The WHO is about to declare aspartame can cause cancer (opens in new tab)

This is a dupe and it's only technically true, it's being added to some low impact "possible carcinogen" category that already contains vast swaths of food and human activities. It has no material impact on any health guidance, it's just a clickbait headline.

Recent discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522471

And to a lesser extent:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36562739

This puts aspartame in the same category as aloe vera. It is classified as less risky than drinking hot beverages or eating red meat.

Healthcare Triage did a review of the research years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf82FfX-wuU tl;dw: artificial sweeteners get a bad rap, multiple studies have found no harm, studies that did find harm were on rats (which often doesn't translate to humans), and the harms associated with excess sugar consumption are numerous, well-founded, and damning.

Previous threads with tons of comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36519942

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522471

Eventually we will get into meaningless situation like in California with Proposition 65 - Basically everything will be labeled that it can cause you cancer and people will start ignoring it.

I wonder how long the diet soda manufactures have been working on this, and preparing for it. I would not be surprised if they already have some thing ready to go to replace it with.

If aspartame makes someone’s weight loss program tolerable enough to lose 50+ pounds, then its risks are probably worth it to reduce other risks borne by being obese.

Good, the less profits soda companies have, the better. Its bad for you regardless of the sweetener. 35-40 grams of sugar per 12 oz can. Insanity.

Good!

I'm for banning artificial sweeteners. Something always told me that you can't get away with having a thing that tastes like sugar but doesn't exactly act like it to the body without some wrong thing happening. Either the taste reaction to the body has to do something strange (tastes like sweet so let's react the same way we would to sugar but oops this isn't sugar so now we're all out of whack) or yeah, something like this where it's carcinogenic.

Now mind you I'm not some wacko who is also against MSG and "chemicals". I also understand that some of the population needs alternatives to sugar. But some of these need full unbiased rigorous testing in humans. What do these things do to our bodies and how do our bodies react to them?