World News

If you want to ignore the vast majority of safety research about artificial sweeteners, then sure.... From this very article you posted:

"“IARC is not a food safety body”

The IARC’s decisions have also faced criticism for sparking needless alarm over hard-to-avoid substances or situations. It has previously put working overnight and consuming red meat into its “probably cancer-causing” class, and classifying the use of mobile phones as “possibly cancer-causing”, similar to aspartame.

“IARC is not a food safety body. The World Health Organization’s Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) is currently conducting a comprehensive food safety review of aspartame and no conclusions can be drawn until both reports are published,” Secretary General of the International Sweeteners Association, Frances Hunt-Wood, said in their press release.

According to the ISA, aspartame is one of the most thoroughly researched ingredients in history, with over 90 food safety agencies across the globe declaring it is safe, including the EFSA.

The International Council of Beverages Association (ICBA) shares a similar position, arguing that aspartame has proven to be a safe tool to reduce calories and sugars in diets.

“The best available evidence from large population studies shows that low and no-calorie sweeteners as a replacement strategy for added sugars is associated with reductions in important public health outcomes such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and death,” John Sievenpiper, Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, told on behalf of the ICBA in their press release.

Aspartame has been extensively studied for years. Last year, an observational study in France among 100,000 adults showed that people who consumed larger amounts of artificial sweeteners – including aspartame – had a slightly higher cancer risk.

It followed a study from the Ramazzini Institute in Italy in the early 2000s, which reported that some cancers in mice and rats were linked to aspartame.

However, the first study could not prove that aspartame caused the increased cancer risk, and questions have been raised about the methodology of the second study, including by EFSA, which assessed it."

Observational studies do not equate to causation

It's not this straight forward. I read the reuters article about this that goes into more detail.

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

But basically, IARC is only looking at if the substance can be carcinogenic, regardless of the quantity it takes for it to be harmful to humans.

There is another organization, called JECFA that is specifically for advice for individuals. This is where "food regulations" would come from.

The JECFA is set to show off their findings at the same time as IARC is gonna make their announcement. I feel like some of you guys are jumping the gun here due to the title of the articles coming out.

Obesity is one of the leading preventable causes of cancer. Along with tobacco, alcohol, sun exposure, and red meat consumption. Aspartame is not a major cause of cancer in humans. If it helps you lose weight, then you're improving your cancer risk.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515569/

Barbecue sausages are also carcinogenic. What matters is how much and in what doses. Hey WHO: Show me scientific, peer revieved, reproduced in independed labs papers with solid proofs. Not preliminary results of "one research". Then I will weigh pros and cons and decide if I should use it. Strangely decades of use under supervision of FDA and other reputable institutions had no remarks like WHO. Don't forget that dihydrate monoxide also promote cancer, and we all drink it like water.

/edit typo, grammar/

Obesity is like the second biggest risk factor for cancers. This post reads like a non-medical professional's interpretation of medical advice. I don't mean to offend, because that is very common. But the information presented here is devoid of context in a way that makes it potentially misleading.

Honestly nothing can be more dangerous than the OG coke. The amount of sugar in that can is incomprehensible

WHO is one of those organizations whose advice I wish I could take at face value, but with anything that should be science based, it only takes a few disappointing compromises to take away a lot of trust.

Like the one time they wanted to recommend member states to consider Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 treatment

And how their recommendations result in our country's maternity wards try acupuncture and breathing as pain relief first, leaving mothers in debilitating pain for hours before giving them any of the real, safe, proven painkillers.

I get the reasoning - that accepting the commonly held medical belief of e.g. China allows them to hold some authority there and be a more global force of good - but to me it just make anything they say go on the "ok interesting, I'll fact check it later" pile.

Worth point out is that it doesn't even reach the same classification as red meat which is classified as probably causing cancer.

Gonna try to cut a line down the middle and say I’m not seeing very convincing evidence one way versus another. Lotta finger pointing and honestly getting way more intense about diet soda than I thought anyone would.

