I file it under the same category as, "The Daily Mail trying to divide every known substance into ones which cause cancer, and ones which cure it."

This venn diagram is just a circle

And the label for that diagram is that "I'm not saying it's aliens" guy, but instead of 'aliens' he's saying, "CHEMICALS".

Well, is it good or neutral for you? I've always felt like these diet drinks were just marketing to make you think everything was fine, feel free to drink as many as you want. I've worked with a few people that would go through 4-6 Coke Zeros every day. In no world can I imagine that that wouldn't have negative long term effects on a human -- all things in moderation, right?

Personally, I'll drink a Mexican Coke with cane sugar maybe once or twice a year, knowing it's not great for me and treating it as a dessert.

But I do agree, it's not good reporting. Pretty much no info on the actual scientific research, but hopefully WHO will give more in depth data.

> In no world can I imagine that that wouldn't have negative long term effects on a human -- all things in moderation, right?

Why on earth would you think that?

It's carbonated water with a tiny amount of food dye, sweeter and caffeine. The latter of which, iirc, has generally positive effects.

Well, the mild acidity is bad for your teeth. Other than that there doesn't seem to be much that stands out as an issue, at least from what we know so far.

Can it be called mild? Diet coke has a pH of 3, which is the same as vinegar

There seems to be some suggestion that the sweetness triggers digestive system changes that could be harmful: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772345/

It’s very vague though

1. There seems to be some suggestion that X

2. ???

3. In no world can I imagine ¬X

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/

[1] shows that artificial sweeteners lead to higher insulin resistance. It is so because they provoke insulin level increase due to their sweet taste.

Caffeine is a tricky one.

If you can drink 6 cups of espresso a day, you have 50% less chance developing dementia. But, how can you drink 6 cups of coffee per day if you do not have good health? It can be that the "small positive effects of caffeine" are due to caffeine consumers have a little better health overall and these with worse health have to consume less caffeine.

For an anecdote, I once went completely off caffeine for a month and haven't noticed a thing after first three days, when I was unusually sleepy. Even training results followed the same progression.

Exactly. I mixed soda syrups for my small business and had to learn what actually goes into it all. Soda is generally 80% soda water, and the syrup is usually only 50 °Bx (roughly 50% sugar by mass). Of course with sweetners the syrup is almost entirely water since you need a tiny amount of the sweetner to get the same level of sweetness. In an average soda drink, the flavor and dye is about 0.6% by volume of the syrup (again, more water since it's in solution), and the preservative is 0.2%. The amounts are so tiny you would have to consume a completely unreasonable amount to even get sick, let alone do lasting harm (except for the sugar, obviously).

But what does California's proposition 65 say about it?

I know this is a joke, but if anyone’s curious: Prop65 says you have to tell people if your product contains chemicals from a list of carcinogenic substances. The list is kept up-to-date by California. Prop65 has no punishment for over-reporting though - you can slap on a warning “just for fun” if you want.

Unless California has aspartame on its list, prop65 says nothing about this.

Saw a California shirt once that was a prop65 warning: "This shirt has been determined by the state of California..."

No aspartame, but aspirin's on there. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list

effectively this is pick your poison: aspartame or sugar

Well no. May I suggest water?

I've found water to be a rather poor sweetener.

just don't drink TOO much [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1770067/

You may, thank you

I choose Stevia

Sucralose is another a widely used option. Cokecola uses aspartame, pepsicola uses sucralose. You can also easily buy it off the shelf

Sucralose however seems to be stimulating some insulin secretion even though it has no real caloric value.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19352508/

Pepsi stopped using sucralose in favor of aspartame several years ago due to customer backlash.

Why is it awful reporting? The WHO’s cancer division (IARC - International Agency for Research on Cancer) is labeling it as being, quite literally, a “possible carcinogen.” That’s the actual name of the category. It’s either “Not classified,” “Possible Carcinogen,” “Probable Carcinogen,” or “Carcinogen.”

Don’t like it? Bring it up with the WHO.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

    LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) - One of the world's most 
    common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a 
    possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health 
    body, according to two sources with knowledge of the 
    process, pitting it against the food industry and 
    regulators.

[…13 paragraphs later…]

    The IARC's decisions have also faced criticism for 
    sparking needless alarm over hard to avoid substances or 
    situations. It has four different levels of 
    classification - carcinogenic, probably carcinogenic, 
    possibly carcinogenic and not classifiable. The levels 
    are based on the strength of the evidence, rather than 
    how dangerous a substance is.

