It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi).
Their involvement in developing intake guidelines represents “an obvious conflict of interest”, said Gary Ruskin, US Right-To-Know’s executive director. “Because of this conflict of interest, [the daily intake] conclusions about aspartame are not credible, and the public should not rely on them,” he added.
Okay, corruption like that should be corrected. Regardless, there’s no scientific evidence that aspartame is harmful. Let alone a biochemical reason for why a dipeptide of two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, that dissociates in the stomach into its constituent components and some byproducts would be harmful in the first place.
Unless you have phenylketonuria, but you have much bigger problems in that case and, if that is the case for you, kudos on being at an age and capability to read and understand this post, you are incredible.
Edit: Also, just noticed the part about US Right To Know, which is a well known anti-science group that’s been pushing pseudoscience and fearmongering about other topics, such as biotechnology, for years. So them being involved here raises questions.
I want to get rid of it because I want a non sugar coke that doesn’t taste like burned tar soaked in urine
Then drink the Diet Coke with Splenda one? There’s also Coke Life that has stevia instead. They basically made sure they have a version with each type of sweetener.
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Fuck yes. Why is there sugar added to applesauce and fruit juice? Why is it so hard to find low calorie drinks that don’t contain artificial sweeteners? The way to curb sugar intake is moderation.
Sugar is antibacterial, hence why honey can stay good like forever. It’s a cheap way to increase shelf life that also makes people really like the food because we evolutionary seek that stuff out. It’s not right though. We work long hours so convenient foods should allow us to buy back some time. But when they’re all like this, you end up either having to do it yourself or risk your health. There should absolutely be limits. But with food costs as they are, who is going to fight for that? The alternatives are more expensive, or you reduce shelf life. It’s much better regulated here in the EU but we too are still not there, obesity is still on the rise.
It’s tasty, cheap, antibacterial and gives attractive colors (caramel). That’s why companies like to put it everywhere, it’s just awfully convenient.
Were I live sugar is added to cider, making it basically extra sweet apple juice with a touch of alchool.
Oh god, Okanagan Cider is so, super sweet. Might as well drink sugar water with added alcohol.
I live near a cidery, and everything is a dry or semi-dry. So much better.
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I live in the UK and was astounded at the sugar consumption when I visited the US.
The most interesting one was bread - it was so sweet, almost like cake, while our bread is just plan savoury bread.
There seems to be an OTT approach to added sweetness that I thought was bad in the UK but is next level in north America.
Another key difference was the milk in coffee shops. I went into Double cup and found some half and half (semi skimmed milk?) and dumped a bunch of it in my coffee. Nope literally half cream half milk. Blllerchhhh.
That just doesn’t even exist over here.
You can also just get fruity syrup and make syrup juice with a lot of water.
Nope, not an option. If I want a glass of coke after I brushed my teeth - I don’t want any sugar in it
Drinking coke - sugar free or otherwise - right after you brush your teeth will still fuck up your teeth.
It’s rammed full of acid.
Except it doesn’t stay in your mouth for hours because you salivate. With sugar, judging by how my mouth feels, the bacteria stays and probably has a whole ass banquet for hours after
Splenda is worse… Stevia is fine
Stevia tastes just awful to me. I wish I liked it.
I find that Stevia has a vaguely creamy flavour to it. Which works well in some instances, and not in others.
Aspartame just tastes awful, for me I get this weird sticky/bitter sensation over the roof of my mouth and turn my throat.
Splenda/Sucralose tastes fine, but has noticeable effects elsewhere, which are a bit TMI.
That’s not better. Splenda just tastes odd. And I haven’t seen that in stores in years, and I don’t remember liking it the first time around
Splenda legit causes digestive problems… Aspartame is fine… Especially in comparison
Drink Olipop or Poppi.
Dude, Olipop Vintage Cola is next level. That perfect vanilla cola without being too overpowering. I love to have it with a great sandwich and chips or dinner!
