It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi).

Their involvement in developing intake guidelines represents “an obvious conflict of interest”, said Gary Ruskin, US Right-To-Know’s executive director. “Because of this conflict of interest, [the daily intake] conclusions about aspartame are not credible, and the public should not rely on them,” he added.

  • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    How do you mean?

    I’ve heard of things like the sensation of sweetness being decoupled from satiation leading to a greater urge for sweetness in compensation, but at least personally that’s not happening to me lol.

    • Rowsdower@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I think what they mean is we shouldn’t encourage people to drink what is essentially candy water. Doesn’t matter if it has sugar or aspartame. It’s still candy

      Replacing an unhealthy habit with a less unhealthy habit is still unhealthy (written as I drink a Dr Pepper zero)

      • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Why not though? The health impact of moderate diet soda consumption seems to be pretty negligible.

        • Rowsdower@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Diet sodas still aren’t water, and they are pretty acidic. They eat away at your teeth, and aren’t great at actually hydrating you. It significantly reduces the harm from drinking candy water, but it doesn’t eliminate them

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      And even if it’s true, it means you’ll eat the sugar instead of drinking it, and then you’ll be able to ingest less sugar before feeling full, plus you probably get some fibre with it as well which helps a lot.

    • PreachHard@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      It’s pretty acidic which sucks for your teeth for one but that wasn’t what I was trying to say

      Yeah I just really mean as a diet as a whole though. If you have an issue with sugar intake then you’re probs drinking way too much sugary drinks. To suggest just swapping out sugars for fake ones I don’t think is best choice to suggest for most people.

      I think there’s probably tons of other issues too just aside from the excess glucose. So fix the diet not the sugar.

      Yeah I agree it’s fine that a most of these chemicals are safe in moderation and well researched. My gripe is the hot swap fix-all attitude that people can take from it.

      • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        That makes sense. I’m coming at this as someone who drinks diet coke because they like it rather than to avoid drinking sugar.

        Amusingly it’s the fact that diet coke is relatively less sweet that makes me like it.