Gotta say that my family (and me until high school) drink wayyy to much diet soda. Like sugar, or aspartame it’s a bit worrying and when you drink caffeinated sweetness all day you’re probably going to feel defensive about someone saying it’s gonna kill you.

I am a bit of the mind that it may only be significantly carcinogenic at super high doses, but who knows if anyone is getting those doses either from commercial beverages or mixing it in the same proportions as sugar in their iced tea

I sort of cringe (more of a nose wrinkle really) at OP's "it's known in some circles to be bad" You see beliefs and correlative evidence constantly misrepresented as proof and truth in food and medical science (reporting and discussion).

I get it. The body is a hugely complicated system, it's hard to figure these things out. What does even figuring them out mean with the amount of complicating factors of this affects that which affects this which causes this.

I'm open to the idea that lobbying and such means Aspartame (and other industrial food products) has really been pushed through.

It's also obviously been studied quite a bit and it's hard to believe all the studies saying it's safe at recommended levels are bunk or fraudulent.

This news was on another instance where the discussion included that the IARC carcinogen classifications do not take into account exposure/dosage. A whole bunch of things can be carcinogenic depending on exposure. Haven't we all read how the rats that got cancer from saccharine had epic doses? It was just magnitudes more than a human would consume.

If an observational study won't cut it (I see you, @xthedeerlordx, and appreciate your comment and explanation), how does one prove the causation? Don't you need randomized controlled trials which would be extremely onerous controlling for various factors and basically making the (ideally large number of) participants live in a lab for whatever amount of time the study takes to really prove causation? I'd genuinely like to know. It seems like for a lot of things correlation after correlation after correlation is the best we're going to get.

Possible carcinogen is an extremely low standard for the WHO, this probably means close to nothing

Aspartame just like about anything is not good for you in large quantities. This probably doesn't concern you if you just drink moderate amounts of sugar free drinks.

If anyone's seen aspartame's wikipedia article, it's like the most corporate compromised entry I've seen. In fact this very report is already being covered up there.

Does aspartame cause cancer?

In general, the American Cancer Society does not determine if something causes cancer (that is, if it is a carcinogen), but we do look to other respected organizations for help with this. Based on current research, some of these organizations have made the following determinations:

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has concluded that “the use of aspartame as a general purpose sweetener… is safe.”

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has stated, “Studies do not suggest an increased risk associated with aspartame consumption for… leukaemia, brain tumours or a variety of cancers, including brain, lymphatic and haematopoietic (blood) cancers.”

Though research into a possible link between aspartame and cancer continues, these agencies agree that studies done so far have not found such a link.

Full disclosure I'm going completely tangential for this one.

I find it believable at best that aspartame can cause cancer, but causing weight gain just makes no sense to me.

I used to be FAT. 250 lbs. I didn't really make that many changes to my diet, except for cutting refined sugars way back.

I switched to Diet Coke, got off the little debbies, and I slimmed right down and now I'm hovering around 135.

It would make sense to say that I would maintain that weight or maybe gained more if aspartame was as harmful as this article says, but I'm not seeing it.

There are so many artificial sweetners in the market now.Even purely natural onea like stevia powders have maltitol added to it. It might be better to give up sweet things completely may be with the exception of fruits for better health.

So it’s like the list of carcinogens in California that everything is basically carcinogenic

Don't freak out (yet) people...

They put aspartame in the "possibly carcinogenic" category which is their least certain one. Also in this category we have... Radio waves (sigh)... Yeah right...

Regular and diet sodas are both clearly junk that humans shouldn't be consuming.

Is this going to be like pork where it's a ~20% increase in cancer or like smoking where it's like a super huge increase?

This is basically the case for every artificial sweetener lol

wtf I literally had a diet coke for the first time in my life the other day, and this comes up? Am I gonna get cancer now???

Luckily I find the taste of aspartame very off-putting. Please don’t take my sucralose.