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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Total nonsense. If you consume enough of any substance, it will eventually kill you. Aspartame is THE most heavily studied food additive in human history and every well-conducted study has found it to be harmless. You need to consume the equivalent of 125+ cans of Diet soda per day to see an even slightly elevated risk of cancer or any other serious disease. This is disgusting, misprepresentative fear-mongering that will steer people away from low-calorie alternatives to sugary soft drinks, thereby contributing to increasing rates of obesity and diabetes and playing right into the sugar lobby's interests.
One thing about aspartame is how insanely sweet it is. I was reading one description where a chemist diluted a very small amount in a liter of water and touched their tongue to the solution. They couldn't get the taste of it out of their mouth for the whole day. Sugar is sweet, but nowhere near as sweet, and we know full well how terrible its consequences can be.
Sweetness is just a sense, it doesn’t imply anything about the carcinogenic nature of a compound.
This isn’t how taste works either, that just had to do with the molecular shape of aspartame and sugar.
Oh, yeah, don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against aspartame, and I far prefer it above sugar in terms of health. Insanely sweet isn't a bad thing in this case, since you barely consume any for the desired effect. And of course the science shows that even if this link is real, there is no level of consumption of aspartame in its commonly consumed form that is going to be a problem.