We can be nice about helping people who ask honest questions too :)

Many people are unfamiliar with the concept of different communities having different rulesets. Even people who come from reddit land.

Rule 2 of the community guidelines does state that all political pictures (defined as a picture of a politician of any country of any planet) are prohibited and will be removed. So they are not wrong, in spite of the down votes. I do wonder if the community were to have a similar poll today on whether these types of images should be banned how it would turn out, assuming the community has grown significantly since the months that have passed since the prior vote. The second choice was very close in the original poll which would have provided an exception of one political picture allowed per current event.

Edit: here’s the link to the community poll for context if it helps anyone else!

Understood and completely agreed with your sentiment. Obviously any time of sweetened drink is going to be less healthy than water. It is also undeniable that our corporate funded research papers have frequently resulted in and continue to result in biased and often completely non-credible conclusions.

I still assert that “safe” is a relative term, and one issue I have is the lack of nuance associated with certain headlines. For example, the IARC Group B classification that the WHO cites is the same risk for cancer as “engine exhaust or occupational exposure as a hairdresser.” So yes, excessive aspartame consumption is definitely objectively bad for you compared to drinking water, but the cancer risk is not extensive compared to many other things we are exposed to on a regular basis.

“JECFA concluded that the data evaluated indicated no sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame. The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.”

Also I very much appreciate the great discussion on this!

Don’t know that I agree with your spin that this news is negative in any regard. Also, aspartame is one of the most studied food additives of all time and has been repeatedly proven safe.

Your claim that it “can have an event worse effect on blood sugar than sugar can” has also been proven false. See “Metabolic effects of aspartame in adulthood: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials” by Santos et al from 2017.

Among other conclusions, the study found that “aspartame consumption was not associated with alterations on blood glucose levels compared to control or to sucrose and on insulin levels compared to control or to sucrose.”