Aspartame Sweetener, Used in Products From Coca-Cola Diet Sodas To Mars' Extra Chewing Gum, Set To Be Declared a Possible Carcinogen (reuters.com) 274
One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, Reuters reported Thursday, citing two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators. From the report: Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars' Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" for the first time by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization's (WHO) cancer research arm, the sources said. 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. This advice for individuals comes from a separate WHO expert committee on food additives, known as JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization's Expert Committee on Food Additives), alongside determinations from national regulators. However, similar IARC rulings in the past for different substances have raised concerns among consumers about their use, led to lawsuits, and pressured manufacturers to recreate recipes and swap to alternatives. That has led to criticism that the IARC's assessments can be confusing to the public.
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. This advice for individuals comes from a separate WHO expert committee on food additives, known as JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization's Expert Committee on Food Additives), alongside determinations from national regulators. However, similar IARC rulings in the past for different substances have raised concerns among consumers about their use, led to lawsuits, and pressured manufacturers to recreate recipes and swap to alternatives. That has led to criticism that the IARC's assessments can be confusing to the public.
Ugh (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re: Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Most sugar replacements are terrible. They generally taste bad and their benefits generally questionable too. Donâ(TM)t get me started with corn syrup.
It really seems like it better to consume real sugar, but moderate the quantity. if anyone says their weight is genetic, while consuming bucket sized sodas, probably has bigger issues to deal with ?
Re: Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that a) they are sugar replacements which already makes them bad because they trick the body into a wrong reaction and b) sugar is pretty bad, so if a sugar replacement is better than sugar, it can still be very unhealthy.
The whole idea of sugar replacement is flawed. Consume less sweet stuff, regardless of how it was made sweet.
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Our body didn't evolve to drink sugar water, the slight sweetness of sugar locked up in fruit never prepared us for this. We're robust though and a little sweetener isn't going to tip the balance.
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If it were only "a little", yes. But for many people it is actually "a lot".
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A lot of ppms is not a lot.
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> Our body didn't evolve to drink sugar water
Give it time, we're still evolving. You never hear about diabetic Humming birds. :)
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https://theconversation.com/wh... [theconversation.com]
"When humans eat too much sugar consistently, their blood sugar levels rise and they are at risk of getting diabetes. Hummingbirds’ anatomy and digestion are very different from humans. While nectar accounts for about 90% of their diet, hummingbirds don’t get diabetes since their bodies are designed specifically for digesting sucrose."
We need hybrid human hummingbird clones.
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So, if sugar is bad and other sweet-tasting chemicals are bad, how to make food taste sweet? Brain implant? Electric pulses to some nerves?
Re: Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep the sugar, but you consume less if it. So 1 cup cake a day, instead of 4, for example. Sugar is considered a bigger obesity risk than fat.
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The problem with sugar is that in the U.S. at least its put in almost everything. Much like sodium as anyone that's gone Keto can attest. Sugar is added to tomato sauce, even to most breads or really anything that also contains a real amount of gluten (Most pastas). It doesn't have to be of course but it often is. This makes tracking your sugar intake quite a challenge and why most people that try Keto find out they have very limited options.
There is also the problem of labeling of fiber and sugar, both a
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"Sugar is added to...even to most breads"
Well, yes. Any yeast bread has to have sugar in the dough or it won't rise. Sugar also aids in leavening the dough in quick breads.
Re: Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
I bake bread. That sugar is supposed to be an amount immediately consumable by the yeast. Not much should be left behind.
Re: Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
Subway's bread has so much sugar in it, it is considered to be "cake" in the EU.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Re: Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you make punches in the face hurt less?
The answer is don't get punched in the face as much.
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You can make punches to the face hurt less with drugs though. Alcohol, some illegal drugs or anesthetics.
So, considering that I want to drink sweetened tea, how to do it in a way that is not as bad?
