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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

212 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] NotYourSocialWorker@feddit.nu 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

One theory is that the body doesn't know if the sweetness is sugar or sweetener. So it produces insulin to take care of it. When the level of insulin gets too high the body tries to compensate by eating more. If that "more" is more sweetener...

[–] antisoma@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

While I'm no expert, that doesn't sound correct to me. I'd expect highly specific binding dependent on the chemical structure of glucose would be required to elevate insulin. A quick search seems to support that. I'm sure there are lots of studies on this that you could find if interested.

[–] doggle@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Unless I'm missing something this seems trivial to test. Just test blood sugar before and after drinking a diet soda. If bloods sugar goes down then the sweetener likely caused a release of insulin. If it doesn't change then it didn't.

It seems petty far-fetched. If artificial sweeteners caused a runaway insulin spike then I would expect them to cause a lot of cases of diabetic shock.

[–] Ataraxia@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never experienced hypoglycemia while on keto and using sweeteners lol

[–] RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You heard it here guys, this dude is pretty sure it never happened to him, so it's definitely fine.

[–] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

Nobody claims it's fine, it's just a personal example

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's just as valid, if not maybe a little more, than the guy claiming it is the reason. People are allowed to discuss their personal opinions and they should need to include that it's only a sample size of one and not independently verified. No one should be stupid enough to think they're claiming otherwise and need to say it out loud that they don't trust it.

[–] RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anecdotes are not "personal opinions" and they certainly aren't valid or valuable in the context of evaluating scientific claims.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

No, it isn't valuable for scientific evaluation. They are valid though. Anyway, the other comment was just a claim without any supporting evidence for it but no one felt they needed to point that out.

[–] huge_clock@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The insulin response you’re talking about is very small and it doesn’t lead to a chain reaction.