> Schubauer-Berigan acknowledged during a press conference with journalists Wednesday that the studies could contain flaws that skewed the results. She said the classification should be viewed as a call to conduct more research into whether aspartame can cause cancer in humans.
> “Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives in the human food supply. FDA scientists do not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions,” an agency spokesperson said late Thursday shortly after the WHO released its findings.
I'm going to side with the FDA on this one. Aspartame could possibly hold the title as the most scrutinized chemical in history. So for the WHO to give such a limp wristed statement calling for more research is unbelievably pandering.
It's also vaguely un-scientific. Even with a 99% confidence interval, we know that 1 out of every 100 analysis studies is going to reach a false conclusion. So just based on the sheer number of studies conducted on Aspartame, we know there are going to be links that turn out inconclusive. Latching onto a small number of niche cases and ignoring the preponderance of evidence is essentially calling for infinite research.
The WHO has a tendency to lean overly-cautious. And if we are being fully honest, maybe even a bit Euro-centric and elitist. And given the alternative is sugar which has obvious and known health side effects it's hard not to see this as some bored staff playing games.
The WHO does have a tendency to lean overly cautious.
But you have to remember that the FDA is not working for YOUR best interest either. When the FDA says that something is “safe”, what it actually means is “the economic impacts of this are probably negligible in a lifetime”. So if aspartame causes cancer after your career is over, then it’s safe according to the FDA.
The WHO isn’t under the same lobbying or economic pressures, and approach their statements from entirely different perspectives than the FDA.
I mean, it's hard to even know where to grapple with such a polemic statement. But you mean to say that the FDA's mission is to ignore retirees? Retirees being the the most powerful voting block in the country, the top source of campaign contributions, and top recipient of government funds.
Even if I was conspiratorial minded, I would assume the conspiracy works the other way.
That's not what he means. He's referring to the FDA officials retiring, and thus no longer being responsible for any of their decisions on safety anymore, since they're at home relaxing if anything bad happens down the road.
From what I've seen, it appears that plastics/endocrine disruptors are evidence of this. BPA being a previous example [1], with most other plastics being a current example [2], including the "BPA free" replacements like BPS.
Not that I don’t disagree with the idea of being skeptical about agency motivations and transparency, but this seems like a literal conspiracy theory.
There are all kinds of things that cause or are linked cancer that pretty much have to be legal. Can the government entirely ban motor vehicles or delivery trucks? Would you have the government ban ice cream because obesity causes cancer?
Government agencies like the FDA have to deal with the complexities of the real world. Risk of death is involved with daily life, so they are often tasked with the analysis of risk.
The layperson doesn’t really like to hear that they’re just a number in a statistics database but it’s true.
40% of people get cancer in their lifetime. So if you have a chemical that increases cancer risk by an insignificant enough percentage, there’s a pretty understandable debate on whether banning something like that is an overreach or not. What are the benefits of the chemicals? What are the risks?
Actually banning fossil fuel cars from dense city centers has been proven to be healthier for the people living there. So yeah would be great if they could ban them everywhere.
I agree, but there's a reason that I specifically didn't add those qualifiers. I was talking about a complete ban on vehicles – delivery trucks, school buses, semi trucks, cars in rural areas, etc. They all have negative externalities and verifiably kill people, but they provide obvious benefits that we rely on.
The FDA is there to evaluate risks and decide when benefits outweigh risks.
A lot of your criticism seems to be playing the man rather than the ball.
The WHO said a person weighing 70kg would need to consume more than between nine and 14 cans of diet soft drink per day to exceed the daily guideline. So basically the FDA and WHO are in agreement, but the WHO uses more cautious language.
Sure, but as much as the news is going to pick up this story and blow it out of proportion, I think people should kind of know they are being played with here.
WHO can't be held responsible for headlines put out by newspapers.
WHO declared aspartame possibly carcinogenic, putting it in the same class as mobile phone usage That means there is some limited evidence pointing in that direction, but that further studies are needed to confirm this. I don't think this statement is incorrect. In the end is all about the daily dosis, and the possibly increase in cancer (is it 0.005% or 5%).