Re: Ugh (Score:5, Interesting)
I highly recommend forcing yourself over to unsweet tea. In my younger years, I was a "the sweeter the better" tea drinker. I forced myself to switch to unsweet years ago, and after I got used to the lack of sweetener, I realized I could now actually taste the TEA, not just the sweet. I enjoy tea even more now - no milk, no sugar, no sweetener, and I can taste the various flavor variations between various kinds of tea (english black, earl grey, etc etc). Many times I can identify the brand of tea being served in restaurants now. So there are benefits to drinking unsweet tea, even beyond the fact its healthier.
Re: Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
I can taste the various flavor variations between various kinds of tea (english black, earl grey, etc etc). Many times I can identify the brand of tea being served in restaurants now.
Agreed. I currently drink tea daily, and with no sweetener. Why? I find sugar masks the subtler flavors, which can be really enjoyable, especially in oolongs and the greens.
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> You can make punches to the face hurt less with drugs though. Alcohol, some illegal drugs or anesthetics.
All those things have some pretty nasty side effects - say nothing of the injuries you'll sustain from the punches themselves. You're still better off doing less of it in the first place - then you need less of the drugs, get less side effects, less injuries, etc.
> So, considering that I want to drink sweetened tea, how to do it in a way that is not as bad?
Your choices are:
1) Do less of it
2) Do i
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But that won't change the physical effects on your body. Like a broken nose may not hurt if you're on enough anesthetics, but your nose being broken will have other negative effects that will impact the function if your body. That's the point there.
And the suggestion is to consider trying to reduce your dependence on sweetness in foods. Which doesn't mean that you absolutely must reduce it to zero, which is a very common strawman when it comes to such suggestions of reduc
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Manipulate the senses is something that I would want to do though. Taking the punch in the face analogy, what if I wanted to feel like I got punched in the face, but not sustain any injuries? This is pretty much what the artificial sweeteners are supposed to do - taste sweet, but not have the calories etc or real sugar. Though, I guess, the ones we know of and use have their own negative sideffects. I wonder what is worse - real sugar or the equivalent "sweetness" amount of various substitutes?
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how to do it in a way that is not as bad?
Same way you smoke cigarettes in a way that's not as bad: Do it less.
Sugar isn't inherently bad. But like anything else, it needs to be consumed in moderation.
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Where are you getting this idea that sweet taste triggers insulin production? Many of us that went keto consumed all sorts of sweet things while remaining in ketosis. It's why the keto diet is often used to reset insulin resistance and has cured type 2 diabetes in a great many people. For some people Apartame can trigger an insulin response but most people that's not the case. Stevia and Erythritol don't have the same effect but like most things in biology that probably also varies depending on individual
Re: Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you make punches in the face hurt less?
The answer is don't get punched in the face as much.
Eating sweet things is highly addictive. I've never seen someone suffer actual withdrawals from not getting punched in the face enough.
Re: Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
You take a few weeks off of slamming buckets of sugar down your gullet and everything tastes a lot sweeter to you. When I dropped sodas, cookies, and other high-sugar content foods from my diet, I was shocked how much sweeter everything else tasted. We've been brainwashed in the states into believing everything should be syrupy sweet by the sugar industry. It works as a seasoning agent, in quantities similar to salt, if you don't go out of your way to suck down massive quantities of it. Of course, now you have to go out of your way to not consume massive quantities of it. But you'll feel better if you do. No more huge rushes followed by huge crashes.
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No more huge rushes followed by huge crashes.
No idea what you are talking about. Either I have not consumed as much sugar as needed for this or I have not noticed the effect.
I do not drink a lot of sodas. Sure, I'll drink some once in a while, but usually I drink tea, with 2-3 teaspoons (so, about 10-15g) of sugar in a 0.5L cup. Sometimes ice tea and sometimes coca-cola or some other carbonated drink (the other ones are tastier, but coca-cola is cheaper).
