“The IARC will reportedly classify aspartame as a possible carcinogen. But this isn’t a food safety agency, and the context matters.”
Soda companies could literally just switch to stevia or monk fruit tomorrow and it wouldn’t be a problem. The only issue is their refusal to change.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32811239/
TL;DR Stevia is shit and bad too
Yeah buuuuuuuuut bottom line et al
Which I don’t understand. It literally would be cheaper for them to use stevia or monk fruit and call it a day than to quibble over something so trivial.
If you don’t mind me being pedantic, “et al.” is short for “et alia” which means “and other people”. “Etc”, short for “et cetera”, means “and other things”. You only use “et al.” when talking about people not named in a list.
The More You Know 🌠
Wasn’t aspartame also linked to liver failure in the 90’s? 🤔
Afaik it has been linked to cancer for about that long too. Used to tell my mom that aspartame (in her diet cokes) causes cancer all the time in ~2000-2001, don’t know where I heard it back then but obviously someone knew because child me was not a biochemist with a lab enough to come to that conclusion by myself.
Still tastes like crap.
I seriously take issue with how artificial sweeteners taste. It’s terrible.
I really don’t understand how people can’t tell, I’m starting to wonder if it’s a genetic thing like with cilantro.
I can’t claim to taste it everywhere, you could probably slip it by me in something. But with sugar free drinks across the board, they all have this bizarre sickly, sweet taste from the sweetener that I just can’t stomach.
There are dozens of us!
I quit artificial sweeteners last year. Just use real sugar in moderation. Seems to be working for me. Biggest change is switching to water to drink. Once you conquer that the rest is cake.
Sugar is still a highly processed sweetener. Even brown sugar sold on a supermarket has gone through several processing steps. At this point, the healthiest way to sweeten your food is not sweetening it at all.
Abstinence is the safest way to have sex.
I mean, to be honest, with 1 in 2 women and 1 in 3 men in the US estimated to get cancer in their lifetime, I’m just not surprised anymore when someone tells me <insert whatever> is linked to cancer.
I think a good rule of thumb is “everything in moderation.” Excessive use of anything isn’t healthy.
Yeah, I mean drinking too much soda in general isnt exactly gonna be good for you regardless of how its sweetened.
However, if you are drinking a lot of soda, better you drink diet versions and get exposed to this spurious “possible” cancer risk than get exposed to ridiculous amounts of sugar that will all but guarantee weight gain and the build up of insulin resistance
Generally I agree with your point, but there is evidence that diet drinks increase cravings leading to greater overall calorie consumption. So it may not really be that much better.
I’m really far behind on clinical literature on the subject (I’m in a different field), but I remember a recent discovery that there were “sweetness” sensors in the gut. I’m not sure if it was speculation or already shown, but the theory is that detection of sweet things in the gut stimulated release of insulin. Since blood glucose doesn’t increase with zero calorie drinks, it can drop blood glucose, increasing hunger.
It’s known that some zero calorie sweeteners we can’t digest, but our gut bacteria can, and it changes them in a negative way.
People have been freaking out about it since it was first introduced. Can’t count how many times someone has told me to put down my diet soda because it causes cancer/diabetes.
Same as microwave oven, cell phones and laptops. Human beings freak out about stuff that they don’t understand, it was then thunder that human freak out about, it is now technology that human freak out about.