If you need to drink 40 cans to increase your cancer risk by 0.005%, it would be irrelevant for most people.
Yup, and yet the thousands who will read the CNN article (ok let’s be serious, they just skim the headline) about the WHO version will “tsk tsk” at me and say “You know that stuff gives you cancer,” while ingesting dozens of supplements that haven’t even been tested for safety because they’re unregulated.
People will sit and argue the carcinogenic potential and completely ignore they're discussing poison. As if cancer is the only factor that could be of concern.
Notice your comment is down at the far end of the pile, while above psuedointellectuals fiegn insight into FDA & WHO motivations.
Endocrine & hormone disrupting, toxic compounds, but wait for it, hasn't been studied yet -> "there's no evidence" of harmful effect -> food safe
EU already banned a whole host of additives the US public gladly gorges on because we want red drank
It's not the job of the FDA or WHO to tamper with scientific evidence to push people in that direction. That's how people lose trust in the institutions of science.
The WHO should hold back on condemning universal sweetening that will make it impossible for anyone to tally the amount they've consumed because people might go back to sugar? They should lie or they should say this path is also probably unsafe?
I don't really see anything inconsistent with the WHO or the FDA statements. The WHO wants health across contingencies and the FDA wants to sell diabetes causing drinks to the maximum extent that they don't provably hurt health.
Likewise. I like to hold a suspicions mind about chemicals introduced into diets until proved safe, and sometimes their dangers can take decades to manifest. However, from aspartame's structure and its metabolites (phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol) it's difficult to see how it could be dangerous except in huge amounts. The worst being methanol and no doubt it's very nasty but the body is well adapted to metabolizing small amounts of methanol from the breakdown of normal foods. It seems unlikely anyone could consume enough aspartame to be harmful.
I'm a lot more suspicious about sucralose (chlorinated sucrose), it seems to me we ought to be much more concerned with what its three Cl atoms do during its metabolism.
Edit: seems to me WHO ought to concentrate time on reducing the population's 'bliss point' from its all-time high. Over the last 50/60 years corporations have forced up the bliss point by making drinks etc. sweeter and sweeter. We desperately need to wean the population from this high point back to more normal levels. Then we wouldn't need as much sweeteners whether natural or artificial.
> Aspartame could possibly hold the title as the most scrutinized chemical in history.
I don't understand this talking point, but I see it repeated often. Aspartame has only been approved since the 70s and was only discovered in the 1960s. The total of all the years of use/research into Aspartame doesn't even amount to a single human lifespan. It's barely over half of one! How the hell are we supposed to have any idea of the long term effects from that? In terms of "most scrutinized chemical in history" I don't think Aspartame has a chance against chemicals like water or ethanol.
This is simply conjecture but there have been numerous studies done it. Moreover, it's the most consumed artificial sweetener in the world. In this case, you'd think at least some cases of cancer would appear even by chance related to it. Yet, as far as I know, we really haven't seen any that stood up to statistical rigor.
From 1970 to now there have been what...4 generations of aspartame consumers? I'd say that sample size is enough to draw a reasonable conclusion from.
I may be wrong in my assumption here but the amount of aspartame needed to cause these types of things is insane. The amount of aspartame you would need to consume to even approach a level considered mildly hazardous with this new data would be 14 sodas.
> From 1970 to now there have been what...4 generations of aspartame consumers?
The few people who started drinking it as teens and adults in the 1970s are now only in their 50s and 60s, and the generations after that have only been drinking it for a few decades. That isn't much data at all to judge long term impacts. 50 years is nothing, and a lot about our consumption of aspartame has changed drastically over that time. In the 1970s people weren't drinking 3-6 cans of diet soda a day. The average American today is drinking a bit less than the 58 gallons of soda a year that we drank in the 90s, but it's still a lot more than was being consumed for the first decade or two since aspartame was added.
