<story><title>Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/29/aspartame-artificial-sweetener-possible-cancer-risk-carcinogenic</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The challenge you have here is that aspartame isn&amp;#x27;t just one of most widely studied substances in the food chain, but that it&amp;#x27;s also one of the most widely and vigorously consumed. People drink a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of diet soda; a lot of people drink it to the exclusion of all other liquids. So it&amp;#x27;s going to be tricky to get the epidemiology to match up with the claim here: if aspartame is meaningfully carcinogenic (meaning: more than by the trace amounts all sorts of other things in the food supply are, from small quantities of mold due to spoilage to acrylamide forming in almost anything we cook), we&amp;#x27;d expect to see a pretty obvious effect in case rates.&lt;p&gt;The article mentions a French study showing a &amp;quot;slight&amp;quot; increase, over 100,000 pts, in an observational study that used self-reporting to control for other risk factors. I can&amp;#x27;t find it; has anyone else?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kortex</author><text>The other big challenge is from a SAR (structure-activity relationship) point of view, it&amp;#x27;s completely benign looking from just about any way you look at it. It&amp;#x27;s two peptides, and a methanol (which yes, gets converted to formaldehyde, but so does fruit pectin). There&amp;#x27;s nothing zany about its structure, it&amp;#x27;s not particularly lipophilic, no receptor bindings of note, no spicy reactive groups, no alkylators, no intercalators, no redox sites. If it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like a duck, doesn&amp;#x27;t quack, doesn&amp;#x27;t waddle, doesn&amp;#x27;t fly, doesn&amp;#x27;t hang out in ponds, and hasn&amp;#x27;t shown ducklike activity over 50 years, what are the odds it&amp;#x27;s secretly a duck?</text></comment>
<story><title>Aspartame sweetener to be declared possible cancer risk by WHO, say reports</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/29/aspartame-artificial-sweetener-possible-cancer-risk-carcinogenic</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The challenge you have here is that aspartame isn&amp;#x27;t just one of most widely studied substances in the food chain, but that it&amp;#x27;s also one of the most widely and vigorously consumed. People drink a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of diet soda; a lot of people drink it to the exclusion of all other liquids. So it&amp;#x27;s going to be tricky to get the epidemiology to match up with the claim here: if aspartame is meaningfully carcinogenic (meaning: more than by the trace amounts all sorts of other things in the food supply are, from small quantities of mold due to spoilage to acrylamide forming in almost anything we cook), we&amp;#x27;d expect to see a pretty obvious effect in case rates.&lt;p&gt;The article mentions a French study showing a &amp;quot;slight&amp;quot; increase, over 100,000 pts, in an observational study that used self-reporting to control for other risk factors. I can&amp;#x27;t find it; has anyone else?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>I remember reading back in the early 90s a number of studies that showed elevated risks of certain brain cancers from aspartame.  The evidence was pretty strong - it wasn&amp;#x27;t conclusive (hence the &amp;quot;possibly&amp;quot; qualifier in this label), but it was enough that I was personally convinced.  The link between aspartame and cancer is much stronger than the one between cyclamate (banned in 1970 but legal in the EU) and cancer.  My parents never let me chug Sweet&amp;#x27;n&amp;#x27;Low packets the same way I chugged sugar packets because of it.&lt;p&gt;IIRC, the only reason aspartame was &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; banned was because saccharine had just been, and if you banned aspartame there would have been literally no artificial sweeteners on the market.  That is no longer the case, with sucralose (Splenda), acesulfame potassium (Coke Zero and other diet sodas), Stevia, sorbitol, and several other sweeteners now on the market.</text></comment>