This reads like an ad straight from the 60s lol
I like their Cherry Vanilla. It goes right through me, though. The apple cider vinegar they use cleans you out. 🤐
Absolutely… Aspartame is safe
Aspartame isn’t only safe, it also goes GREAT with a cold glass of Coke Zero™! *
*these statements have not been approved by the FDA
I especially like the part where they get away scot free, and the guy is just telling us to ignore them… maybe fire them for the conflict of interests? Ugh.
We’ve studied this chemical literally more than any other food additive and there’s still nothing definitive. Also mice are not a good stand-in for humans. They are really only used for acute toxicity and such.
But the mice genetically predisposed to getting tumors got tumors. What more proof do you need?
It’s official: Cancer causes cancer.
One step closer cancer causing mice
Fun fact. A potential side effect of many cancer treatments is… cancer
just gotta hope it kills the old cancer before it gives you a new cancer
How hecking cancerous cancer is?
Cancer%
Even if aspartame does cause cancer you get the choice of cancer or diabetes when you drink cola, so whatever. Just don’t drink it.
My gripe is that swapping out sugars for fake ones doesn’t seem healthy long term regardless of any direct impact aspartame itself may have. Just have less sugar imo.
Edit: didn’t realise how controversial that soft opinion would be lol. Look, drink what you want but I’m going to stick with water unless it’s a treat. I know it’s not healthy for me to scratch the dopamine itch with sugary tasting treats all the time; fake sugar or not. My perspective is less about trying to say, diet soda is bad but that there must be better alternatives to suggest than just sweetener filled copies?
How do you mean?
I’ve heard of things like the sensation of sweetness being decoupled from satiation leading to a greater urge for sweetness in compensation, but at least personally that’s not happening to me lol.
It’s pretty acidic which sucks for your teeth for one but that wasn’t what I was trying to say
Yeah I just really mean as a diet as a whole though. If you have an issue with sugar intake then you’re probs drinking way too much sugary drinks. To suggest just swapping out sugars for fake ones I don’t think is best choice to suggest for most people.
I think there’s probably tons of other issues too just aside from the excess glucose. So fix the diet not the sugar.
Yeah I agree it’s fine that a most of these chemicals are safe in moderation and well researched. My gripe is the hot swap fix-all attitude that people can take from it.
That makes sense. I’m coming at this as someone who drinks diet coke because they like it rather than to avoid drinking sugar.
Amusingly it’s the fact that diet coke is relatively less sweet that makes me like it.
I think what they mean is we shouldn’t encourage people to drink what is essentially candy water. Doesn’t matter if it has sugar or aspartame. It’s still candy
Replacing an unhealthy habit with a less unhealthy habit is still unhealthy (written as I drink a Dr Pepper zero)
Why not though? The health impact of moderate diet soda consumption seems to be pretty negligible.
Diet sodas still aren’t water, and they are pretty acidic. They eat away at your teeth, and aren’t great at actually hydrating you. It significantly reduces the harm from drinking candy water, but it doesn’t eliminate them
And even if it’s true, it means you’ll eat the sugar instead of drinking it, and then you’ll be able to ingest less sugar before feeling full, plus you probably get some fibre with it as well which helps a lot.
That’s not what this is saying. This is saying the studies saying it IS harmful were real, and the part saying “it’s probably safe in small amounts” was industry-influenced.
No, this is just saying the safe dosage level was biased by people from the industry being on that particular panel.
Despite the IARC’s new designation, the Joint FAO-WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), which determines safe doses of food additives, did not change its recommendation for daily intake of aspartame. JECFA still says that consuming 40 milligrams of aspartame per every 1 kilogram of body weight (about 2.2 pounds) per day is acceptable, according to a news release.
This is just 1 panel that determined the safe dosage level. This does not affect the findings of the study at all which concluded that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic to humans” but that “We don’t know enough about the possible link between aspartame and cancer, but we can’t ignore that there’s something going on”
So they haven’t even found a definitive link or even said it’s definitively dangerous. And the 40 milligrams per 1 kilogram of body weight is the same as the recommendation from the FDA.
