How did you possibly get that out what I wrote?:rolleyes:
First post of the thread:
Sounds exactly like the out-of-hand dismissal I find interesting. It’s not a problem unless an industry with strong disincentives to look closely and an agency that’s overtaxed and subject to politicization says otherwise. That doesn’t mean :eek: all artificial ingredients are bad :eek: It simply means that with that sort of premise the cite soapbox you’re standing on isn’t as sturdy as you think it is.
The incentive to not serve people mutagens in multi-billion dollar cash cow soda products is much, much greater than the incentive to use aspartame vs other sweetners/artificial sweeteners. Coke = Cancer is NOT a good marketing scheme.
Having worked in an FDA regulated industry as a chemist, I feel rather comfortable telling you that the FDA is not nearly as corrupt as “some guy on the internet” says it is (then again, I’m just some gal on the internet…).
A lot of this type of research happens in university and hospital research centres anyways - funding/research from cancer prevention institutes are very much interested in knowing what causes and what doesn’t cause cancer.
You found it odd that the default assumption was skepticism that something causes cancer. It might be reasonable to suspect that the alternative is to not be skeptical to claims that something causes cancer. I was asking clarification. Usually questions are indicated by a certain type of punctuation. See if you can find it in my post!
:rolleyes:
Those 200 mg/kg were consumed over a 10 day period, so 20 mg/kg/day appears to be unsafe. Still a high dose but lots of people consume that much every day.
No, that’s not what that cite says. The chronic treatment with 200mg/kg over 10 days means that the dose was 200mg/kg on each of the ten days.
But let’s go with 20mg/kg.
For a 65kg adult, that’s 1300 mg of aspartame or 16 cans of Coke Zero a day. Closer to 3, but you still haven’t demonstrated that there’s a significant risk.
This also assumes that rats and humans metabolize things exactly the same way (not a good assumption).
Reading comprehension fail.
Can you find the word “cancer” in my post?
Do you know what context is? You referenced calls for a cite. The only call for a cite was regarding claims that it causes cancer. So, again, :rolleyes:
Also.
I’m sorry my post caused you so much confusion. Or maybe you don’t suffer from a total lack of reading comprehension skills–you could have **rostfrei **and **Roderick Femm **on your ignore list.
You heard right, those things aren’t good for you…
I could never deal with anything other the real things. I either have the real things or I don’t eat them at all.
Me too, when I was growing up my father thought bringing home cases of Coca Cola/Pepsi along with boxes of chocolat was love. Therefore I grew up washing down chocolates with cola and drinking them like water… dentists love me. 
However I was never an overweight kid though. Go figure.
Odd thing is, I actually prefer the diet version of drinks to the sugar/HFCS ones. The sugary ones are too sweet. As for my own personal experience, diet drinks did help me lose and keep off weight. YMMV.
How is your weight? As mentioned upthread, studies have shown that consumption of sugar-free beverages actually contributes to weight gain (something about pushing up your body’s desire for sugar from other sources or something).
Conversely, consumption of regular soft drinks has also been linked to weight gain (something about them containing a ton of calories).
Aside from weight, I’m not aware of any significant drawbacks to diet soda consumption.
I will be that guy who recommends no soda at all and instead water.
Yea I try avoid soda at all costs…
Snarky_Kong and Rhythmdvl - your posts in this thread (prompted by the [aside]) made me remember a story my Toxicology professor told us in class years ago.
Problem is, I don’t quite remember it, but I remember the point of it,so I’m going to substitute stuff in for the sake of relating it anyways. I’m going to assume that my professor was talking to a [friend] of his, because I don’t remember who it was. [Friend] was a smoker. I know it wasn’t about artificial sweeteners/aspartame, but it was about something else with similar lingering claims of being damaging, so for simplicity, I’m just going to sub in [aspartame].
[Friend] told my professor that she no longer wanted to consume [aspartame] because it might be bad for her health/a carcinogen/[whatever claim]. My professor pointed out that the studies done so far indicated that it was a matter of dosing, and that she was unlikely to consume [aspartame] at any level that was likely to cause any damage to her health. Besides, her cigarettes were much more dangerous.
[Friend’s] response was that “at least I know what those dangers are. I don’t know that [aspartame] isn’t dangerous, so I’ll avoid it.”
Somehow, it was less scary for [friend] to engage in something she knew was dangerous than it was to engage in something that hadn’t conclusively been proven to not be dangerous. In effect, the fear of the unknown was so much greater than the fear of the known dangers of cigarettes, even if the unknown amounted to “there doesn’t seem to be any danger at all.”
Some might argue that [friend] was a somewhat stupid person - I don’t know, she might have been. But I kind of get the feeling that a lot of people without scientific backgrounds - and even many with - occasionally engage in this kind of thought process. I don’t know this, so therefore I must assume something, no matter how often people have tried and looked and failed to find it.
I think it plays into why a lot of people don’t “trust” science.
Either you completely missed the study that I posted above or your reading comprehension is impaired.
Now I only drink cola as a part of my hangover cure regimen (chilled + a lots of ice)… for medicinal purpose only.
Also, though rare, when I’m having pizza sometimes or fast food which I don’t eat much.
If 20mg/kg is excessive, then a 65-kg man can have no more than 1300mg/day.
There’s around 56mg of aspartame per 250ml of Crystal Light.
Therefore, it would be unwise to consume more than about 5.8 liters of Crystal Light per day.
Unless you are playing Ultimate Frisbee all day in Houston it’s unlikely that you’d want to drink 5.8 kg of Crystal Light in a day.
If you’re wondering if you would feel better without it give it up for a week and see if you feel better. I usually feel better if I stay away from more than the occasional diet soda but if I felt the same either way I would drink it all the time.
Insightful post… Behavioral science meets toxicology! I’m in a completely different field, investment management and corporate finance, and I frequently experience very smart people making dumb decisions as well. We’re all born with irrational fears and prejudices that we acquired when we were living in caves.