NightOwlRevealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group
AutoTL;DRThis is the best summary I could come up with:
In May, the World Health Organization issued an alarming report that declared widely used non-sugar sweeteners like aspartame are likely ineffective for weight loss, and long term consumption may increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults.
A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a “possible carcinogen”, then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings – people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago, before new science cited by WHO raised health concerns.
It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi).
That same day, WHO’s Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (Jecfa), which makes consumption recommendations, reaffirmed the acceptable daily intake of 40 mg/kg of body weight.
Ruskin said the move also marks a change in direction for WHO, which in 2015 distanced itself from Ilsi when its executive board found the group to be a “private entity” and voted to discontinue its official relationship.
In the “avalanche” of media coverage of WHO’s designation of aspartame as a possible carcinogen, many outlets noted WHO’s split decision, or reported that WHO found the product to be safe.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Aspartame: Decades of science point to serious health risks - usrtk.org/sweeteners/aspartame_health_risks/
Wtf?:
A 2022 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that exposure of mice to aspartame at doses equivalent to below 15% of the FDA recommended daily intake for humans produces anxiety-like behavior. The anxiety appears in up to two generations descending from the aspartame-exposed males.
Weight gain, increased appetite and obesity related problems -Several studies link aspartame to weight gain, increased appetite, diabetes, metabolic derangement and obesity-related diseases. See our fact sheet: Diet Soda Chemical Tied to Weight Gain.
DarkWaspThe biggest issue I’m seeing is there’s other research that is the opposite of that so it keeps going back and forth which is problematic and hard to parse.
exscapeJust looking at the list of topics ("All topics" button in the menu) raises some major alarm flags about the trustworthyness of usrtk.org as a source.
I deleted it, it was linked to a WHO article so they got me. Sorry about that.
They're a pretty well known anti-science group.
CylusthevirusThat site is sketch as fuck. Covid bullshit, the works.
Oh shit, you’re right. I’ll delete.
Also it tastes like ass
I was under the impression the research showed that there was a risk but you needed to consume an exorbitant amount to get there. Around 20+ cans of coke a day which the majority of people don’t do.
Hot SaucermanAround 20+ cans of coke a day which the majority of people don’t do.
This guy has never met an American.
This is fair lol. I’m Canadian and when I was 17-20 I’d consume around 4-6 cans a day which was a crazy amount to myself and most people. 20+ seems nuts just financially.
You’re not wrong, it is nuts, health-wise and financially!
Agree. Even recently, I would have up to 5-6 cans worth myself (have since cut down a lot), but alongside the financial cost, there's also the acid eating away at your stomach lining and the excess caffeine to worry about alongside the Aspartame.
Frankly, given the stomach issues and acid reflux that too much soda can give you, I would imagine that people (even sodaholics) would have to stop much sooner than 20 due to all the other issues involved with sodas before the problems with Aspartame would even come into the picture.
Not to say that I'm not leery of Aspartame, but diet Soda has other major issues beside it.
chakan2The soda acid thing is also a myth. The PH level of your stomach acid is much higher than soda.
downpunxxcut a stomach open, spread the stomach acid on a painted car hood, eat that shit right off. saying it's the same ph as stomach acid, is like saying 1 of a thing is safe but 2 of the same thing has to be safe as the 1 thing. idiocy. and said with such confidence. ah the internetz, such a boon to humanity.
Sigh…come back after highschool chemistry.
VulKendovLower pH means stronger acid. Soda is not more acidic than you stomach acid. The real danger that the acidity of soda poses is to your teeth.
And considering the knock-on effects to the rest of your body from your teeth, it’s not an issue to sneeze at.
I dont necessarily disagree with your overall point about Americans drinking a lot of soda, but I don’t think pointing out that a company makes a cup a little smaller than 3 cans of soda is a very strong counterargument to the claim that it takes 20+ to be harmful…
The largest Big Gulp is 50oz and when I was a kid, people leaned on free refills for them. A 50oz is almost a whole 2-liter.
You’re not wrong, it’s not the best example, but I’ve seen people go through numerous Big Gulps a day.
Hell, when I worked overnight as a security guard, one of my fellow guards who drink an entire 2-liter of Mountain Dew to himself every night.
