“The IARC will reportedly classify aspartame as a possible carcinogen. But this isn’t a food safety agency, and the context matters.”

    • CamelCityCalamity@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If you don’t mind me being pedantic, “et al.” is short for “et alia” which means “and other people”. “Etc”, short for “et cetera”, means “and other things”. You only use “et al.” when talking about people not named in a list.

      The More You Know 🌠

    • darthfabulous42069@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Which I don’t understand. It literally would be cheaper for them to use stevia or monk fruit and call it a day than to quibble over something so trivial.

      • zeppo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        On the scale of Pepsi or Coke, a seemingly trivial amount like 1/2 a cent a can adds up to significant money. It’s amazing how companies pinch pennies when dealing in volume like that. They sold 32 billion cases of beverages in 2022. No idea what the real figure is, but let’s say 5,000,000,000 of those are diet drinks with aspartame… that’s 120 billion cans, so if the other sweetener cost only 1 cent more per can that’s 1.2 billion dollars.

        Since the verdict on aspartame isn’t clear, they’d also have to tweak the formula for flavor, and switching would be somewhat of a PR admission that there’s something wrong with aspartame, I imagine they’re very reluctant to change anything.