Personally, I don't even drink soda and so I have no skin in this game whatsoever. I honestly have no idea what the long term risks of Aspartame are, I just doubt anyone could have much confidence with less than 50 years of research. I can say that it seems highly unlikely that there are dire short term effects at least, but I have nothing but sympathy for those who are skeptical considering that companies routinely buy research to show whatever conclusions they want to see while burying any results that are unfavorable and the FDA often seems to care more about protecting profits than human lives. We've seen again and again that companies are willing to knowingly poison people and that regulatory agencies are ineffective at protecting us from it, so I can't blame anyone for being cautious.
Considering that the WHO's stance of "possible carcinogen" isn't a strong claim in the first place and the recommendation for additional research can't hurt anyway it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Even given these limitations, if the effect were strong, we would see some of it start to pop up after 50 years. Unless there is reason to think it's a threshold effect - no impact until X level of consumption. I'm not sure whether there is, but even if the impact is "causes cancer after 100 years", we would likely see some signs in some people after 50. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that the volume of studies haven't shown small effects increasing over cohort duration.
The Ockham's Razor here - the bigger the causative effect, the more signal it should have.
> Even given these limitations, if the effect were strong, we would see some of it start to pop up after 50 years.
I think that's the argument the WHO is making. That given what we've learned over the last ~50 years it does seem possible that aspartame is increasing the rate of certain cancers. It's a pretty modest claim and they think it's worthy of more research. I find that hard to argue against. What's the harm in a bunch of independent researchers spending some time studying the long term impacts of aspartame? If it turns out the effect is very small, or non-existent it won't change anything. People can just feel more confident about chugging down gallons of diet soda every year. If it turns out that a bunch of people drinking aspartame end up with cancers after 70 years when they wouldn't have otherwise, we'd know how to prevent that for the next generation. Scientists get work, we get answers. Seems like a win/win.
There have hardly been 4 generations of aspartame consumers, since quite a few of the 1970s generation are still with us (would it be more or less if they'd had no aspartame? I have no idea, do you?) and mass use didn't kick in until later anyway.
>the alternative is to learn to enjoy bitter beverages.
people seek replacements when things they like become scarce, not alternatives.
asking the public-at-large to wholly change preference (especially when the preference is compounded by biological bias in the way we experience taste..) will never be effective without extenuating circumstance or market control of some sort.
I sympathize with your point -- people should try to enjoy things without a lot of excess sweetness -- but it doesn't align with reality.
> What if a diabetic wants a cookie? Or ice cream?
Diabetics can eat cookies and ice cream, they just need to shoot themselves with insulin afterwards. It's having too much of it the problem.
Besides, if something is bad for you, you avoid it. Period. There are infinite other flavors in life to make it all about that single one. "But I want it" is not a reasonable argument.
I agree, but studies have nowhere close to a 99% confidence interval. Half or more of these types of studies reach false conclusions and are not reproducible.
> An adult who weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds, would have to drink more than nine to 14 cans of aspartame-containing soda daily to exceed the limit and potentially face health risks.
Okay, but if I consume 9 to 14 cans of sugar-based soda, I don't wind up with the same cancer risk? It's a ludicrous amount of aspartame/soda to be sure, but there -is- something potentially an issue with aspartame somewhere in there.
Yes, "everything causes cancer" but I don't disagree with the WHO's decision. Something's there, even if it's negligible.
> No, you will end up with type 2 diabetes.
I don't think anyone is talking about diabetes.
> For some reason, she thinks that a tiny bit of aspartame has a higher probability of causing her kids greater harm than a ton of refined sugar.
Agree that sugar is absolutely terrible for you, and aspartame is much less bad. What the WHO's talking about is strictly "possible" cancer risk. Based on my understanding, it's highly likely it's more worth it to face possible cancer risk thank the 100% definitive high risk of disease from sugar in the diet. The main thrust of my point is that there's no reason it shouldn't be on group 2B, and the FDA claiming otherwise is silly.
In that case, they can't prove a negative. There is no reason to believe that a molecule is different depending on where it came from. If there is evidence to the contrary, that would be interesting.
Which are? I assume any molecule introduced to the body in excess will have a variety of effects. It just seems after decades, there seems to be nothing substantially risky about consuming any of the low calorie sweeteners in a non crazy amount.
Especially since the alternative seems to be people consuming a ton of excess carbohydrates, which have near guaranteed risks.