It’s hard for me to think about because I can’t even get through a whole 16oz without stopping halfway because it’s too syrupy.
A 2 liter a day is still miles away from the amount you’d need to drink to reach unsafe levels.
I think you’d have to drink 3+ a day before you’re at unsafe levels if you’re 150lbs (and…well…if we are shitting on eating habits, 150 is a very light American).
ShakeThatYamTbf, about half of a Big Gulp is filled with ice.
Holy balls that’s a large cup wtf. How popular are they? I mean, you see them in movies but that’s all the info I can draw from lol.
We literally had private companies engineer bigger soda cups to handle how much fucking soda Americans drink.
This is a really weird statement. Like it was some sort of feat of engineering to manufacture larger cups.
Very arguably, with 1970’s manufacturing standards, and how much 32 ounces of liquid weighs, it was an engineering feat. So much so that the originals looked more like a milk carton.
Potts’s desperation caught the attention of Coca-Cola, who in 1976 sent representatives to the merchandise manager with a strange proposition. Coca Cola wanted to create a new 32 ounce cup for their drinks, a previously unheard of amount. The largest size at the time was 20 ounces, and even that was considered to be monstrous. Instinctively Potts refused, claiming that the Cups were “too damn big” and in Potts’s defence, he was right. The design for the 32-ounce cups was square on the bottom and resembled your average milk cartoon.
Not a feat of engineering, a feat of marketing
Madison_rogueA Big Gulp is 30 ounces, 20 cans of coke is 240 ounces of soda. That's a lot of Big Gulps. That said the Double Gulp, the largest size 7-11 offers, tops out at 50 ounces. Yet you'd have to drink almost five of those to reach 20 cans.
in 2018 The United States consumption of soda per capita was 38.87 gallons per year, or 13.6 ounces of soda per day. Which was down from 45.5 gallons per year in 2010.
Remind me of the “Parks and rec” joke about “child-sized soda”: it’s the size of a small child!
HuddaBuddaDon't want to share my life story, but I did for a time, got to about a twelve pack and a half a day of diet coke when I was 20.
My reward was not weight loss, but an a-fib. and half a life expectancy.
I don't blame the diet coke because I was the one buying and drinking it. But it is important people understand that something is wrong in that stuff.
Just as I wouldn't blame cigarettes for giving me lung cancer, but I would want others to know it can.
That’s so unfortunate, thanks for sharing that. Hope you’re doing okay.
Doug7070Not to defend diet coke (any kind of soda is not healthy for you, regardless), but I would generally assume that drinking 144oz (assuming 18x8oz cans/day) of any type of beverage that isn’t plain old water would tend to cause some level of serious health effects, given that’s more than your entire general recommended daily fluid intake from all sources. I feel like the general takeaway is that most food and drink is bad for you in excess, and companies constantly slapping “diet/low fat/low carb/etc.” labels on junk food products that are marginally healthier than their peers gives a false impression that you can have your cake and eat it too in terms of negative health effects from these foods/drinks.
That’s basically how I’ve felt about it. If you’re getting too much sugar from drinking soda, the correct response is to drink less soda - not substitute the sugar with something that tricks your body into thinking it’s sweet.
SwedneckBut this ignores that people want to drink soda, and sugar-free soda lets them do that while also not consuming vast vast vast amounts of pointless calories.
You have to balance enjoyment with health, not doing so is why most diets fail, if you force yourself into a healthy diet that makes you sad you will almost inevitably end up falling back to the junk food because it makes you happy.
People want to eat lots of fat, sugary foods but that doesn’t mean they should.
Certainly, it’s about balancing enjoyment with health. However I think it’s important to listen to what your body is telling you, when it’s telling you you’re having too much of something.
Honestly not sure what your point is here, you seem to have ignored my argument and replied with a non-sequiteur.
Yeah, people should listen to their bodies, and their bodies say that they want to drink soda.
Now, is it better to drink soda with a shitload of calories, or soda with like 3 calories?
Most people have not trained themselves to pull off intuitive eating and thus their bodies just crave fats and carbs, so the best thing to do to improve their diet is to satisfy those cravings while consuming fewer calories.
This then provides an excellent motivation to re-calibrate your cravings as you realize that it is, in fact, possible to eat healthily without being miserable.