Using a term with a technical definition that isn't remotely close to the plain english meaning of the composing words, in a headline—and not explaining the gag in the first paragraph—is terrible reporting

Isn't this the same list that says Cellphones are a possible carcinogen despite mountains of evidence that they cause no cancer and also zero known mechanism of action?

> The WHO’s cancer division (IARC - International Agency for Research on Cancer)

IARC is only nominally under WHO. It is a weird French agency founded by some French activists and politicians in the 1960's.

They use a 5 class classification

    Group 1: The agent is carcinogenic to humans.
    Group 2A: The agent is probably carcinogenic to humans.
    Group 2B: The agent is possibly carcinogenic to humans.
    Group 3: The agent is not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans.
    Group 4: The agent is probably not carcinogenic to humans.

But out of the 1042 chemicals and things they have classified, none are in Group 4. (Historically, there once was one single chemical in Group 4, but they have reclassified it.)

For IARC, everything is either at least possibly carcinogenic, or there is insufficient evidence (Group 3) to yet declare it carcinogenic.

Also:

"In 2019 IARC was accused of cooperation with "toxic tort law firms" who make profit of suing companies for compensation for alleged health issues based on IARC classification. IARC was accused from hiding conflicts of interest impacting a few invited experts, especially those related to large-scale cash flows from US law firms."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Agency_for_Resea...

Many countries have perfectly capable chemicals agencies and food safety agencies, who are much more reliable than the IARC.

That list doesn't even contain "Not a carcinogen". So basically I don't take it seriously at all.

> So, the reader will be under the impression that it will cause cancer, which is pretty dubious, all while obesity for which sugary drinks are partially responsible is a very real cancer risk.

Saying it's "partially responsible" in essence is ridiculous, though, when it's also a critical nutrient we eat in virtually every food. Aspartame is not. It's the sheer volume of sugar ingested that's the issue.

High fructose corn syrup is not a critical nutrient.

AFAIK, most lists of "possible carcinogenic" are just lists of things people want to cause cancer but the evidence disagrees.

There's something to say about lists where people put substances we don't know a lot, to call attention for studying more. But I haven't actually seen one of those, it's always lists of substances people study a lot, and publication bias set them marginally into statistical relevancy.

I doubt very many people want any substance to cause cancer. People want the things they eat to be healthy and wholesome but they've learned that they can't trust the people making our food or our regulatory agencies to protect them. That's caused people to be cautious and distrustful even when there is little cause for it.

Aspartame is one of the must trustable things we eat. Very few foods have been studied as much as it has. Both quality and quantity of studies.

This is part of how the medical regulation leaders in every country are the most insanely cautious, neurotic people on earth. They all recommend not to eat steaks rare. Everything is a carcinogen. When they have such a low tolerance for danger, it just means everyone learns not to listen to their advice.

Purely anecdotal, but I used to drink insane amounts of aspartame in the form of Crystal Lite. I don't know what that's made of now, but decades ago it was made with aspartame, and I'd guzzle gallons upon gallons of that stuff because it could be mixed with tap water and was therefore cheaper than buying drinks in cans. Maybe in the long term it will cause my butt to fall off in my 60s, IDK, but if aspartame causes cancer, then it must be incredibly weak given the unglodly amounts I was consuming on a daily basis.

Today, I'd still avoid aspartame, but also sucralose, because it's unnecessary and may even cause insulin to be artificially raised in response to the sweetness. And I also just don't drink nearly as much as I used to now that I'm metabolically healthy.

It's a common fallacy that increasing the dose necessarily increases the effects. There are a whole lot of chemicals where the relationship is more complex. There are drugs where negative effects only occur when the drug is discontinued, where the effect of the drug increases or decreases as it it taken continuously, where the effect rapidly saturates and does not increase with increasing dose, and so forth.

I know enough about pharmacology to know that I know nothing.

> It's a common fallacy that increasing the dose necessarily increases the effects.

Can you provide an example of a chemical which has effects on the human body that are completely unrelated to the size of the dose? Just because the effects of a carcinogen may be non-linear in relation to the dosage, that doesn't mean that a greater risk of cancer incidents with a greater dose is an unreasonable expectation. Some thing can be assumed unless an exception is identified.

Mercury or radioactive material come to mind.

Indeed it is awful.

The BBC has a reasonably good article on this subject today

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66057216