I know that food in the US is a lot sweeter than here, I think Subway had to change their bread, b
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Sugarless sweet products abound in nature. The "trick" is fully understandable from an evolutionary point of view: if you're a plant trying to make a fruit you want animals to eat, which would you rather do: invest a ton of energy into producing actual sugar, or trick the animal with a small amount of an extra-sweet substance and bulk the fruit up with water?
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That's not an evolutionary point of view - that's corporate America's point of view.
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It very much is evolution's point of view. And running counter to that, animals have evolved the (imperfect) ability to discern sugar from sweet non-caloric compounds.
Re: Ugh (Score:5, Informative)
I'm literally a horticulturalist. Yes, there are a huge range of plants with a huge range of far-sweeter-than-sugar non-caloric compounds. Do I honestly have to start making a list for you?
Apparently in your mind, if it hasn't been commercialized and hit the shelves, it doesn't exist. *facepalm* Hey Pentadiplandra, go F yourself, you don't count! Thaumatococcus, bite me! Synsepalum, I guess some people have heard of you, but not enough so get the F out of here! You too Siraitia! Dioscoreophyllum, you can go to hell!
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Is it actually true that theybtrick the body into the wrong reaction?
They trick the tongue, sure, by tickling its sweetness receptors, but apart from our brain's pleasure centres does that trigger anything substantive in the body? Presumably nothing in your digestive system will mistake sweetener for sugar unless it is structurally sugar-like? (and I don't know whether sweeteners are)
Re: Ugh (Score:5, Informative)
"At least in animal studies, the consumption of artificially sweetened diets has been shown to increase adiposity (fat deposition), drive hyperinsulinemia (insulin spikes) and cause insulin resistance during diet-induced obesity."
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Stevia also not great, at least in rats:
https://diabetesjournals.org/d... [diabetesjournals.org]
although an earlier study reckons it doesn't particularly affect diabetes-related indicators in (a tiny sample of) obese humans
https://diabetesjournals.org/d... [diabetesjournals.org]
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Re: Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, artificial sweeteners have you consume "less sweet stuff" Aspartame is 200x sweeter than sucrose, so you would typically use just 0.5% as much as you would real sugar. So if they say x grams of aspartame per day is carcinogenic, remember that you would be consuming less than 1 gram unless you were on the extreme end of consumption.
As far as additives, I would be far more wary of artificial colors or preservatives that are actually in significant doses.
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Consume less sweet stuff, regardless of how it was made sweet.
People consuming substances shown to be highly addictive should consume less of those highly addictive substances to improve their health. Now give me my nobel prize.
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they trick the body into a wrong reaction
Artificial sweeteners do not cause an insulin reaction. This has been well studied.
There is however, evidence that some people do experience a psychological reaction to sweet tastes that can alter cravings, but that's going to vary from person to person. Sort of like how for some people even social media can be addicting.
Re: Ugh (Score:5, Informative)
Corn syrup is sugar. Indeed, it has almost the exact same fructose-glucose ratio as sucrose does (either 42% or 55% frucrose, while sucrose is 50%). You're not going to get healthier by switching from corn syrup to cane sugar. You need to cut out the sugar.
Also, corn syrup absolutely is "real" - what sort of nonsense is that? All sorts of different naturally sweet foods have entirely different ratios of different sugars. Why does corn syrup's suddenly not count as "real"? You think you're looking at a fictional product? Want an *actually high* fructose syrup? Try agave syrup - commonly used, ironically, as an alternative to corn syrup.
As for aspartame:
Well, then don't issue a statement until you have this information for crying out loud. Most things are toxic in some quantity - the question is how much of it you have to consume to be a threat. Check any random herb or spice in Wikipedia, check out its essential oil composition, and start clicking to the articles on the individual chemical components. I'll give you the Cliff's Notes, it'll go like this: toxic, toxic, allergenic, toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic, genotoxic.... etc. Essential oils are defensive compounds; we just happen to like their aroma and flavour. The question is how much you consume. In most cases, we've decided that it's acceptably small. In some cases however (such as safrole in sassafras) regulators decide that there's too much risk (though people will always debate where the line should be in those sorts of decisions).