The body isn’t saying it wants soda. There is no drive from the body for soda. The body might want sugar, but it’s also saying it’s having too much. The brain is saying it likes the taste of soda, but taste isn’t nutrition.
Most people have not trained themselves to pull off intuitive eating and thus their bodies just crave fats and carbs, so the best thing to do to improve their diet is to satisfy those cravings while consuming fewer calories.
The best thing to do to improve their diet is to improve their diet. The point is to learn that those cravings aren’t right, so you can learn to identify your body’s real cravings are. If you keep drinking diet soda you may be less likely to make meaningful change, at best you’re delaying it.
Apart from the aspartame, that’s also like 900mg of caffeine a day, which is over twice the recommended amount, and 700mg of sodium.
Yup. what else can I say except poor self control and shortcuts are a mean combination.
I eat a lot healthier now, but that mistake isn't one that just goes away.
ADHD?
Unmedicated, I would crave soda like a fucking sugar tick. I’d eat until I was sick, then eat some more. Actually rotted a bunch of my teeth with my shitty habits and poor self-control. Needed several root canals… ugh…
Medicated, I have soda maybe once per month or every other month. I don’t have uncontrollable cravings for sugar anymore. It’s fucking great!!
I think self medicating with caffeine may have been part of it. Congrats on the cutting back.
It makes people with ADHD sleepy right?
Personally it doesn’t even do that, it just literally does nothing whatsoever to me.
I have popped 200mg of caffeine pills and chewed a 4mg nicotine gum and the only effect is that the gum makes me cough.
They do in Múrica. I’ve seen it
The World Health Organization said it was safe up to a certain level. The people in the WHO who said that work for Coca-Cola.
This means we can’t rely on the recommendation, and the actual “safe” amount may be much lower than that. The article goes into good depth and gives counterarguments too.
It is important to note that in reality there is no safe amount for a carcinogen. Sometimes a threshold is set to reduce risk to a reasonable amount in necessary workplace exposure or medical treatments.
The truth is, I think we’ll all eventually realize any sweetener should be seen as candy, not a thirst quencher.
I read somewhere that asparteme doesn’t accumulate and just passes through the body, which was an argument for having a regular intake below the threshold to be not a risk. With this revelation though, that seems sus now too.
I think that’s what this is about.
It doesn’t mean aspartame is bad and we are all going to die.
It means that perhaps the safe limits, risk reductions etc need to be re-assessed for them to be with regard to actual harm reduction… instead of the current possibility of “just enough harm that coke doesn’t get blamed, but good profit can still be extracted” that these coke associates may-or-may-not have influenced.
It calls recommendations into doubt as opposed to the actual raw science.
AFAIK, aspartame has been widely studied. If it was a substance of actual risk, it would have been highlighted.
Thank you being basically the only person in the thread who actually read the article.
The part where they said “aspartame is probably bad” wasn’t the corrupt part. The corrupt part was when they put an addendum saying “a little bit of cancer is okay as a treat”
bad news : "Guideline on Diet Coke ingredient by consultants tied to industry is ‘obvious conflict of interest’ and ‘not credible’, report says"
protip : don't drink or eat anything with any amount of Aspartame in it, as it isn't safe, or, you know, party on garth, it's your life, how long and healthy it will be sometimes is completely up to you
People are on so much garbage now it’s hard to pinpoint what makes them sick. I told someone about aspartame giving me headaches that felt like what they described and it cured them of the headaches they where getting bc they didn’t realize it could be a factor.
NeatoWe've studied this chemical literally more than any other food additive and there's still nothing definitive. Also mice are not a good stand-in for humans. They are really only used for acute toxicity and such.
But the mice genetically predisposed to getting tumors got tumors. What more proof do you need?
RickyRigatoniIt’s official: Cancer causes cancer.
One step closer cancer causing mice
Fun fact. A potential side effect of many cancer treatments is… cancer
just gotta hope it kills the old cancer before it gives you a new cancer
oce 🐆How hecking cancerous cancer is?
Cancer%
I honestly have no clue on the studies but I can’t drink anything with aspartame in it at all, even a single sip bloats me and screws up my bowel movements hard. It might just be an allergy but it took me 3 years to find the cause and I’m happy to avoid it that’s for sure.