Also the thing it is replacing, sugar, IS known to cause cancer, diabetes, and other diseases. So take that as you will.
That last bit is what people always seem to miss.
Getting hit in the head with a branch is bad for you, but it’s less bad for you than a bullet.
In the end, you need to compare the two risks, and not decide “a is bad, no need to look at b”
I don’t much care what one study is saying. We’ve studied this chemical so much and we still have no conclusive proof it’s harmful. At some point you really gotta focus money elsewhere.
Literally every fucking health org has studied the chemical and found no evidence of health issues connected to it. It’s only this one study that the IARC cites. And IARC doesn’t take dosage into account either.
Regardless of people’s taste for aspartame, it is literally not dangerous. It does taste dry. It doesn’t taste like sugar. You do not have to enjoy it. But it is not bad for you.
edit: my badly worded comment got some discussion going which is great. I just want to say that I was being as hyperbolic as the worried people and I’m sorry. Of course it’s not black or white. There are factors to consider, but what I was trying to express was that aspartame leans to the safe side rather than dangerous.
Obviously do not drink 25 cans of soda a day, obviously do not compensate for the fact that you’re drinking a “light” product by consuming more of it. But a can a day isn’t gonna ruin your health.
Except for the fact that a decade ago aspartame was shown to create pre-diabetic conditions in the gut, like sugar, except worse. And that studies proved that because psychologically people think it’s “light” they drink more soda and actually gain weight. Yeah if you ignore those pesky little facts it’s totally is 100% harmless. So definitely go around telling people it’s 100% harmless.
Do you have stock in diet Coke or what?
One thing I always like to remind people of: The fact that these effects are, if at all existent, so small that they can barely be observed also means that if they do turn out to be harmful, it’s not too bad, as the harm is also small. It’s not like e.g. lead in the water where you can very clearly prove a significant harm.
You can almost never say that something is not dangerous, unless it’s practically mathematically proven…
This applies especially for food etc.
I think we have to be much more conservative with food and substances we put into it. A lot of (Meta-)meta-studies suggest, that processed food is a health risk.
And this may sound a little bit far-fetched, but I think a good amount of the idiocracy in (especially) the USA may be related to the food (as also a lot of studies have found connections to brain/psychological health).
Yeah, actually.
And, like, literally EVERYTHING has an LD50 value.
For some things, the value is astronomically gargantuan, though.
Like, if you have to consume more than your body weight of a substance within thirty minutes in order for it to have a lethal effect, it’s very improbable to ever happen by accident, and very difficult to make happen on purpose.
Allegedly, the LD50 for aspartame is 10,000 mg per kg of body weight
(I fucked up the math on the line that used to be here and got justly called out for it; 10,000 mg is only 10 grams. If someone weighs 60kg it would only be 600 grams which is still A LOT but not nearly what I thought it said at first) (And that’s how much to get to a fifty percent chance of dying - I don’t know what the shape of the curve was leading up to this point, it could be nonlinear.) HOWEVER, I can’t recall if LD50 only accounts for acute mortality, or if it also accounts for chronic mortality; like, if it gives you a type of cancer that takes 20 years to kill you somehow, is that even known? no idea.10,000 mg per kg of body weight you would literally have to consume 10x your body weight in aspartame
10g/kg is actually 1/100th your weight, not 10 times it
Shit, yeah, I fucked up that math good and hard
Additionally to what the others already said:
LD50 and “bad for your health” are quite separate things.
Vitamin D for example has an LD50 of ~30mg per kg. So according to your logic, it’s way unhealthier than aspartame (factor ~100). Though in reality you would die without vitamin D intake.
10,000 mg equals 10 g, not 10 kg, so you would only need 1/100 of your body weight. Still an unrealistic amount, but far away from 10x.
This kind of shit makes people distrustful of science in general. Way to go, guys.
Don’t worry, it’s all worth it in the end because the corpos made more money! /s
It should make you distrustful of politics, lawmakers, lobbyists, and capitalism not science itself. Pure science is unbiased and systematic, by definition.