Given how little aspartame people consume, it better be pretty damned carcinogenic for a declaration to be justified.
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Corn syrup isn't less healthy than sugar. It just doesn't taste as good. Neither are perfectly pure - the impurities in corn syrup make it taste bad, while the impurities in white sugar are actually just remnants of molasses which taste very good (to me). Even cheap beet sugar, which is not nearly as good, tastes better than corn syrup.
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Most sugar is made from beets, which are showered with pesticides like everything else. If the sugar doesn't come with pesticides, it's because it's been chemically processed.
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Sugarcane cultivation also frequently uses significant amounts of pesticides.
The main problem with corn syrup is one most people for some reason seem not to talk about: it's cheap. Before corn syrup, manufacturers / bakers were incentivized to minimize sugar content because sugar was significantly more expensive in most places than other bulk dry ingredients like flour. But that's not the case with corn syrup. And consumers tend to prefer sweeter goods over less sweet goods, because sweet = addictive. So
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It really seems like it better to consume real sugar, but moderate the quantity.
Based on what? This current designation aside there's a bit of evidence that artificial sweeteners aren't perfectly healthy, but they are almost universally far better than sugar for any similar level of sweetness flavour.
if anyone says their weight is genetic, while consuming bucket sized sodas, probably has bigger issues to deal with ?
Sugar has far more to answer for than people's waistlines.
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the better alternative is avoiding additive sweetener altogether.
but be my guest, pick your poison.
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Indeed. Just do with a lot less sweet stuff. After a few weeks you will not miss it anymore and overall you will be healthier.
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
Stevia plant is by the way easy to grow, and only a little is needed to sweeten tea for example. Honey is the best in many ways.
Aspartame is absolutely horrible tasting and sugar is much better. The need for sweetened products is wholly artificial though.
âoeDietâ stuff assumes that a person is hooked to certain product and needs a relieve (by buying another product). The logic is doubly twisted.
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Stevia can work really well with fruit flavors - peach, lemon, or berries especially. For most other purposes, you have to mix in erythritol to keep it from getting too bitter.
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Stevia has already been found to be a carcinogen, and not just a possible one.
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Based (AFAICT) on a single 1991 study that was thoroughly debunked a few years later.
Sugar on the other hand contributes strongly to not only cancer, but almost every other medical cause of premature death.
Yet. a lot of evidence shows that artificial sweeteners, in general, don't improve all-cause mortality vis a vis consumption of comparable sugar-sweetened products - a very, very, VERY low bar.
The only thing that's pretty much guaranteed to work is to train yourself to consume things that are less sweet,
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
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Splenda doesn't even come close to the taste of sugar. It has this gross bitter aftertaste.
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
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I've tried them all, none taste like plain old sugar. I've settled for just accepting my drinks will have sugar in them if they are sweet. I just drink less of them.
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Too true, too true, and you've found the correct solution. It's a shame that nearly everyone else insists on finding a solution that allows them to continue over-consuming.
It's like how for literally decades now we've been hearing "scientists", "nutritionists", and "dieticians" say that they have "concluded" that "dieting doesn't work" or "counting calories doesn't work". Then along comes Ozempic and friends, which does what? Makes people eat less. And guess what, they lose weight. So is it that dieting doe
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
Splenda doesn't even come close to the taste of sugar. It has this gross bitter aftertaste.
Try blending it with acesulfame potassium (Ace-K). The combo neutralizes out their respective aftertastes.
In the 1960s, they did the same thing by combining saccharin and cyclamate. Either one alone was gross, but together, they took a sufficiently large chunk of the US market for sweet beverages for the sugar industry to completely FREAK OUT and fund one of the most scientifically questionable studies in food-chemistry history to get cyclamate banned in the US.
Every wonder why when you go to a large grocer
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When I finish a 100+ mile bike ride in the summer, if I haven't been keeping up with food and my blood sugar is crashing, guess what is a great fix? A can of delicious, sugary soda...
