Twenty some odd years ago, as a wee little girl I did some experiments for a junior academy of science project testing aspartame and other sweeteners on daphnia and I still remember how much it absolutely tortured and killed those organisms as compared to splenda and sugar. It really messed with my mind back then and I found a huge list of side effects for its use which included straight up death. I have no idea why people use it so liberally. That project made me avoid it for life.
As long as I remember, aspartame was always suspected as carcinogen and was told to avoid it. Nice to finally to declare it as such
So it might cause cancer? Like literally everything else, including being outside?
There’s a reason why a scientist started a Twitter account that just replies to studies with ‘in mice.’ https://www.statnews.com/2019/04/15/in-mice-twitter-account-hype-science-reporting/
Frankly I’m a bit skeptical of the WHO’s judgement here. I used to be completely against all artificial sweeteners, only using Erythritol and Stevia based sweeteners (which I regarded as ‘natural’ at the time).
Then the study on Erythritol having a worrying connection to heart attacks came out, and looking into the study, I found that it absolutely had merit, and decided to be cautious and eliminate it from my diet until more research is done.
However, that study made me take a deep dive on all artificial sweeteners, and surprisingly I found that Aspertame seemed to be one of the safer ones, especially after reading This well written article on Aspertame. I’m not ruling out the possibility that it’s unhealthy, but I find it difficult to believe there’s some mechanism that would make it carcinogenic based on the evidence we have of it. I know the WHO claims that all artificial sweeteners cause changes in the gut microbiome to various degrees, and maybe that could influence the ability of cancer to grow? But I don’t think enough studies have been done to truly link those two things, but that’s just my opinion.
Their conclusion regarding artificial sweeteners was to avoid them completely, and to use sugar instead, which did not influence gut flora. But we already know the dangers of sugar, which are quite real and already affecting millions, where as the dangers of artificial sweeteners on gut flora are still hazy. It just seemed odd to recommend the devil you know instead of a potential danger.
Of note about artificial sweeteners though, be sure not to cook or bake with sucralose (splenda). During my deep dive, I found that normal baking temperatures are enough to cause the chlorine atom in sucralose to form into toxic chloropropanols. The sucralose industry tried to whitewash those studies by funding their own studies that claim it’s perfectly safe, but the methodology of the original study was sound, and IMO the evidence is clear that sucralose is only safe if used at room temperatures.
