Several users kept pointing out aspartame metabolizes into formaldehyde and that aspartame wasn't approved for 16 years by the FDA until Donald Rumsfeld, former president of the company that manufactures it (Searle) gave the FDA commissioner the boot and appointed a new one.
The wikidorks (aspartame shills?) who police the aspartame article and prevent people from editing it could only respond by ignoring the entire conflict of interest and insisting over and over that the users pointing this out were "paranoid" and "conspiracy theorists" and falling back on industry-funded studies (literally the private corporation that made it studying it) saying it's safe, and the FDA being ultimately trustworthy. They accused the users of "writing a blog" and "diffusing history" (????) and said that this isn't what the talk page is for.
They said that the talk page is only for "suggesting ways to improve the article (that they police)" (????????) When that didn't work they finally accused their interlocutors of being traditional sugar shills, at which point someone responded that both sugar and aspartame are bad for you, and that the USA allows high fructose corn syrup while other countries don't, because it has lax regulations. This is when the entire conversation was shut the fuck down.
TL;DR wiki nerds get to invoke "it's not a forum" rule to shut down people "diffusing history" while accusing their interlocutors of being "paranoid conspiracy theorists" and claiming that pointing out conflicts of interest in the FDA approval is wrong because... the FDA is the most reliable source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aspartame
I edit medical pages on Wikipedia. Let me summarise this without taking sides against anyone (honestly I have no fucking idea about the aspartame thing and I don't feel like reading deeply into it now).
Medical articles look for "high quality articles". This means guidelines from medical bodies (like the CDC, NHS, or American Butthole Health Institute). They can also include "systematic reviews", which is where some scientist looked for as many articles as possible on a subject and put them together.
It's rather hard for a single research article to get onto Wikipedia. Often enough this is a good thing, as Masks Don't Fucking Prevent Covid by Dr. InfowarsFan aren't allowed. This rule has been very positive with keeping amtivaxxers and ivermectin losers out of Wikipedia.
One of the many disadvantages of Wikipedia is that there's a VERY strong bias towards the establishment. If the FDA says something, it's hard not to make that the heading of the article. If the NY Times said that Stalin killed billions, well fuck now Wikipedia insists that Stalin killed billions.
If peeps here want to try to change the article, I'd recommend pouring over the FDA recommendations and systematic reviews for nuanced statements, like "there may be a risk for cancer". Yes, Wikipedia editing is masochist. I'm sorry.
Oh hey, would you look at that, a recent study showing even low doses of aspartame cause cancer in rodents.
The author even has his own Wikipedia page.
Philip John Landrigan (born June 14, 1942), is an American epidemiologist and pediatrician and one of the world's leading advocates of children's health.[1][2]
He was formerly the Director of the Children's Environmental Health Center and the Ethel Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
In 2018 he became the founding director of Boston College's Global Public Health Program and the Global Pollution Observatory within the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.[4]
He seems like kind of a big deal.
Odd that his research on aspartame isn’t on his Wikipedia page. :thinkin-lenin:
interesting article but the lowest dosage they tested would be equivalent to the average person drinking ~10 diet sodas/day. maybe the guy who drinks two big gulps a day is fucked, but i wanna know what aspartame does to people with more reasonable consumption habits.
the authors definitely should have tested a wider variety of doses (2, 5, and 10 mg/kg).
A wider variety of doses would have been cool, but adding two more treatments would ostensibly double their work. And after looking at the full paper it looks like the author basically inherited ~3,000 dead rats/mice that had undergone the treatments in the 90's.
Afaik this aspartame cancer stuff is still insignificant. They give the rats the equivalent of 10 cans of diet coke a day for their entire life. Practically you'll get cancer from something else before you should start checking everything for what sweetener is in it. Wikipedia still sucks.
I have a lot of respect for people who try to improve Wikipedia because it seems infuriating uphill battle. So many pages of consequence are captured by special interests or three letter agencies.
“Not a forum!” I exclaim, on the forum dedicated to the topic at hand.
Ironic, as Wikipedia is the rule lawyering forum moderators wet dream.
oh nice, today I learned that aspartame turns into fucking formaldehyde lmao
lmao just learned about this. how much formaldehyde does it end up making
Does your body really produce 45 grams of formaldehyde a day like Unbh claimed?
It isn't that surprising that formaldehyde is created as a waste product by the liver, it's a pretty simple molecule; but it would almost always be formed by transforming something else that was more toxic in the original form prior to processing it down to formaldehyde.
Context is pretty important, where it is, the life cycle of that molecule, the acidity of that environment could all change it to be completely harmless vs. almost certainly carcinogenic. Alcohol absorption in the GI tract is a horrific carcinogen, it's no benzene but it's still massively destructive. But nobody really seems to be concerned about it other than cancer researchers, who don't even have enough pull to prevent the wine lobby from pretending wine is good for you other than one of the biggest known influences in developing breast cancer.
Aspartame causes cancer, sugars causes diabetes. Honestly the real problem is as always capitalism pushing us absolutely inhuman level of sugars and sweets into our food. The human body can only deal with the sugars metabolized from carbs and perhaps some honey as a treat.
Sugar demonstrably causes an insulin response. You can test this with a simple blood-glucose meter. I was type 2. My A1C was 10.1%. I got it down to 5.9% by staying away from sugar and carbs. If it was fats and oils that caused insulin resistance, then I would still be diabetic.
Fruit is fine because it has less sugar in it than sugary treats. It also tends to have more fiber. If you go from drinking sodas and eating candy/cookies/cakes to eating nothing but fruit, you would see a drop in A1C and blood-glucose because fruit has less sugar in it. That doesn't mean it's the sugar reversing diabetes though.
You can go buy a $20 meter and some test strips and test this out for yourself. Fast for 8 hours, test your sugar. Eat some honey, wait 30 mins, then test it again. The next day fast for 8 hours, eat some sugar-free peanut butter. Wait 30 mins and test. See which ones causes the greater insulin response.
It's a constant high-insulin response that triggers type 2. Your cells become insulin resistant because they're constantly bombarded with high blood sugar levels.
Yes, this is correct. It's even more correct to say that flooding cells with sugar that is never used by the cell causes type two diabetes. Exercise and triggering cellular metabolic activity literally both prevents and reverses insulin resistance.
Type one diabetes is completely different, almost the opposite. It's truly disturbing how many patients, doctors and nurses confuse the two.
sugars don’t really cause diabetes
Not to be rude but this is very wrong.
Wikipedia used to be fucking awesome like 10-15 years ago for deep science, biomed, medical science. Then wikidorks merged thousands of pages on biochemistry and cellular chemistry because, using their extensive home schooled curriculum from hearts of iron 4, they assumed all these things sounded similar enough they had to be the same thing. Completely destroyed one of the greatest resources in existence. They keep sending me fucking donation requests to create more shitty add on bullshit nobody wants, because I used to donate back when it was an amazing resource. You know, the one they ran straight into the fucking ground because the authors were typically written by the scientist that had spent their life researching, not some 24 year old loser with 15,000 edits or whatever.
Nerds becoming anti intellectual mouth breathers is the absolute worst fucking development of my adult life.
very interesting. thanks for sharing. as far as i know there isn't any evidence of aspartame being bad for you. anyone have any studies to the contrary? edit: just saw the link by KiaHaha