Oops (Score:3)
Now the question is how long did the manufacturers know?
Re:Oops (Score:5, Informative)
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Not helpful (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume.
That's...kind of important? Even water can be deadly, if you drink too much of it in too short a period of time.
Digesting aspartame produces some dangerous chemicals, such as methanol and formaldehyde. Sounds horrible, until you realize that these same chemicals occur continuosly in your body, from digestion and ordinary metabolism. Your body is perfectly capable of handling minor amounts of these chemicals. It's the quantity that matters.
Current guidance says that you shouldn't consume more than 40mg (EU) or 40mg (US) of aspartame for each kilogram of body weight. This amounts to around 12 liters of diet sodas for an average person, per day.
Except... (Score:2)
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume.
That's...kind of important? Even water can be deadly, if you drink too much of it in too short a period of time.
Digesting aspartame produces some dangerous chemicals, such as methanol and formaldehyde. Sounds horrible, until you realize that these same chemicals occur continuosly in your body, from digestion and ordinary metabolism. Your body is perfectly capable of handling minor amounts of these chemicals. It's the quantity that matters.
Current guidance says that you shouldn't consume more than 40mg (EU) or 40mg (US) of aspartame for each kilogram of body weight. This amounts to around 12 liters of diet sodas for an average person, per day.
for the potentially millions of people like me for whom aspartame causes debilitating illness in significantly smaller doses than outlined above. Who knows how many others are affected more subtly? Cancer or other ailments seem like a very probable outcome.
Re:Except... (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely, smaller doses can negatively impact a percentage of the population; but perhaps more often, it's the compilation of contributing factors that lead to a poor outcome.
Smoking is considered to be unhealthy in its own right, but it magnifies the health risk of exposure to things like silica, asbestos, and radon. So ideally, any small healthy habit you pick up might be a benefit multiplier.
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"Current guidance says that you shouldn't consume more than 40mg (EU) or 40mg (US)"
Is there a difference between EU milligrams and US milligrams?
(I know US gallons are smaller than British gallons, but I thought metric standards were worldwide)
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That's...kind of important? Even water can be deadly, if you drink too much of it in too short a period of time.
This was a review as to whether something should or shouldn't be classed as potentially carcinogenic. Dose isn't relevent for the classification.
But since you're interested. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] show that Aspartame is carcinogenic well below the recommended daily maximum intake of Europe (to say nothing of the higher figure in the USA which you mistyped and is actually higher).
Last I heard those chemicals (Score:4, Insightful)
There is literally no substance more studied than aspartame on earth that humans eat. And sugar has similar links to cancer in the quantities considered "at risk" (12-36 cans a *day* for a 132 lb person. I'm 190 if I'm in shape and on a bad day drink 4 cans).
This isn't going to make me give up Caffeine free Coke Zero (though the price increases might). The biggest problem with diet soda is that it doesn't actually help with weight loss because it encourages you to snack. So in terms of weight loss it's not really any better than regular stuff.
That said having gotten used to diet I can't go back. The real stuff is like drinking syrup.
Exposure (Score:3)
Drinking a small amount of water contributes x = 0 chance of developing cancer, consuming aspartame contributes x > 0 chance of developing cancer.
That's not how it works for all substances. Some things are carcinogenic no matter what the dose. Some substances need to be in the bloodstream at a certain concentration before they can interfere with DNA replication to cause cancer. That's why there is a "safe" amount of aspartame to ingest. The way the IARC categorizes substances, that's what it's category indicates. If it were to cause cancer in any dose, it's minimum safe dose would be zero.
In any case, aspartame is in the same classification as caffei
Here's a weird idea (Score:4, Insightful)
How about using sugar?
Yes, sugar. No, really.
Just maybe, maybe not a metric ton in, well, everything? I know sugar is a godsend for the food industry, it's dirt cheap and it makes stuff tasty, even junk you could not sell otherwise, just dump a load of sugar and palm oil into it and you could make cardboard taste good. Just add some guar flour and xanthan to some MSG and you have a perfect dip to accompany it. We know.