Science is done by people, and people are inherently biased at all times and about all things, consciously or not.
The issue here isn’t bias, it’s a conflict of interest.
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these kinds of conflicts of interests need to be disclosed properly, clearly and up front, and folks need to be critical until its sufficiently peer reviewed
whether other findings agree with these isnt relevant, its still extremely important that folks know that corporate interests might be colouring any given paper
researchers in a given field are practically always going to have jobs with big players in those fields, but taking biases into account is still important for interpreting findings
I think it’s sort of a catch 22. The people that tend to be the most knowledgeable about a particular science often have industry experience doing the exact thing you want them to study now. The idea that people could study the effects of aspartame for decades but are now “tainted” because they used to work for a soda company doesn’t necessarily square up to economic reality.
If however, you choose to put your foot in the sand there you’re going to have a bunch of people on a committee that have no idea what they are doing (which by the way people will also criticize you for) Remember when Trump appointed senior cabinet positions to people with completely unrelated experience? Such as Ben Carson (a former medical doctor) being appointed secretary of housing.
It’s a lose/lose situation I’m not sure what you all are expecting.
Similar to how oil companies researched global warming. They have the scientists in the right field and the data, but corporate interests will cover up things that don’t align to their business models.
Overall if the study is sound, other scientists can chime in and prove or disprove their results. Really the laymen should take studies (done by anyone) with a grain of salt until the wider community comes to a consensus,
It’s almost as if it’s not necessarily a dichotomy at all
That situation is a bit different. Oil Companies performed proprietary research internally and promoted those results as scientific. Whereas, the implication in this post here is that anyone who ever worked for an oil company in climate science can no longer do climate science for an agency.
Okay, so, let me get this straight. This panel said aspartame is safe, but it’s got a conflict of interest, so we should ignore all that and fall back to the conventional wisdom that…aspartame is safe?
Regardless of this corrupt shit, in general studies show that it’s safe in normal quantities. Health wise it’s much better then sugar.
What’s a normal quantity? Keep in mind that caffeine is addictive, driving consumption. Not a good combination to use chemicals that are safe in small quantities, in a product designed to be addictive.
A lot of strange defending of this corrupt behavior here. The fact that this corruption exists immediately calls into question the safety of the recommendations. It won’t be the first time Americans were killed for corporate profits.
A lot of scientists who actually know the studies and biochemistry involved, actually. Not “defending of this corrupt behavior”, but just pointing out that corrupt behavior doesn’t negate the science itself.
Corruption is a part of companies and capitalism. Even the “good” companies, like renewables, are corrupt and do corrupt things.
just pointing out that corrupt behavior doesn’t negate the science itself.
But when corruption doesn’t let the science happens? You know, in 2020.
The science has been done by dozens of independent scientific teams around the world for decades. They have repeatedly shown the lack of health impact from aspartame.
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I still wonder if artificial sweeteners mess with metabolism, say by training people to ignore satiety signals, which would be why we saw that study a few days back saying artificial sweeteners are associated with weight gain.
One theory is that the body doesn’t know if the sweetness is sugar or sweetener. So it produces insulin to take care of it. When the level of insulin gets too high the body tries to compensate by eating more. If that “more” is more sweetener…
While I’m no expert, that doesn’t sound correct to me. I’d expect highly specific binding dependent on the chemical structure of glucose would be required to elevate insulin. A quick search seems to support that. I’m sure there are lots of studies on this that you could find if interested.
Never experienced hypoglycemia while on keto and using sweeteners lol
You heard it here guys, this dude is pretty sure it never happened to him, so it’s definitely fine.
Nobody claims it’s fine, it’s just a personal example
It’s just as valid, if not maybe a little more, than the guy claiming it is the reason. People are allowed to discuss their personal opinions and they should need to include that it’s only a sample size of one and not independently verified. No one should be stupid enough to think they’re claiming otherwise and need to say it out loud that they don’t trust it.
Anecdotes are not “personal opinions” and they certainly aren’t valid or valuable in the context of evaluating scientific claims.
