PSA: Aspartame determined to be carcinogenic at normal use levels

[unixronin]

For those who haven't seen it or the New York Times article yet, the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center of the European Ramazzini Foundation has recently conducted a long-term study on aspartame that everyone should be aware of.

The results of this mega-experiment indicate that APM is a multipotential carcinogenic agent, even at a daily dose of 20 mg/kg body weight, much less than the current acceptable daily intake. On the basis of these results, a reevaluation of the present guidelines on the use and consumption of APM is urgent and cannot be delayed.

(Emphasis mine; full paper in HTML here, PDF here)

Stay away from that shit, folks.  Not only is it nasty, there's growing evidence it can really screw you up in an increasing number of ways.

Comments

[otherbill.livejournal.com]

Refresh my memory...aspartame == Nutra-sweet?

What artificial sweetener do they use in most diet soft drinks?

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

aspartame == Nutra-sweet

Tab is saccherine.

Most of the Diet Whatevers are aspartame.

Some of the new Diet Whatevers that are coming out now are Splenda / sucralose. There may be a remote, possible indication that it can cause severe and sudden problems in people with diabetes, but it's pretty rare, and the one study that I found indicating this was excessively biased and never followed up on (the head researcher's father had a stroke she blamed on a diet drink with the stuff). Still, if you've got severe diabetes, it's possibly something to be aware of.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Correct, Nutrasweet is aspartame. (Far as I can tell, the name is supposed to imply it's somehow nutritious. I hate marketers.) And most diet soft drinks are indeed sweetened with it.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

And Crystal Lite. Same stuff.

Aspartame

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

Damn glad I don't use it. Never could taste the sweet, anyway.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

I'm giving this to my mom...

I've told her repeatedly not to eat anything with it. She's a gum and mint addict and all those things have aspartame.

She always complained about having terrible gas. I kept telling her it was the aspartame. She didn't believe me until she retired and stopped popping mints every 10 minutes. Gas gone.

Now I can hit her with this.

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

Um, they found cancer in *rats*. Not people.

Talk to me when they can link cancer in People to aspartame use. Everything causes cancer. :P

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's also been linked to ocular migraine and other vision problems, including *blindness* in people. Though the government has taken it upon themselves to tell the opthamalogical community that it doesn't accept their research.

Me, I just get migraines and lose my color vision when I get it. I can tell when I've been slipped aspartame unawares, because my vision goes sepia. Talk about blind testing.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I can tell when I've been slipped aspartame because it tastes disgusting. My brain refuses to parse it as sweet, for some reason.

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

A daily dose of 20 mg/kg body weight. That makes one aspartame pill/sugar cube equivalent per kilo per day... Just the thought of it would make me sick too.

[batchfile.livejournal.com]

i just don't get why people put unnatural or processed to death food in their bodies and expect nothing bad to happen?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Feed corn treated with lime for masa harina.
Cassava is poisonous until cooked.
Flordia Arrowroot may be poisonous until cooked.

We don't know it will hurt us until we test it. One man's meat is another man's poison.

The natural stuff will kill you faster. Mushrooms, rhubarb leaves, fugu...

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

FUGU ME!!! ;)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I have no wish to try fugu ... it sounds too much like playing Russian roulette.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I've always thought of those first folks to try something. "Here, see if this is poisonous." Hmm, Joe died. What if we try cooking it? Leaching it with water? Okay, next tester!

The guy who discovered the sweetening properties of aspartame did something you're not supposed to do in labs: he spilled some and licked his fingers. In other circumstances, he might have qualified for a Darwin award!

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

So ... where are all the resulting cancers?

[jilara.livejournal.com]

It's European research. The U.S. doesn't accept research done in Europe or Canada. They don't have manipulatable...um, acceptable research outside the U.S. Our drug and chemical companies have no oversight...um, insight into the methods of research in other countries.
That's why lower-cost drugs that have been shown harmless after decades of research in Europe are considered unacceptable in the US. You know, like all those potentially dangerous lower-cost drugs available from Canadian pharmacies.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

give me raw sugar, or give me death!

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I'll have to tell my co-worker who guzzles "diet" soft drink like it's going out of style (so she won't put on weight, natch).

This could be interesting.

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

You know that regular old sugar is one of the worst things for you, right?

Lots of papers on both sides of the Aspartame debate here (http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/aspartame.php).

Also, 20 mg/kg per day doesn't sound like much, but for a 100-kg man (220 lbs), that's 2000 mg/day, which is more than 20 cans of diet soda. Even I don't drink that much.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The point is not whether anyone near the middle of the bell curve drinks that much. The point is that level of consumption is currently considered to be safe and within normal limits, and now there are indications it's carcinogenic at that level of consumption.

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is the point. And I'm glad that someone is doing this research; it should continue, and the FDA should take notice. But I think exhortations to stay the hell away from Aspartame are still at best premature, even in the face of these findings.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It's far from the only finding. Consider:

• It's known to cause severe medical problems for phenylketonurics.


• It appears to adversely affect serotonin levels in the brain.


• Many people report migraines, tunnel vision and loss of color vision after taking aspartame. The FDA has declined to accept the data.


• It's been banned in Germany because studies there have shown that under certain conditions, it can cause progressive brain damage. The FDA has declined to accept the data.

I think there's plenty of reason to avoid the stuff. Unfortunately, in the US we have a dual standard regarding drug and food additive approvals. Drugs can generally not be prescribed, even to people for whom they offer the only hope for relief or even live, unless proven safe. Food additives, on the other hand, can de facto generally be used pretty much freely unless and until proven to be dangerous.