But how about not doing that and instead sell us food?
Re: Here's a weird idea (Score:2)
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Gums and thickeners aren't bad in themselves. The problem is that they are usually replacements for actual substance. Back in around 2003, McDonald's introduced their "triple thick" shakes. Note - they don't even call them milkshakes anymore. They are mostly carrageenan and other gums and thickeners and they don't even thin out when they "melt." Same goes for "ice cream" in the grocery store. If you look, the majority of products in that freezer case are not ice cream. Some meet the criteria of "froz
Re: Here's a weird idea (Score:2)
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But how about not doing that and instead sell us food?
You answered your own question: "it's dirt cheap and it makes stuff tasty". My local grocery store stocks plenty of all-natural foodstuffs. The ultra-processed stuff still sells just fine. Be it because of cost, taste, convenience, or a variety of other factors, the market has spoken.
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The market has spoken. Well, no. The supplier has spoken, and it found a gullible demander.
Capitalism assumes that it deals with a mature, sensible consumer. That's its main flaw. There is no such thing.
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Capitalism assumes no such thing. If it did it would act very differently.
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It's not about my preferences. It's about what capitalism claims it can do.
Capitalism claims that it will produce the best possible product due to competition and selection. Various suppliers compete offering products to a demand side that can then pick and choose the product that matches the closest what the demand side wants. Suppliers have to adapt their product to better suit demands or perish.
So far the theory.
As we can see, though, that theory does not survive long in practice.
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But how about not doing that and instead sell us food?
Adding sugar to food makes it sell more, and hence more profit.
Telling companies to stop chasing profit would be as useful as telling people to eat less sugar. Maybe you can get 1 out of 10 or 100 to do it, but don't realistic expect most can do it.
So, any better solution other than artificial sweetener?
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Sure. Stop paying for self-inflicted health problems.
That problem will sort itself out in a generation or two.
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> But how about not doing that and instead sell us food?
They already tried that, and found that with suitable marketing, people would much prefer to buy something that costs pennies to produce, but sells for hundreds of times that amount rather than something that takes a fair bit to produce and sells for only slightly more than it costs.
The only ways out of this really are (a) education - if you know how to make healthy choices, then you can at least choose to make them. If you don't know, then you can'
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You can't have soda as we know it without a lot of sweetener because of carbonic acid, plus the other effects carbonation has on your perception of flavor. They have to totally pound the sugar into the beverage in order to make it sweet. But the truth is that even fruit juice has enough sugar in it to be troubling when it's consumed in liquid form, because it's more rapidly metabolized.
There's not so much profit in selling us food.
I don't believe this. (Score:2)
Re: I don't believe this. (Score:3)
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In general, most "medicine" prior to the 1990s ignored the now well-known symbiosis between our microbiome and the rest of us.
Now that we do know about it, more research is needed, and is being done, on how and why things that "can't possibly hurt us" in fact do.
Glyphosate is an example of a substance that kills plants by shutting down their shikimate pathway, which human cells don't have. So it should not greatly affect us, yet it does. Why? Because many of the organisms in our microbiome do have it, an
How long until it hits the prop. 65 list? (Score:2)
Re: How long until it hits the prop. 65 list? (Score:5, Funny)
They ought to just put signs on the borders that read "California causes cancer."
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The payoffs are to the FDA. It's the only reason why California has to do its own work. And California mostly just leaves things on the shelves with the warning rather than keeping them off the market.
Oh ferchrissake, not that conspiracy theory again (Score:2, Insightful)
Aspartame is NOT toxic (unless used at very high doses - like everything really) and it's NOT a carcinogenic.
The reason why it's possible to say that with confidence is that it has been tested to death, and used massively in a truly staggering range of food products consumed by everybody in great quantities since the 1980's, and we haven't seen the beginning of a snifter of a solid proof that it's harmful.
