What kind of sugar? High fructose corn syrup or sugar?
HFCS is metabolized in the liver making it far more damaging to the body. And soda that uses real sugar typically has a lower sugar content. Soda with real sugar also imparts a feeling of fullness, typically resulting in people drinking less.
"Our results do not indicate that occasional consumption should pose a risk to most consumers," said Dr. Francesco Branca, director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety at the WHO, during a press conference in Geneva. He said the problem is for "high consumers" of diet soda or other foods that contain aspartame. "We have, in a sense, raised a flag here," Branca said, and he called for more research.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it disagrees with this new classification, pointing to evidence of safety. In a written statement, an FDA official told NPR that aspartame being labeled by the WHO "as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans' does not mean that aspartame is actually linked to cancer."
The WHO has long set the acceptable daily intake, or ADI, of aspartame at a maximum of 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day. So, a person who weighs 60 kilograms (about 130 pounds), could consume up to 2,400 milligrams per day, which is roughly equivalent to 12 cans of Diet Coke — much higher than most people consume.
I beg to differ I know for fact my dad drinks 12 cans or more a day. Hell I did at one time but with regular Dr Pepper. It not hard to go through a 12oz can of soda.
In Mexico and other countries there are cities where you cannot drink the water so you end up drinking soda your entire life. Coca-Cola buys the good water and pollutes the rest so that they are the only safe drinking option.
I came in here ready to defend delicious aspartame from people who aren't science literate and was surprised to see many really good arguments and comments already posted. Lemmy, you're pretty cool as a community right now.
Realistically what it means is that millions of people will react with "meh, still gonna use it." I mean, have you met humans? We knew lead was toxic since at least the Roman era, but that didn't stop us from using it in everything - including food and drink.
The difference is that you can completely avoid lead poisoning if you eliminate exposure to lead, but you can't completely avoid cancer even if you eliminate exposure to carcinogens.
And eliminating exposure to aspartame would have only a minimal effect, at best, on your overall risk of cancer.
And they'll do that while standing in bright sunlight without sunscreen, drinking beer, eating red meat, processed food, candy with real sugar and driving in fossil fuel cars which are in the same or higher category of cancer risks.
candy tastes good, beer gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, and i ain't paying 10x more money for a car just so i get to spend 10 hours a week at some charging station so my tablet with wheels can go whirrrr.
That's cool. I just suggested the Ann Reardon video because she's addressing the findings from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that's also mentioned in this article.
The paper cited in that video had serious flaws in their methodology.
A repeat analysisby the same group found that Mexican Coca Cola actually does contain table sugar (sucrose) as well as fructose, whereas American Coca Cola contains no table sugar and more fructose than the Mexican version.
I never trusted the stuff. We use to say this matter-of-factly when I was a kid, about thirty years ago. I'm glad to see that my unfounded confidence and speculation turned out to be right!
Ehhh, not so much. Honestly the rating for carcinogenic substances is very shaky and can be very misleading. Like many things, poison depends on the dose and the same with carcinogens. Bacon is a group 1 carcinogen, and cigarettes are a group 1 carcinogen. Despite the same rating, cigarettes are BY FAR much more carcinogenic.
For group 2b "possible carcinogens", it usually coincides with the frequency of the product. For this rating they review what a cancer victim typically eats/consumes/interacts with. Aspartame and many other ingredients, are labeled as possibly carcinogenic, as many victims have eaten them, but there is no strong correlation.
The problem is however, many of these ingredients are so common that almost everybody eats them. It's like saying "everybody who drinks water dies, it's poisonous!".
Not exactly. In this context "possibly causes cancer" translates to something like 'we have no credible evidence that it does, but we can't prove that it doesn't.'
In the early days of YouTube, after I saw a video where they boiled a can of Coke and found 13 spoons of sugar. I stopped drinking that stuff. Aspartame or not, I'd rather drink water.
One thing I have observed with sodas containing aspartame, is the short shelf life, I think normally they give sodas 1 year but after 6 months the soda starts having an off taste that only gets stronger.
I have tried drinking a can of zero that was 2 years past the expiration date, and it tasted like cat piss.
Ps: I guess the aspartame molecules are not very stable in a soda mix?