riverside artificial sweeteners & cancer debunking myths bobby dubois's stud

Ajouté : 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Myth one, artificial sweeteners cause cancer. Let's start with the scariest claim. Artificial sweeteners cause cancer. Now, this myth didn't come from nowhere. The first major danger signal was not aspartame. It was cyclamates and saccharin. In the late 1960s and 70s, animal studies linked those sweeteners with bladder cancer in male rats. Based upon information like this, cyclamates were banned in the United States in 1969, and for a while saccharin was put on a cancer list. This began the cancer fear.

[00:00:38]But, like most health issues, it's more nuanced. Dose and biology matter. Those early rat studies exposed the animals to massive doses of these sweeteners. One author estimated the exposure was roughly equivalent to hundreds of diet sodas per day. And with saccharin, the National Cancer Institute later noted that although high-dose saccharin was linked with bladder cancer in rats, that mechanism didn't apply to humans. And saccharin was removed from the US carcinogen list in 2000. The modern cancer concern is more subtle. A big human study you might hear about is NutriNet-Santé, a French observational cohort. It included over 100,000 adults and found that those people who consumed more artificial sweeteners had a slightly higher overall cancer risk compared with those who didn't consume them. With a hazard ratio of 1.13, or potentially a 13% increase in cancer risk. Aspartame and acesulfame K were the main sweeteners implicated. Now, what should we make of this study? The study was observational, meaning they didn't randomize folks to either drank or not drank artificially sweetened beverages.

[00:02:01]Rather, they just asked what folks ate and drank and then observe what happened to them. And it's very possible the people who use more artificial sweeteners differ from people who don't in body weight, diet behavior, diabetes risk, medical surveillance, smoking, alcohol, and many other ways. Now, the authors tried to adjust for many factors, but residual confounding is hard to eliminate. I conclude from most observational studies that the findings may be interesting, but absolutely not definitive. So, the cancer myth has an origin with the rat studies and then a potential signal from an observational study. My practical verdict, I understand the cancer concern, but don't think that having a couple of sodas a day will be the cause for me. A whole lot of other factors are likely way more important.