In 2016, I quit Diet Coke. This was no small change. I was born and raised in the city of Atlanta, home of the Coca-Cola Company’s world headquarters, and I had never lived in a house without a full refrigerator of Diet Coke at all times. Every morning in high school, I ate breakfast, and then I made sure to shove some (temporary) parts into my back pocket to use in the school vending machines. When I moved into my college dorm, the first thing I did was stock my small fridge with canned goods. A few years later, my then-girlfriend wrapped two 12-packs in wrapping paper and placed them under her Christmas tree. It was a joke, but it wasn’t.
You would think that giving up would be very painful. I was surprised how easy it was. Over the years, I’ve heard stories of people who give up soft drinks and notice overnight improvements in their health—better sleep, better skin, and energy. I also heard whispers about the big one considered danger of artificial sweeteners. However I like my DCs a lot so they don’t shake. Then I tried my first can of unsweetened seltzer at a friend’s house. After years of turning my nose up I think Cross, I realized that most of what I liked about Diet Coke was cold and iced. It was enough. I switched to seltzer on the spot, planning to join the ranks of the converted and receive whatever health benefits would accrue to me for my good behavior.
Except they didn’t come. Seven years later, I don’t feel better than when I drank four or five cans a day. I still stick to seltzer, because you know, who knows?-and I totally forgot Diet Coke existed. But the alcohol didn’t, as it were, prevent me from sleeping more or reduce my rosacea or my feeling, I don’t know, zesty. Aside from the caffeine, they didn’t seem to make any difference in the pros or cons for me.
yesterday, Reuters reported that the World Health Organization for Research on Cancer recently announced that aspartame, the sweetener used in Diet Coke and many other low-calorie sodas, “probably causes cancer in humans.” Maybe I should have felt more legitimate. Maybe I’m not feeling well now, but many years down the line (knock on wood), I’ll be fine. I’ll bet on the right horse! In fact, I have never felt anything like anger. Over the past few decades, the proliferation of foods and behaviors has become a regular subject of vague health warnings— artificial sweeteners, real sugar, wine, butter, milk (dairy and non-dairy), food, coffee, oil, chocolate, eggs. , meat, veganism, vegetarianism, weightlifting, drinking lots of water, and more. The more warnings, the more helpless any of them feel. What, exactly, is anyone supposed to do with any of this information, other than get frustrated with the things they enjoy?
It is worth reviewing what is known or doubted about soda and health. The the lion’s share of research on this topic it takes place in studies known as research-scientists investigate how they use and document the health effects, looking for similarities and events related to the behavior and the results. These studies cannot tell you whether the behavior caused the effect, but they can establish a link that is worth further investigation. Regular, excessive consumption of soda has been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and stroke risk, among other things — a troubling connection for people concerned about their health. But there is a big problem in understanding the meaning of this: For many years, advertising he encouraged that people who already have—or have had—other health concerns substitute alcoholic beverages for those with real sugar, and many such people still substitute them to follow a low-carb diet or even lower their blood sugar. . As a result, little evidence shows that diet soda is the only cause of all these problems-health is very complex, many events that occur in almost all areas-but many experts encourage you to reduce the consumption of soda as a preventive measure.
The representative of the IARC cannot confirm or deny the nature of the WHO announcement on aspartame, which will be released on July 14. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Reuters report is correct: In two weeks, the organization will change. The name of the sweetener indicates that it is “probably carcinogenic.” To the layman, that statement, especially in the context of public health agency issues, may seem to imply a serious skepticism about risk. The proof may not be there yet, but there is enough reason to believe that the threat is real, that there is reason to disturb the common people.
Except, like my friend Ed Yong wrote in 2015, when the IARC made a similar declaration of the possibility of carcinogenic animals, that is not what the group means at all. The IARC classifies hazards into four categories: carcinogenic (Group 1), possibly carcinogenic (Group 2A), possibly carcinogenic (Group 2B), and unclassified (Group 3). Those groups do only one thing: They explain how guaranteed the agency believes that the evidence is of any kind of increased risk, however small. The group that aspartame can find itself recently, 2B, does not say much about carcinogenicity. “In fact, 2B becomes a dumping ground for all the risks that the IARC has considered, and it cannot be confirmed or ruled out as carcinogens. Which means: many things,” wrote Yong.
The groups did not want to connect with degree about the risk involved – the extent to which the organization is certain or uncertain that there is a risk associated with a product or entity. And relationships can mean many things. Hypothetically, frequent consumption of foods that can increase your risk of developing a fatal cancer may fall into the same category as something that can increase your risk of developing cancer with a 95 percent survival rate and a low survival rate, as long as the IARC. I was equally confident in the evidence of all those results.
The term carcinogenicity is just one example of how health information can reach the public in ineffective, even well-intentioned ways. Earlier this year, WHO advised against using artificial sweeteners. At first, that may sound difficult. But the real warning was about the limited evidence that sweeteners help with weight loss, not any new evidence about their unique potential to harm your health in some way. (The warning did not include links between long-term use of sweeteners and increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and premature death, but as the WHO said at the time, this was considered a negative correlation, not part of a causal discovery. fear.)
The same release also quotes the director of the WHO for nutrition and food security advising that, for long-term weight management, people should find ways beyond artificial sweeteners to reduce the consumption of real sugar – in fact, it is not a health warning for any medicine. , but about salt as an idea. How much would you need to cut out of your diet to reduce the risk? Release, itself, is not mentioned. Consider a birthday plate of crudités instead of cake, just to be sure. (Isn’t celery GMO? Organic? I’m just guessing.)
The media, of course, must bear our blame for how quickly and to what extent these light-hearted ideas spread. Many people are very much they worry about the food they eat—perhaps because they’ve received so many conflicting signals over the years about how that food affects their bodies—and they turn to news that something has been deemed beneficial or harmful. Well, the research that most articles cite is often conclusive, and at worst, it is improper design or other defects that it cannot produce useful information.
Combined, poor communication and information distortions have the real potential to completely destroy people’s ability to identify and respond to real risk, or distract them from harm. Pointless finger-wagging, often about real things that most people experience as small pleasures in everyday life, is not helpful. When everything It is a serious health risk, it starts to feel like nothing is there. I still drink several Diet Cokes a year, and I maintain that there is no better drink to pair with pizza. We will all die one day.