Yeah, there are absolutely people who drink this much aspartame.
Probably we should think of its danger level like Advil: normal sparse amounts are fine. But if you are doing it constantly you're going to have issues.
It doesn't even mean that. 14 cans doesn't cause issues, it is when the FDA thinks risk kicks in. That might still be a 1 in a million chance, after hitting the 14 can limit
Probably obvious to many, but I wanted to throw out there: after quick audit of my kitchen, I found aspartame in or added to other products (e.g., chewing gum, coffee, smoothie mixes, cereal, ice cream, etc.). So lets make sure we keep that in mind when quantitatively measuring aspartame consumption!
Even still, if all of that is replacing sugar and plummeting your risk of diabetes, a small increased risk of cancer after a lifetime of consumption seems like a very acceptable tradeoff.
I wonder what the time-frame for this is. If I drink 14 cans of diet soda once, have I permanently increased my odds of cancer? That seems likely. If I drink 14 cans of anything other than water or maybe coffee every day for 30 years I would expect negative health effects.
It would be great if they had some sort of time-frame.
My point is there is a big difference between and X% increase in cancer being associated with 2-3 cans a day for a year compared to a decade. And who knows if 2-3 cans a day for a year is any safer than 1 can a day for 5 years or a can every other day for 20 years?
Cancer risk is accumulative I'm assuming. So you would want to reduce risk as much as possible because there are plenty of other things you're exposed to that increases cancer risk. Can't just look at one substance and it's risk alone.
Diet soda and sweeteners behind them are still a scam even if they don’t “cause cancer.” They’re a scam because they still cause insulin response. Pancreas cranks out insulin after tasting the soda, and there no blood sugar to react with.
My uncle drank tons of Diet Coke and got pancreatic cancer. Doesn’t mean diet soda caused his pancreatic cancer, but he definitely didn’t loose weight by drinking the stuff.
> My uncle drank tons of Diet Coke and got pancreatic cancer. Doesn’t mean diet soda caused his pancreatic cancer, but he definitely didn’t loose weight by drinking the stuff.
The point for most people of Diet Coke isn't to lose weight. It's to avoid the harm caused by sugar, while still having something to drink. Diet sodas are definitely way, way better for anybody with sugar senstivities or diabetes. Plain water would be better, but that doesn't make Diet Coke a "scam."
But there are also articles that describe what’s called “anticipatory response” to food/drink. I didn’t see an article connecting diet soda in particular to insulin response, but possibly it’s the same for things that only taste sweet.
Even if they do cause an insulin response (which a bunch of people have noted, is not true for many sweeteners), they do not have calories. If your uncle drank sugared soda instead, I'm certain he'd weigh significantly more than his life drinking diet soda.
Diet sodas are a bit of a trap people fall into, though: if you switch to diet soda and don't also fix your otherwise unhealthy diet, then it won't really help you. It's better than drinking sugared soda, but not exactly the whole solution.
> They’re a scam because they still cause insulin response.
Some sweeteners can cause insulin spikes (sorbitol and xylitol for example), but aspartame does not. There's some evidence that it can still cause insulin resistance though.
Is the science good on this claim? I keep hearing it and we should be more concerned about insulin spikes but is there really a correlation with sweeteners?
If diet soda really caused a big insulin response while containing no sugar, wouldn't we see things like a heavy binge on diet soda causing hypoglycemia? Which I've never heard of.
It is also normal that many European foods are banned in the US. For every discussion I see about how the FDA is crazy for letting Americans consume all these various additives, I see another discussion about how the FDA is crazy for banning $EUROPEAN_FOOD. Unpasteurized milk is one of the more common ones people talk about (along with products made from unpasteurized milk). Kinder eggs were another, but the situation has changed. People also scoff at the American habit of refrigerating eggs (which is fine—the choice to refrigerate or not refrigerate eggs just has to be consistent with the ways eggs are prepared for consumers in your country, and in the US, refrigeration is correct, because of the way eggs are treated).
Kinder eggs didn't change by the rule, the manufacturer just found a workaround. The rule is that a toy can't be inside food. The US version of Kinder eggs (Kinder Joy) comes in two separatable halves so that the toy isn't inside it.
