So maybe the huge worry people had after the news that WHO would classify it as cancerous was a little too much. I think the media could have reported on it in a bit more responsible way.
Won’t effect the US, even if it causes cancer. EU has prohibited food additives which are carcinogenic, but we don’t because the poor, poor food producers might have to pay farmers more and pay a couple pennies to make food that doesn’t kill people.
The US should ban it just like it does saccharine. It takes less aspartame for that study than it takes for saccharine to cause issues I mice.
The US is fairly strict about food additives that cause cancer, but not general chemicals that cause cancer. There’s also a difference between causes cancer and link to cancer.
I have always heard the 52 can argument but the thing is, who in the hell is drinking 14 cans a day? I’m a physique competitor, I need an exorbitant amount of water and 14 12 fl oz/355 ml cans is a shit ton of fluid.
Something being carcinogenic is not the same as it being likely to cause cancer. I wish this was a better understood distinction in the public. It comes down to how carcinogenic it is and how much you’re exposed to/consume. It is technically true that aspartame is carcinogenic – it’s a scientific fact. But like they say here, normal human consumption amounts makes the likelihood of getting cancer from it negligible.
It’s important though to recognize that carcinogens come in varying levels of strength. I’m fine with drinking two cans of diet soda, but I would never wash my hands in benzene. Benzene and aspartame are both carcinogenic, but benzene is WAY more potent. We’ve limited the amount of benzene that can be in gasoline for this reason – but again note, it’s limited, not eliminated.
I took an environmental engineering class in college, and our professor had a very cute but apt tagline. Dilution is the solution to pollution. You’ll never get rid of 100% of something. But reducing its concentration can make it safe regardless. Same idea goes here.
Thanks for coming to my completely unsolicited Ted Talk.
Safe in limited amount, so just like normal sugar then. Just don’t drink liters of soda each day. (Or even better, don’t drink soda but water instead)
14 cans of soda a day, even diet soda, can’t possibly be safe or good for you. Especially since aspartame is also linked to kidney and liver failure and is even worse for you than ibuprofen in that regard; and you wouldn’t normally take 14 ibuprofen in a single day.
How much did Coca-Cola pay for this PR? I swear, ever since the first news that aspartame is linked to cancer, there have been way more articles trying to convince people it ain’t that bad. It’s a corporate smokescreen.
I’ve been on a low sugar diet for 3 years, to try to curb my binge eating disorder. Sugar was a huge trigger. I recently looked into how many low and zero sugar products use aspartame and every thing I buy to adhere to my diet has it in it. I’m introducing a bit more regular sugar into my diet so I stop consuming so much aspartame. It’s going well. I haven’t binged since the start of this, and hopefully it stays that way.
You need a huge amount of aspertame to cause issues. Sugar is very unhealthy and it’s in everything. I’d recommend sticking to sugar alternatives. If you’re adding sweetener yourself, to coffee or whatever, there are other options though. I like stevia, which you can even grow and extract yourself without too much trouble. Ragardless, unless you’re consuming absolutely massive amounts of aspertame, you’ll be OK. (Maybe switch to water from soda though. That’ll help regardless.)
Thank you for making me feel a bit better. How tf do you grow stevia tho??? I want to do that.
Up to 14 cans is technically limited but I don’t think that limit is relevant for the average person. Or what do the Americans say?
14 cans is like 4.62 liters, which is more than what an average person needs in water per day.
If your drinking 4.5 liters of pop a day, cancer is not on the radar. Plenty of stuff that will kill you first.
Not a shock.
Food scares are almost always over blown (except obviously tide pods).
People thought MSG was going to kill everyone. People thought Cholesterol was the key to good health. Even fat in moderation is perfectly fine.
But Fish will kill you with mercury, uncooked pork will kill you with everything (which is unlikely to happen in the first place, but also most pork you get is already cooked, at least sausage and hams). Salmonella is definitely going to kill you. Your kitchen is going to burn down, Fried food will end your life, and all processed food is bad.
Remember Supersize me? Remember the guy who ate two big macs a day for multiple years. That SINGLE guy should have been the end of the entire documentary, because he basically showed “Yes you can eat McDonalds in moderation and have a healthy life.” But instead “McDonalds is going to kill you with super sized food.”
The fact is you’re probably more likely to get Ebola than most of these things actually contributing to your death… though speaking of disease myths…
These things rush in, kill a business or a company, and then are forgotten, and then 10 years later new science comes out and goes “Btw it wasn’t as bad as people thought… try it out”
About the MSG hysteria, it’s not even rooted in actual medical data, just run-of-the-mill xenophobia, which in itself is absolutely wild to me. It’s like a whole chunk of the population collectively decided to develop the palate of a toddler, turning up their nose to “foreign” food.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate “Researchers, doctors, and activists have tied the controversy about MSG to xenophobia and racism against Chinese culture,[62][63][64][65][66] saying that East Asian cuisine is being targeted while the widespread use of MSG in other processed food hasn’t been stigmatized.[67] These activists have claimed that the perpetuation of the negative image of MSG through the Chinese restaurant syndrome was caused by “xenophobic” or “racist” biases.[68][69]”
I didn’t dive deep on MSG just to not sound like I’m ranting about that specifically but you nailed it. It was more about Chinese restaurants (at least that’s how I heard it) and I remember my parents saying we don’t go to Chinese restaurants during the hysteria.
Sucks because I love Chinese food, and Thai, Korean, Japanese and more.
Supersize Me: “Wow, if I eat garbage at a 3000+ calorie rate a day, I’m gonna feel like shit! Please give me awards and adoration and play me in every high school health class!”
Don’t forget TV shows, more documentaries and more.