No, it isn’t valuable for scientific evaluation. They are valid though. Anyway, the other comment was just a claim without any supporting evidence for it but no one felt they needed to point that out.
Unless I’m missing something this seems trivial to test. Just test blood sugar before and after drinking a diet soda. If bloods sugar goes down then the sweetener likely caused a release of insulin. If it doesn’t change then it didn’t.
It seems petty far-fetched. If artificial sweeteners caused a runaway insulin spike then I would expect them to cause a lot of cases of diabetic shock.
The insulin response you’re talking about is very small and it doesn’t lead to a chain reaction.
Sweeteners are worse than sugar.
Did WHO know this before announcement? Lol
I mean … the people at WHO who hired them, must have known? (Conflict of interest is important in these kinds of health subjects)…
Of course they still tell diabetics to keep chugging down carbs and just buying more and more insulin…
I dont trust them.
Of course they still tell diabetics to keep chugging down carbs and just buying more and more insulin…
To be fair, that’s pretty much what a lot of non-diabetics do, except they make their own insulin.
They do?
A story as old as time: People who make decisions being paid by people who benefit from the “right” decisions.
From the start I’ve never drunk all these Zero drinks because after reading a little about just how poisonous aspartame is, it was obvious this stuff shouldn’t be consumed.
I’d rather drink sugar sugar than aspartame. Having said that I’ve just stopped drinking all of these sweet drinks all together.
I hope the truth gets out to the public
Source for aspartame being poisonous? That’s the precise opposite to scientific consensus and frankly sounds like conspiranoia.
“because after reading a little about just how poisonous aspartame is”
Presumably on websites with titles like “Natural News” and “Infowars”.
I can’t remember it was years ago, but I got this from Mayo Clinic website today:
“A popular artificial sweetener that’s widely found in sugar-free foods and beverages is being labeled as a possible cancer risk by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO’s cancer research agency, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), determined aspartame to be a possible carcinogen after reviewing and assessing the potential carcinogenic effect of the sweetener, but says it’s safe to consume in limited amounts.”
So the WHO is saying it could cause cancer so drink it in limited amounts. So there may well be some issues with it. Definitely don’t be drinking 5 or more diet sodas a day that’s for sure.
I don’t know why they don’t use something like sorbitol instead. It doesn’t have these issues and I never have any side effect from it whereas the few times I drank aspartame my body rejected it and kept sending it back to my tongue for me to scrape off, until all of it was out of my system.
No other food had ever done that to me.
IARC has been long since discredited at this point. You want to talk corruption, their panel to determine carcinogenicity was found to have been using a lawyer as the primary consultant who was working with various anti-science groups and he has been actively pushing to get certain things labeled as carcinogenic, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary.
A separate WHO group, JECFA, which is actually about determining human health and safety in relation to specific chemicals (which is not IARC’s job) has repeatedly produced opposing results to IARC. And that includes on their recent claims about aspartame.
Ok, so the WHO are using dubious sources?
The WHO isn’t really a combined organization. It’s a diffuse set of disparate groups, panels, and NGOs. So they don’t really have control over what any particular branch is doing.
IARC has been arguing that it’s been doing its job under its defined parameters and I suppose they are. The problem is that, under their defined parameters, practically every single thing they investigate will be labeled as carcinogenic because everything is carcinogenic at a high enough dosage. Including being alive in the first place.
So I suppose the issue is more the media putting any stock or importance into IARC’s announcements, when they aren’t really saying anything meaningful about human health.
There’s no evidence of aspartame being harmful to humans and there’s been a shit ton of research on it from various people
All I can tell you is that the few times I drank it because I had no other option, I had the taste of it in my mouth all night and for several days afterwards. That’s not normal… My body was clearly rejecting it and sending it out though my tongue.
The only way to get rid of it was to scrape my tongue each time my body sent more back until it sent it all out via my tongue …
You don’t like the taste. You just don’t like the taste.
No it’s not that. It tasted fine when I drank it but to have that pure aspartame taste for days thereafter is not fun.
