Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk(technologynetworks.com) |
Artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk(technologynetworks.com) |
Sucralose, stevia, and others were not found to have an increased risk, but they were only present in a much smaller segment of the population (i.e. 10% used Sucralose) so they may not have enough representation to be ruled out.
> In particular, the absence of a relationship between sucralose and cancer risk in this study should be considered with caution since exposure to sucralose was very low compared to the exposures for aspartame and acesulfame-K.
The HR has fairly large bounds... 1.03 to 1.25 so there is increased risk but this still does not tell you if people who consume a lot of sugar substitutes also exhibit behaviors that increase their risk of cancers. Such as also consuming highly processed food.
>Compared to non-consumers, higher consumers of total artificial sweeteners (i.e., above the median exposure in consumers) had higher risk of overall cancer (n = 3,358 cases, hazard ratio [HR] = 1.13 [95% CI 1.03 to 1.25], P-trend = 0.002). In particular, aspartame (HR = 1.15 [95% CI 1.03 to 1.28], P = 0.002) and acesulfame-K (HR = 1.13 [95% CI 1.01 to 1.26], P = 0.007) were associated with increased cancer risk. Higher risks were also observed for breast cancer (n = 979 cases, HR = 1.22 [95% CI 1.01 to 1.48], P = 0.036, for aspartame) and obesity-related cancers (n = 2,023 cases, HR = 1.13 [95% CI 1.00 to 1.28], P = 0.036, for total artificial sweeteners, and HR = 1.15 [95% CI 1.01 to 1.32], P = 0.026, for aspartame)
A HR of 1.15 means it increases your risk of cancer by 15%.
Not nothing, but I'm not sure that really ticks off a worry box for me. Though I don't personally eat much sweetened food at all, artificial or otherwise (work from home and enjoy cooking, so I make most everything from raw ingredients).
Seems to me all good things for this article to do.
> Debras highlights that 78.5% of the participants included in the analysis were women
How can you tell that it was the artificial sweetener that led to cancer? And not one of the other hundred things people consumed during the day?
If it weren't for diabetics, I'd argue they all should be summarily banned (even, and especially, the "natural" / "organic" sugar alternatives, since those are mostly being produced in labs and are just enabling deceptive labeling).
What about plant-based sweeteners such as stevia, monkfruit etc, or sugar alcohols?
Artificial sweeteners are byproduct of petroleum refining, witch means they do not contain C₆H₁₂O₆ + something but completely different molecules that happen to taste like it for us.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-brief/fda-brief-fda-allo...
It's also naturally occurring
> Associations between sweeteners and cancer incidence were assessed by Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, sex, education, physical activity, smoking, body mass index, height, weight gain during follow-up, diabetes, family history of cancer, number of 24-hour dietary records, and baseline intakes of energy, alcohol, sodium, saturated fatty acids, fibre, sugar, fruit and vegetables, whole-grain foods, and dairy products
So I have a more interesting question here: how effective are these sorts of statistical methods? Is it plausible to start out with a highly-biased population [1], adjust for twenty or so distinct factors, and get results that are actually meaningful?
[1] As I understand it, the study population consists of 102k French adults, self-selected via finding the relevant website and their willingness to go fill out a bunch of surveys. As TFA notes "[...] 78.5% of the participants included in the analysis were women, which could be considered a selection bias. Additional biases noted by the researchers were that participants were more likely to have higher educational levels, and to demonstrate health-conscious behaviors."
Even with the significant controls in the study, I still completely believe this is the case. People who avoid artificial sweeteners likely make many other health-promoting decisions (healthy user bias) that are far too granular to control against using simple factors like weight and smoking status. The HR is only 1.15. Are you really confident enough in the controls to see this as a real association?
Exactly they are so many variables to take into account that each population subset is becoming very small. I would love to have the insight of a stats nerd on the study.
Btw if you look at the raw data, they are for instance less cases per subject in the high consumer than in the low or none consumer (table 2), but they get a higher hazard ration, meaning that other correction were taken into account. It is very difficult to interpret such results.
Long story short: it's nothing new, only for many years industry needs and desire have prevailed (read also the equally recent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30793352 so to speak) now something start to pops up.
The issue I suspect it's not only Bad Capitalism©®™ but also a practical issue: we (humans) are many and natural sugar production while far expanded since the colonial era is still far from sufficient to satisfy the demand. Similarly for many junk/ultraprocessed foods: in part they exists to satisfy food industry interest, in part because we can't satisfy the demand of quality products...
This and other studies contradict your assertion. Do you have a reference?
The 95% CI lower boundary for most of the cancer risks are still > HR 1.00, which seems significant enough to call out an increased risk correlation.
Not so with lab created stuff - your body may not have the ability to do anything with it, so it either sits and causes slow damage, or gets excreted very slowly, and can cause hard to detect damage.
For example acetone is not very toxic because the body can metabolize it.
Both effects have been shown separately. For instance, mice on fixed calorie diets become lethargic and gain weight if artificial sweeteners are added to their water.