Morgan Spurlock did VERY well for himself based on that completely bias “Study”. Sadly that became the style of documentary for a while (and potentially still is). Fuck the facts, let’s make entertainment!
Everyone knew McDicks is bad for you. It was an entertaining doc. That’s why people loved it. Also, most Americans are 100% ignorant to nutrition. Count your blessings it’s a no brainer for you.
As a side note, i don’t think the skinny guy from Super Size Me who eats 2 Big macs a day is a picture of exemplary health. Dude is either a genetic outlier or he will drop dead of a coronary one day.
He’s not all that special or unhealthy. 2 big macs is about 1k calories, if you get them as two meals with coke it’s about 2k calories. If that’s your food for the day it’s perfectly fine for a moderately active person. The sodium is probably the most dangerous part and just drinking more water would likely keep that in check as well.
People seem to not understand that not everything is about calories. There’s a fuck ton of grease and fat in that food. You might not exactly gain a ton of weight but you’ll be coating your arteries with all of that fat. A little fat is good. We all need fat. But the amount of fat that is in fried and red meat is very high. Too high to be eating everyday even if you’re within calorie limits
McDonald’s isn’t actually super fatty or greasey. Fats are overly demonized, they don’t make you fat.
It’s ground beef. Of course it’s super fatty.
High fat is bad for you. Eating any thing high in fat will coat your arteries in fat if you’re eating it all of the time as every meal every day. Never once did I say it would make you fat. It will clog your arteries leading to congestive heart failure if it gets bad enough.
I’m not saying eat LOW fat. I’m not saying to cut out fat. But eating a very high fat content diet is terrible for you. Ask any doctor. You’d have to have absolutely zero health sense to think eating burgers every day with fries isn’t terrible for your health.
Clogging arteries is also about cholesterol, which is increasingly determined to be mostly genetic and dietary is secondary.
You can find nutrition studies to support or attack anything, it’s one of the worst sectors of science. The US is still recovering from the awful food pyramid paid for by grain farmers. Many cultural cuisines are loaded with fats, olive oil is in everything around the Mediterranean, France uses creams and butters, inuits live on almost exclusively protein and fat.
All of those could be explanations. Here’s another one.
Big macs are 583 calories… two big macs are about 1100 calories… aka perfectly reasonable in a healthy diet. I forget if he ate two a day or two in some meals, but a nutritionist would ok that Calorie count.
Morgan Spurlock pushed “no one can eat here and be healthy” but he constantly pushed for combo meals ate in one sitting, and supersized every time they asked. That’s like someone going into a bar and saying yes every time the bartender goes “Want another one” and then going “OMG I’m so wasted and got alcohol poisoning” he set the rules up to make sure he failed, because no one is saying eat a combo meal at Mcdonalds for three meals a day.
The thing is it WOULD be interesting if he looked into why he can maintain a reasonable weight while eating it… but of course they didn’t because that would prove Mcdonalds isn’t the worst thing ever. Morgan had two goals. Prove Mcdonalds is unhealthy (And ignore contrary evidence) and make an entertaining documentary. He did the later, but I feel like he never even came close to the former because his methodology was shit.
I think it’s incumbent upon adults to see media blitzes as probably exaggerated and studded with misinfo.
If you don’t buy the initial wave, the accuracy of news goes way up.
The problem is most people aren’t doing that, and even those who do get second hand/rumors/stories from other people and eventually succumb to misinformation.
I’ve heard many times that X is cancer causings. I wish it was one wave that you could ignore but this shit gets repeated entirely too often, and even if it’s not, the misinformations operates outside of the individual, because downstream products (diet coke) moved away from this because of bad PR.
Even the tide pod thing was over blown. No one was actually eating them, it was just a meme.
I agree, but the “Tide pods are bad don’t eat them” is true… (Though almost all media hysteria is over blown, it’s a constant.)
Everything in moderation as long as it isn’t straight up poisonous.
And even then, small amounts will make you immune. No seriously, I saw it in a documentary called the Princess Bride.
Hydro homies where you at? Soda is trash, diet soda is trash, tiktok water is trash. Aspartame aint a problem in our lives.
This. Nothing to worry about if you only drink high quality h2o.
“Water sucks! Gatorade not only tastes better, it quenches your thirst more!”
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I’m still not eating it. It tastes terrible or makes my mouth go numb depending on the type. There is a serious hole in the market to be filled by quick low calorie snack foods that are shelf stable and don’t involve sugar alternatives. Most stuff is just too sweet any way.
No one is out here forcing you to suck down aspartame. That’s your right not to ingest it.
I didn’t get the sense that op felt forced.
Very glad the WHO doesn’t discriminate between countries and companies when it comes to bribes.
Also glad to know there’s as safe level of carcinogens I can ingest.
The problem being, of course, that those that drink things like Diet Coke, are addicted to drinking things like Diet Coke, this hedging after the fact, is such nonsense, and meant to soothe the ruffled feathers of diet beverage manufacturers who advertise with News organizations. If the thing is cancerous, then it’s cancerous, now you know, don’t keep printing stories saying “a little poison is fine, if you watch it” lol
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But a little poison is often fine
Of course a little poison is often fine, if we use such a broad definition of poison.
If the definition of “poison” includes anything that can hurt you in massive quantities, that would include most drugs, plenty of vitamins, essential minerals, and even water if you take it to the extreme.
You don’t think 14 cans a day is a massive amount?
14 cans a day is a massive amount, and I didn’t say anything to imply otherwise.
I was agreeing with the guy I replied to that “a little poison is often fine” and elaborating that lots of things typically considered “safe” become dangerous in such large quantities.
So actually no. It isn’t really safe. Coca-Cola and the rest of the beverage industry is just as bad as big tobacco.
Everything is technically unsafe. When we say “safe” we always mean “in moderation”
