https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/…
Time to put a ban on this sweetener and maybe other artificial sweeteners also? Aspartame is in most diet drinks and even other products such as Berocca. I personally opt for real sugar rather than sweeteners, only because these sweeteners make a higher craving for me to eat more.
broccoli
There's probably a stack of pesticides in it…
organic broccoli
@WreckTangle: Lead in the water (Flint water crisis for those who cbf clicking (or hovering on) the link)
Broccoli contains carbon atoms which, when burned, can turn into acrylamide, which in some animal studies have been associated with cancers.
Yes let's smoke up cigarettes in moderation if we go by your view.
You'd probably be fine
Just make sure it's less than 114mg per kg, although that's likely for the natural/stable isotope/s, not -238…
Uranium-238, with a half life of 4.5 billion years, is barely radioactive at all.
If you were enclosed in a box made of uranium-238, you would experience a significant reduction in radiation exposure overall.
This is because it is such an extremely dense material that it acts as an effective shield against radiation.
enclosed in a box
effective shield
speaking from experience, trapper?
How much of aspartame is moderation though?
Welcome to the 80's.
When you read how aspartame got to market despite being rejected a few times you'll understand.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_8…
(highlights)
"Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity, attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with Attorney James Turner back in 1996. The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and that it violated the Delaney Amendment, which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause cancer. According to the top doctors and researchers on this issue, aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss, coma and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue and depression. Further dangers highlighted is that aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol. The resulting chronic methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain causing addiction. Methanol, or wood alcohol, constitutes one third of the aspartame molecule and is classified as a severe metabolic poison and narcotic. How's that Diet Coke treating you now?
So how does Donald Rumsfeld fit in to all this? A little history:
In 1985, Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's clouded past, including the report of a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it "might induce brain tumors." The FDA had previously banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have then-Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld vow to "call in his markers," to get it approved. Here's how it happened:
Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president January 21, 1981. Rumsfeld, while still CEO at Searle, was part of Reagan's transition team. This team hand-picked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., to be the new FDA commissioner. Dr. Hayes, a pharmacologist, had no previous experience with food additives before being appointed director of the FDA. On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Reagan issued an executive order eliminating the FDA commissioners' authority to take action and Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener. Hayes, Reagan's new FDA commissioner, appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision. So Hayes installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor.
One of Hayes' first official acts as FDA chief was to approve the use of aspartame as an artificial sweetener in dry goods on July 18, 1981. In order to accomplish this feat, Hayes had to overlook the scuttled grand jury investigation of Searle, overcome the Bressler Report, ignore the PBOI's recommendations and pretend aspartame did not chronically sicken and kill thousands of lab animals. Hayes left his post at the FDA in November, 1983, amid accusations that he was accepting corporate gifts for political favors. Just before leaving office in scandal, Hayes approved the use of aspartame in beverages. After Hayes left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, he served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position as a high-paid senior medical advisor with Burson-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame.
Here's the kicker: When Searle was absorbed by Monsanto in 1985, Donald Rumsfeld reportedly received a $12 million bonus, pretty big money in those days. "
Anyway, the whole article is worth a look and there's plenty of links there for those who wish to get further educated on the subject.
Holy shit.
A lot of the stuff in that article is made up. Betty Martini isn't a doctor, more the aspartame equivalent of Andrew Wakefield
Look at the links down the bottom of the page. They're not to studies, they're sites like "holisticmed.com" and a link to a site selling "Organic evaporated cane juice". There's so many red flags to that article that it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Assuming your correct, at least the comment is well written and easily verifiable.
Yup, it definitely is. Although a lot is meaningless. Searle, Rumsfeld and Hayes are terrible, all interested in make a buck and not research. But Searle in general was terrible at research, they had multiple drugs going through senate inquiries and they basically couldn't do research properly. But this was also followed up on - https://www.gao.gov/assets/hrd-87-46.pdf. There were senate inquiries too. It's not like this happened behind closed doors.