And while this lists a bunch of things we have issues with, there are also a few others that might eventually get allowed, but take a long time. Like monk fruit and alluose.
For context, tonka is valued for its coumarin content and coumarin is maligned for its association with the active ingredient in rat poison and some medications, but is a different molecule.
Coumarin is found chiefly in perfumes (functional and fine fragrance) and smells sweet and grassy. In this application, it is sold all over the world, including the US.
And tonka beans kinda taste like a combination of vanilla and something. Like a more complex version of it. Love it for everything sweet and it has almost (it shouldn't be heated) completely replaced vanilla for me.
An occasional can of regular soda is also fine. The problem is mass consumption of either, and the link between soda and fatty foods. People eating salads aren’t drinking a coke of any kind. What goes great with a coke? A giant BBQ pulled pork sandwich with sloppy fries and onion rings.
"occasional can of diet soda" is a minimizing strawman.
I recently had a friend quit diet pepsi - he used to drink as many as 18 cans per day. I'm not sure its responsible for federal regulators to call that behavior 'safe', and am glad he's kicked the habit.
I don't think the regulators would call drinking 18 cans of anything a day "safe." An ingredient being safe doesn't mean you can have unlimited amounts of it with no ill effects; this isn't even true of water.
My understanding is that the WHO has maintained its recommended max. daily intake, which is the equivalent of about 10 cans of soft drinks a day... make of that what you will.
I've worked with folks who sit at their desk and drink diet soda from those giant reusable 64oz cups, all day. When it's all zero calories, I guess I can see how you get there.
I can speak to this, anecdotally, as I read this comment, at a restaurant, on my 3rd Coke Zero refill.
I realized a long time ago that I really enjoy drinking soda, and not much else. Very little interest in alcohol, sure I have some with friends but never when alone. Don't drink coffee (I have, of course, but never particularly enjoyed it or drank it regularly). I do enjoy Gatorade and fruit juice, of course it's because they are sweet.
Anyway, I also realized that if I'm going to drink soda regularly, I had to switch to diet. Just for the calories, really, at the time concerns about sugar weren't as prominent. But I gained a bit of weight in my late teens and switching to Diet Coke was a "free" reduction of 500 calories per day. "Free" as in, easy to switch, no dieting, no eating less, etc.
My point here is that I think the refill situation is the opposite of what you suggest -- diet soda doesn't cause me to drink more, it's the fact that I've always drank a lot of soda that caused me to choose diet soda.
Oh, and maybe it's related, I love chewing on ice that has been doused in soda. A server sees an "empty" glass and wants to clear it, but I see a mountain of delicious ice. Weird, I know.
Yep that's true. In the summer of '04 I worked as a Napa delivery driver, driving parts orders all over the city to mechanic shops as needed. 7-11 had a location right across the street from us, so it was common that we would make a "sev" run in the morning to get everybody caffeinated. The manager there was a badass classic parts guy that was a great guy and who did his job really well, but drank copious amounts of caffeine.
7-11 started selling an enormous 128 oz mug that we would fill with soda in the morning and drink throughout the day. That was an insane amount of soda. But my boss at the time would have me take his 128 oz mug and fill it with several pots of coffee. The clerk at sev would joke about how she had to make a couple of extra pots around 8 am because of my boss, and how "I know it's still for him even if he's too chicken to come in himself."
To this day I've never known anybody that drank as much caffeine as he did. I'm guessing the nicotine from the chain smoking helped take some of the edge off :-D
Aspartame has an interesting history. This includes the fact that its FDA approval is credited to none other than Donald Rumsfeld, who hand-picked the FDA commissioner who approved aspartame while he was still CEO of the company that held the patent to it.
I stopped drinking alcohol due to the possible cancer link seeming much greater than aspartame's link to cancer. It seems strange that the studies are much more conclusive on alcohol's role with cancer than aspartame, but the concerns are much higher for aspartame than alcohol. Part of me wonders why this is. One possible reason I see is that people's trust in the studies about aspartame are much lower than their trust in the studies about alcohol.
