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Aspartame sweetener used in Diet Coke a possible carcinogen, WHO’s cancer research agency to say-sources

Exclusive: WHO's cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen -sources

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/whos-cancer-research-agency-say-aspartame-sweetener-possible-carcinogen-sources-2023-06-29/

One of the most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, according to two sources, pitting it against the food industry and regulators.

Exclusive: WHO's cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen -sources

10 comments

medgremlin

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Oh my fuck. I hate news stories like this. Aspartame falls into the same cancer risk category as eating red meat sometimes and being kinda lazy. A rigorous systematic review was conducted of dozens of studies of aspartame and they did not find a plausible biologic mechanism by which aspartame could cause cancer. Epidemiologically, it's vaguely correlated, not causative of cancer.

Also, in the Reuters article it notes that a 132-lbs adult would have to drink 12 to 36 cans of diet coke a day for the dose/exposure to become relevant to the risk they're talking about. This article is talking about one study that is at odds with the systematically reviewed data from 40 human observational studies, 12 experimental animal studies, and 1360 assay/experimental end points to look for the supposed link.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691522007475#sec5

nanometre

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Remember when Big Sugar(TM) did that study on how sugar is beneficial? Is this that again?

Mummelpuffin

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Right? If media articles on stuff like this were all correct, literally everything but distilled water causes cancer, seemingly.

lunarshot

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Your answer is as good as the that headline is bad. this was a very informative and correct analysis of aspartame. kudos

nzodd

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Wait being lazy cases cancer? I'm in a lot of trouble then

medgremlin

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Being lazy is vaguely kinda sorta correlated with cancer... but that doesn't account for the fact that humans who are regularly active are also less likely to make other lifestyle choices that are more significantly tied to cancer like smoking and drinking.

This is the problem with a lot of population based studies. Obesity is linked with a lot of health problems like cardiovascular disease, but only some aspects of cardiovascular disease have causative links to obesity and others are sequelae of other factors that tend to be associated with obesity. For example, extra weight/adipose puts more stress on your heart by there just being more body mass to deliver blood to and more oxygen demand from muscles to just physically move the weight around (also a cause of joint problems)... but it's the poor diet full of cholesterol that clogs up the arteries (aka atherosclerosis) causing myocardial infarction (heart attack).

Omegamanthethird

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Per the article. You have to drink 12 to 36 cans a day (depending on the individual) before it even starts having health risks.

krackalot

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So it's only a concern for Americans then?

StewieTheThird

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Being completely transparent I don't care if there are any health risks associated with it for the greater population. I am just allergic to it and it gives me the worst shits possible, so if we could stop putting it in things that would be killer. It's in every gum now so I just can't buy gum anymore.

realitista

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Hasn't this been known for a while or am I thinking of saccharine?