Since then though, the research was done to confirm where it's safe and where it isn't. I wouldn't give diet coke to a baby and there's warnings on who can't have it. But we probably should have seen a huge spike in brain cancers by now if it was really as bad as it's made out to be.
Other bits are easily verifiable. Like the list of diseases it supposedly causes, it looks made up. We get far more methanol from other foods that aspartame, for example.
it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Too much salt causes heart disease.
Huffington Post.
So the pro-establishment “it’s just a conspiracy theory” types were wrong yet again, but it’s the WHO making the claim so…
Never heard anyone say anything related to aspartame is a conspiracy lol, where are you hanging out? What I have heard is that "Aspartame is one of the most rigorously tested food ingredients. Reviews by over 100 governmental regulatory bodies found the ingredient safe for consumption at current levels."
The biggest beef I have with the current situation is that they never conducted proper animal trials before testing it on humans. It was just approved because it was a political judgment.
It took them several years before someone did the rat study…
The same applies for whatever happened in 2019; we are still doing a live trial at the moment but preliminary analysis shows most people are erring on the side of caution.
We need real science to be done and we need it fast. Not warp speed science though, if you get what I mean.
Would help if you read the article to understand the context, but if you're a conspiracy nut…
IARC is kind of useless because the same applies to the fluoride argument, albeit not wrt to cancer.
The IARC ruling, finalised earlier this month after a meeting of the group's external experts, is intended to assess whether something is a potential hazard or not, based on all the published evidence.
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume.
Peer reviewed independent studies are what matters.
If you read carefully in the article you would notice that International Sweeteners Association (ISA) is not an impartial source, but it isn't made clear in the article because the author does not like to write content like that. You need to use your brain.
Saying "hey crazy people, you're crazy" doesn't make me "pro-establishment'. It makes me pro-evidence.
Too bad the conspiracy theorists think WHO is a cabal ran in service of the devil to fool people into doing the opposite of what they should.
Yeah I had a laugh at this too.
"The WHO can't be trusted, oh look WHO might be doing something I agree with, of course they can be trusted in this case!"
From the article
Working overnight and consuming red meat are in the "probable" class, which means that there is limited evidence these substances or situations can cause cancer in humans and either better evidence showing they cause cancer in animals, or strong evidence showing that they have similar characteristics as other human carcinogens.
The "radiofrequency electromagnetic fields" associated with using mobile phones are "possibly cancer-causing". Like aspartame, this means there is either limited evidence they can cause cancer in humans, sufficient evidence in animals, or strong evidence about the characteristics.
Helps to read in context.
Didn't they say that about smoking and thalidomide at some point as well?
thalidomide was an entirely different situation (prescribed drug not a food) and the major impact was birth defects, and smoking at the time people were say it was healthy they didn’t have the same rigour around the science of how they assess and classify risk. Certainly smoking has been a known and promoted cancer risk my entire life and I was born in the 80s. Aspartame has been thoroughly studied tested over the same period and the same strong evidence hasn’t emerged. So if it is a carcinogen, almost certainly to a lesser degree in the way it’s commonly consumed. One thing to thing about with carcinogens is the mechanism they get to the cells impacted and the dose. Like with smoking it’s that direct contact with the substance to the lungs, mouth and throat where you most commonly see the cancers.. With asbestos it’s how it embeds within the lungs. I’m not saying I know how safe or not aspartame is but from the quoted article, from all available evidence it’s less likely to be carcinogenic than red meat. If new evidence came to light it might change from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’
Well you could take a look at some of links I posted above? :)
The thing is that all of these things and more have all been approved by the 'authorities' at some point and then have later turned out to be very harmful so for me, they have very little credibility in these matters. If something has been proven to be safe over time with use in the real world then I'll take a look at it but with stuff I can totally live without like smokes and diet fizzy water I'm happy to give them a miss.