I think this whole thread has an interesting contrast to a prior HN thread about Alcohol being unsafe at any level of consumptions and which is rated as a Group 1 carcinogen by the WHO, a much stronger designation than has been given to Aspartame:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34752193
Choice quotes from the top three comments in that thread:
1) “To the extent that we expect agencies like the WHO to help us make informed, practical decisions regarding this sort of absolutist statement seems like an abdication of that responsibility.”
2) “The WHO is fear mongering.
Maybe it is good health politics, people are scared of alcohol and people will have a better live.
Maybe it would be better to communicate the risks more quantitavily. Not everyone is stupid.”
3) “The thinking is backwards on this. They state there is no scientific safe drinking level. They even compare it to radiation. The goal is to establish an unsafe level. it's like saying there is no safe speed to drive a car - sure that's technically true, but worthless to say.”
I think it’s just emotional reasoning and HN having a classic case of being critical when presented with evidence that contradicts your pre-existing beliefs while being uncritical of evidence that confirms them.
> but the concerns are much higher for aspartame than alcohol
This is not true, at least with the WHO. Alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen according to the WHO. It definitely causes cancer. The WHO classifies aspartame in Group 2b "possibly a carcinogen." There's some confusion over how to render uncertainty here, but the WHO does not actually classify aspartame as a carcinogen.
I think the op meant concerns amongst the general public. Yes food safety experts have more concerns about alcohol but I would guess there are a lot more people who avoid aspartame and still drink alcoholic beverages.
If anyone of any reputable standing says something is a potential carcinogen at any level or percentage, why on earth would you continue using it at all? It's well documented aspartame is at worst "not good for you", so why allow it at all? Other than the Coke and Pepsi's that will cry murder and loss of jobs.
Regardless what WHO or FDA say, Aspartame is a hazard for people prone to migraines. It took years for me to find it out and it seems this experience tracks with other posters on HN whenever the topic comes up.
Some questions have fuzzy, ambiguous answers that are subject to interpretation. It was that way last year too. It's not a reason to get frustrated with science. It's an ongoing process.
I don't think this is "getting frustrated with science" as much as "getting frustrated with the reporting on science".
I don't think people are arguing that doing aspartame research is pointless so much as they are annoyed at the sensationalistic approach taken to report of that research. There is a large difference between "Aspartame may cause cancer" and "Aspartame may cause cancer if you drink 14 cans of diet coke a day".
It's pointless distractions at best and downright fear-mongering at worse in the attempt of getting ad-revenue from clicks.
But "You can believe anything you want" is a personal choice, there's extra nuance that explains why two bodies disagree if you want to look for it. Ultimately it's on us to read further than headlines or not.
This article title is fine in my opinion as it mostly covers the disagreement between two bodies as you said, but before that one I saw at least 2-3 articles this week that were just "WHO says aspartame causes cancer". That's the thing that angers people because it's obviously clickbait
The answer to the question of whether aspartame is safe for humans is not fuzzy or ambiguous. We haven't found the truth for certain yet, but it will be very black and white eventually.
It could be safe for some people and not others. It could be safe in combination with some foods and diets but not others. It could be safe according to one scientist's threshold of acceptable risk but not another's. It could be safe in the sense of being less bad than sugar but not in comparison to drinking water. And so on.
> “Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives in the human food supply. FDA scientists do not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions,” an agency spokesperson said late Thursday shortly after the WHO released its findings.
I'm going to side with the FDA on this one. Aspartame could possibly hold the title as the most scrutinized chemical in history. So for the WHO to give such a limp wristed statement calling for more research is unbelievably pandering.
It's also vaguely un-scientific. Even with a 99% confidence interval, we know that 1 out of every 100 analysis studies is going to reach a false conclusion. So just based on the sheer number of studies conducted on Aspartame, we know there are going to be links that turn out inconclusive. Latching onto a small number of niche cases and ignoring the preponderance of evidence is essentially calling for infinite research.
The WHO has a tendency to lean overly-cautious. And if we are being fully honest, maybe even a bit Euro-centric and elitist. And given the alternative is sugar which has obvious and known health side effects it's hard not to see this as some bored staff playing games.