The only detrimental side effect that I know of personally is, when I used to drink a lot more coffee t
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Oh but you stopped using it for 'safety's sake', well then it is settled - you have no more credibility than a politician. You are speaking out both sides.
Re:Oh ferchrissake, not that conspiracy theory aga (Score:4, Informative)
The JECFA has tons of data. Here's their take on aspartame:
"Since 1981, JECFA has said aspartame is safe to consume within accepted daily limits. For example, an adult weighing 60 kg (132 pounds) would have to drink between 12 and 36 cans of diet soda – depending on the amount of aspartame in the beverage – every day to be at risk."
As for the IARC, people need to stop worrying about what they say: they are not worried about dosage etc, just "is there any way this might cause cancer if you ingested 5 tons of this". They have, to date, only declared ONE thing "non-cancerous". Their role is far, far different from the regulatory bodies who govern our food supply.
https://qz.com/708925/why-it-s... [qz.com]
Re: Oh ferchrissake, not that conspiracy theory ag (Score:2)
Aspartame and many other sweeteners mess with your gut biome and metabolic function. It actually makes insulin resistance worse.
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With respect to headaches, aspartame had the reverse effect on me. Consuming anything that contained it gave me a blinding, migraine-level headache that lasted for up to an hour. I doubt it was psychosomatic, because it happened a couple of times when I had no idea I was eating/drinking anything with aspartame in it until I got the headache, then tracked down what gave it to me.
Long ago I stopped trusting (Score:3)
If you want to “cheat” and use artificial sweeteners, fine. I’m not opposed to them. Freeeeedddoommmmmmmmm!!! You reduce calories, sure, but they do other weird things to your metabolism, along with maybe an increased cancer risk.
There’s no free ride, people. Moderate your intake or pick your poison
Re:Long ago I stopped trusting (Score:5, Informative)
From memory . . . . the combination of cyclamates and saccharine was strongly associated with bladder cancer in rats, but when the cyclamates were removed and saccharin was tested alone, that association disappeared, and, on this basis, saccharin was eventually returned to GRAS status ("generally regarded as safe.")
However, lots of studies show that replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners does not improve all-cause mortality, which is HUGE, because we know that sugar contributes mightily to many of the leading causes of death (cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, strokes, etc.) and that reducing dietary sugar, without replacing it with anything, improves all-cause mortality.
That is the basis on which I'd say that, until much more is known, it'd be better to eat fewer sweet things in general, other than fruits, which reduce all-cause mortality in spite of their high sugar content, perhaps because the sugar mixed with fiber and pulp is absorbed more slowly avoiding being metabolized into fat in the liver.
And? (Score:2)
Who in their right mind eats shit with artificial sweeteners in it? Unless you have some medical condition, just eat normal stuff, don't overeat and exercise and you're fine.
Aspartame has hidden behind "sweeteners" enough (Score:2)
Let's face it, it's the one which they are mostly talking about when using the term. It features most if you drink branded drinks. And thus can't avoid even if trying (like out and wanting a diet drink in a diner).
Previously research on this has always been "sweeteners" when mostly it means aspartame. Sure, there might be other problems with other sweetners, but research those, and do it separately, not this nonsense science of "sweeteners do this".
I believe it is supposed to be a weight-loss suppressant, s
There's lots of things in that list: (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Essentially that's the "maybe" list, for things there is no evidence for being carcinogenic, but someone wants them to be on a list.
Diet cokes donâ(TM)t lead to weight loss (Score:3)
Re: Xylitol (Score:2)
And in quantities necessary to achieve equal sweetening power to the usual amount of sugar, Splenda, etc... it acts like a laxative. A pretty potent one, in fact. Go ahead... buy a "not a low calorie food" (even though the calorie count on there label shows that it clearly is) cake or pie, and eat two slices (which will probably be 3-4 times the official "serving size" listed in the box). You'll be on the toilet for HOURS.
That's why everything made with xylitol has the "not a low calorie food" warning. It's