this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by NightOwl@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[–] Fluke 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The World Health Organization said it was safe up to a certain level. The people in the WHO who said that work for Coca-Cola.

This means we can't rely on the recommendation, and the actual "safe" amount may be much lower than that. The article goes into good depth and gives counterarguments too.

It is important to note that in reality there is no safe amount for a carcinogen. Sometimes a threshold is set to reduce risk to a reasonable amount in necessary workplace exposure or medical treatments.

The truth is, I think we'll all eventually realize any sweetener should be seen as candy, not a thirst quencher.

[–] Kingofthezyx@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Thank you being basically the only person in the thread who actually read the article.

The part where they said "aspartame is probably bad" wasn't the corrupt part. The corrupt part was when they put an addendum saying "a little bit of cancer is okay as a treat"

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I read somewhere that asparteme doesn’t accumulate and just passes through the body, which was an argument for having a regular intake below the threshold to be not a risk. With this revelation though, that seems sus now too.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I think that's what this is about.
It doesn't mean aspartame is bad and we are all going to die.
It means that perhaps the safe limits, risk reductions etc need to be re-assessed for them to be with regard to actual harm reduction... instead of the current possibility of "just enough harm that coke doesn't get blamed, but good profit can still be extracted" that these coke associates may-or-may-not have influenced.

It calls recommendations into doubt as opposed to the actual raw science.
AFAIK, aspartame has been widely studied. If it was a substance of actual risk, it would have been highlighted.