Same, I don’t think it’s a good habit to regularly drink sugary drinks even if they have “fake” sugar in them. It’s just these companies finding ways for us to consume more of their product without the guilt of calories.
When I’m thirsty I drink water. And very rarely will I drink something else with real sugar like juice, a beer, or even rarer an actual soda.
In the end, the aspartame in the coke Zero is likely less harmful than the sugar, and I would pick a coke Zero every day of the week over coke with sugar.
Sugar is just not healthy.
Having said that I’ve just stopped drinking all of these sweet drinks all together.
I personally just got tired of them. Alcohol-free beer (EDIT: yes, I know it’s not quite beer) is nice too.
I’ve always wondered why anyone would drink beer without alcohol in it. I always assumed it was only ever used by alcoholics trying to kick their addiction, or desperate teenagers who can’t get a fake ID.
Do you just really like the taste of beer?
I don’t have time to be intoxicated, so not getting drunk is good (I also get drunk easier than most people due to smaller body mass and fast metabolism).
I mean, the answer to your last question is - I do like the taste of good IPA, but that’s not what alcohol-free beer gives you. The latter for me is like pleasant soda with the taste of bread without excess sweetness (this is very important, I just hate sweet drinks).
A good alcohol free beer is actually decent. It misses a bit of mouth feel and robustness a proper beer has.
Alcohol Free Prosecco is actually amazing. Fizzy, yummy, great burps.
The decent alcohol free stuff is actually 0.5%. So, it’s still a beer. It’s just been brewed or post-processed to have 0.5% alcohol.
I’ve had AF Gin & Tonics that have been amazing, and others that just taste like raw tonic.Remember that beers are more than just lagers. I love alcohol free light hoppy IPAs (seriously, basically water, a hint of barley, a hint of yeast, and a nice juicy hoppyness), alcohol free sours (some of these end up being just like juice), and so on. Sometimes the off styles of beers make for better AF ones!
I haven’t found a decent AF pale ale, lager, or many of the other more popular styles. They seem to be brewed more like a beer with alcohol taken out, rather than specifically tailored/crafted to being an alcohol free beer.I’m going to say “you” a lot in this next bit, but I’m not targeting actual you. Just more, throwing my opinion out there.
IMO, if you are only drinking beer because it gets you drunk, then perhaps you have a bad relationship with alcohol?
If you are drinking beers because it’s a social thing, that’s cool. As long as you can also drink sprite and do the social things. Otherwise, perhaps you don’t have the best social circles?
If you don’t like beer, that’s also fine.deleted by creator
There’s something about the after taste of NA beer that irritates me. I’ve found a few I like (Heineken and Athletic Brewing) but even they have some weird aftertaste that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe its the lack of alcohol that makes it taste off.
I think the one Birra Moretti does isn’t too bad either
I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one, have never had it.
Well, the one I was thinking about is Baltika 0, I suppose it’s not being exported to the USA, ahem.
I moved to natural sources (sugar and stevia) and I only do half doses. All this stuff is way too sweet and it’s crazy that the boomer generation just let things get so out of hand.
I’m the same, never drank zero for the same reasons and I pick ordinary sugar when I drink soda (not often).
I also don’t use fluoride in toothpaste and that’s another thing people think is weird. But my teeth are absolutely fine after over 20 years of doing this. I use kingfisher tooth paste without fluoride.
Why the fluoride? Only heard about it from the “the pineal gland is the eye of the soul” kind of people
Dentists recommends using flouride, so naturally most people do. But I just feel uneasy about it.
Why?
It caused staining on my teeth so my dentist said to eat less sugar and brush correctly if I didn’t want that. It’s not really a big deal.
What is your opinion on homosexuality in frogs?
This type of corruption should require those involved getting lengthy prison sentences to.
Instead they’ll get a reprimand and a reminder not to do it again
Would this fall under the purvey of regulatory capture?
Regulatory bodies tend to act purely as pipelines getting people jobs in the industry they are supposed to be regulating.
Profits before people, as always.
