 2B https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IARC_MON... ) together with a laundry list of common things that may or may not cause cancer (in doses that may or may not be realistic)

You can bet that excessive sugar and obesity contribute more to overall disease than aspartame ever will.

Artificial sweeteners are, as a class, extra fattening. They are absolutely counterproductive to anyone trying to reduce weight or indulgence in sweet foods.

The sweeteners are far sweeter than anything in nature, and so they trick the body into going into a sugar-processing mode, but there's no sugar to be had, so the pancreas goes absolutely nuts. Artificial sweeteners are essentially malware that you're putting into your body to hack its processes.

No, this myth needs to die

Calories are fattening. Energy does not come from the void. Period

Problem is people overcompensating because they had a diet coke so they think it's ok to get the large fries

But why do artificial sweeteners exist? Why bother putting them in food in the first place? It seems like we've received some irrational fear of real sugar and made to feel like, we consumed too much of it, so here's this fake replacement so you can consume all the shit you like, but guilt-free.

There's also been an absurd increase in the sweetening of every food, where things like bread just have massive amounts of HFCS and there's been a backlash about that. I think that all this insistence on sweetening everything has just created a market where people don't care how they get their sweet fix, they just want it so desperately that they're willing to consume horrible synthetic toxic waste to get it.

I would strongly encourage anyone who regularly consumes Coke to switch to black coffee or tea for a month and take notes on how they feel.

Why? What did you experience?

Coffee has acrylamide which has actually been shown to cause cancer.

> Q. What is acrylamide and what do we know about its link to cancer?

> A. Coffee can contain acrylamide, a chemical that is also used in certain industrial processes and has been commercially available since the 1950s. In addition to coffee, acrylamide is also found in French fries (frying causes acrylamide formation), toasted bread, snack foods, like potato chips and pretzels, crackers, biscuits, cookies and cereals, and in tobacco products. Acrylamide is classified by IARC as a “probable carcinogen,” based primarily on genotoxicity experiments in animals. In 2002, Swedish scientists discovered that acrylamide could be formed from asparagine (an amino acid) and sugar during high-heat cooking. This discovery led to intensified research into the association between acrylamide intake from diet and cancer risk in humans. In 2011 and 2014, two large studies summarized the evidence in humans and found no association between dietary acrylamide and risk of several cancers.

https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-research-news/coffee-and...

This implies that the first part of your comment is correct, but the second part likely is not.

I did that (no Coke Zero for almost a month). Noticed nothing different.

Yeah, I discovered that it can be hard on the kidneys so I kicked it after drinking way too much for too long - I went from a couple of cans a day to maybe a dozen drinks over a year. Still have my two coffee a day, but I mostly drink water now. I do not feel any different.

Same. I wouldn't discourage anyone from not dropping the habit. I mean, I don't feel different in terms of day to day health, but also in that I don't miss having coke zero. So... Why buy it? But yeah, it didn't seem to be impeding my health in the way others things have.

I would very strongly encourage people to switch to water and take notes on how they feel. Be sure to stay with it for the withdrawal symptoms to disappear.

Tea, perhaps, but for me, coffee is significantly worse than Coke. At least in the amounts I'm able to drink these beverages.

I bet they will feel more energetic and alert. They may also feel more jittery and anxious and may find it difficult to go to sleep. Coffee has triple the caffeine of Coke, and tea has double.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

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