@EightImmortals: I can totally see why you don’t want to use artificial sweeteners. I primarily don’t like the taste in food products. I don’t mind it in colas. Realistically we’re all better off drinking water, tea and coffee, but that didn’t stop me from indulging in the Barcadi deal yesterday. My point is that article quoted re aspartame isn’t particularly alarming and despite all the research it doesn’t seem to be highly risky compared to some things. This can be the case even if there was some dodgy shenanigans involved to bring it to the market.
My meat is brown/pink when I eat it, not red, so I'm good.
time to plant some stevia farms
.
WHO also declared mobiles phones are potentially carcinogenic almost a decade ago.
Dunno? WHO?
Excess sugar is much worse.
Obesity is the biggest health crisis Australia has ever faced.
Cancer is also up there on that list.
Cancer is on the list too, just much further down.
Obesity is one of the causes of cancer…
When you say ‘health crisis’ what are you referring to?
Death and serious illness.
and mental health…
@jv: Mental health and substance abuse issues, I would rate as potentially being a ‘crisis’ although it’s been that way for a long time so I don’t know if it’s a crisis if it’s being going on for 20+years
It’s the crisis part that I think is a bit of a stretch. No doubt obesity isn’t good for people and our obesity rate is pretty high, but what’s the ‘crisis’. Cost of the healthcare system? Most demand on the healthcare system is older people and the cost is increasing because more is happening and people are living longer. We expect more from our health system and our health system can do more than ever before. Cancer, mental health and substance abuse are big contributors to burden of disease, but you don’t hear anyone talking about a ‘cancer crisis’.
The linked article literally says
"It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. "
As such, this remains non newsworthy unless new, unpublished science is included in this review.
Yes, there are animal trials showing that Aspartame "may be carcinogenic".
However, as this article also mentions, the quantities of Aspartame ingested in those trials (on a weight for weight basis) is borderline physically impossible to consume in day to day life as a human.
I'd hazard a guess that the Acid intake from consuming that much diet soft drink would cause you troubles far earlier than any affect from the Aspartame.
There is no proposed mechanism by which Aspartame could even cause such issues.
Methanol (a recognised poison) is released in the digestion process, but again, the quantities are miniscule to the point of being negligible at even unusually high consumption levels. There's more Methanol in a fresh Apple than in a can of diet soft drink..
Stop/reduce drinking soft drinks (diet or not) to save your teeth from tooth decay, not cause of this nonsense.
Getting hit by a car whilst walking down the street or falling off a ladder should be far higher than Aspartame on your list of things to worry about in day to day life.
I love listening to tubbies and the lazy extra gamer bragging about how they have cut back on sugar whilst drinking 16 liters of chemical infused fizzy drink a day. Its as funny as an episode of a good comedy… Its also indicative of the ridiculousness of humans today that they (and some do) claim they are being healthier for doing this.
Often all they need to do is look in a mirror to show how wrong they are.
Aspartame is dreadful stuff and yet here are some peole saying it is ok.. Good luck with your guts people. Personally it sends me into a headache sick feeling frenzy and i never touch the stuff
Agreed. Aspartame is really some nasty stuff.
Personally it sends me into a headache sick feeling frenzy
Sounds like some weak guts lmao
People should not lecturing other people if they are Overweight / Obese. Doesn't make sense.
Can people put their BMI first before telling people not to? lol
Don't worry man. Most people got happily injected with 2, 3, 4 or 5 doses of some new genetically modified stuff that was not really tested on humans.
At least aspartame has been used for over 40 years.
She'll be right…
IARC are a hated group. Industry doesn't like them in the least. This should be obvious to those who have followed the IARC Monographs as they've been released over the years.
Anyway, for aspartame, USRTK does a good job summarising the situation here: https://usrtk.org/sweeteners/aspartame_health_risks/
Is there anything that isn't a "possible carcinogen"? Everything in moderation is key.