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- cross-posted to:
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“The IARC will reportedly classify aspartame as a possible carcinogen. But this isn’t a food safety agency, and the context matters.”
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I think a good rule of thumb is “everything in moderation.” Excessive use of anything isn’t healthy.
Except plutonium, man that stuff will mess you up.
Everything in moderation. Just one or two atoms at a time.
can I split them and save half for later?
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.
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I wonder if there would be that much worry about it if it didn’t taste like shit.
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.
But sex can be quite enjoyable…
Yes, sex is a lot like sweeteners in that respect.
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.
The main risk factor for cancer is old age. Wealthy countries have a lot of cancer because a lot of people live long enough to get cancer.
Yep. Nobody dies of just “old age”, there’s always a cause. Unfortunately cancer is the cause that is the hardest to treat.
It’s a bit more than that. Cancer is caused by copying errors. Just the right errors, in just the right order. The longer you live, the more chances these copying errors get to happen in just the right order. If nothing else kills you, cancer will.
So, wealthy countries have a lot of cancer because they have a lot of people living longer. And the media loves to run stories on how terrifying this is.
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.
Aspartame doesn’t taste great, but stevia is just awful
A lot of people complain about it, but I don’t have any problem with it. I enjoy stevia-based sodas like Zevia or even hard seltzers with it (Truly has a few) with no problem. I wonder if it’s one of those things where it tastes different to various people like cilantro.
It is. They’ve done research and found that basically all artificial sweeteners have a genetic component. For me personally, stevia tastes like soapy bitter lawn clippings, while aspartame and sucralose taste basically normal. A few of my old standby drink mixes swapped to stevia a couple years ago, and I instantly noticed and couldn’t finish them.
It’s the most metallic, awful tasting thing. It feels like I’m allergic to it or something. Like it makes my mouth subtly burn.
I’m more of a monk fruit person myself too honestly.
I got some monk fruit at the discount grocery store where they have random discontinued things and it was a huge bag of little mini pixie stick sized, single serve packets of monk fruit powder and I ate the whole bag like they were pixie sticks and I was a six year old on Halloween.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32811239/
TL;DR Stevia is shit and bad too
Yeah buuuuuuuuut bottom line et al
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 🌠
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.
On the scale of Pepsi or Coke, a seemingly trivial amount like 1/2 a cent a can adds up to significant money. It’s amazing how companies pinch pennies when dealing in volume like that. They sold 32 billion cases of beverages in 2022. No idea what the real figure is, but let’s say 5,000,000,000 of those are diet drinks with aspartame… that’s 120 billion cans, so if the other sweetener cost only 1 cent more per can that’s 1.2 billion dollars.
Since the verdict on aspartame isn’t clear, they’d also have to tweak the formula for flavor, and switching would be somewhat of a PR admission that there’s something wrong with aspartame, I imagine they’re very reluctant to change anything.
Bottom line won’t change when users of your product are addicted. Since coke etc. are full of sweetener, which I assume causes a similar level of addiction to regular sugar, those that drink it won’t mind if the price goes up 5 cents or whatever because cola put some slightly better sweetener in it. Cola would probably just make a new branded version or slap a “new an improved flavour” on the can and jack up the price by 10 cents anyway. Actually, people are pretty particular about the flavour, so that’s probably why they won’t do it. They must have gradually shitted up the recipe to get to the current version so people didn’t burn down coke HQ.
But it tastes like crap. At least to a part of the consumers. That seems to be some genetic variation or something, the after taste of sweeteners is so bad. 😵💫
I find stevia based sodas taste better anyway
I’m a card carrying hippie and I fucking hate stevia. It ruins all it touches.
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!
Unfortunately, not everyone thinks it tastes badly. Even worse I’m someone who can absolutely tell the difference between sugar and sucralose (Splenda) and it tastes god awful.
I’ve gone from drinking sugared drinks to almost none or low sugar only. I try to keep it at 28g or less per 16oz if possible. However, I’ve really taken a liking to sparkling water. There are some great flavors out there.
I’m the opposite, you couldn’t pay me to drink soda that has sugar in it. The aftertaste is awful. I used to hate soda until I tried diet
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.
