Is Sugar a Sin?

Artificial sweeteners are where belief and science collide

Last week, the World Health Organization, released a statement saying that aspartame has a “possible” link to cancer.

I heard about this via YouTube, where the algorithm seems to have determined that I really wanted to know about it, because I was served a whole bunch of videos on the topic from all sorts of news outlets. And, for once, YouTube is right, I am interested.

What I noticed in the few news clips that I looked at, is that they used the statement as an opportunity to stir up drama, as news media does. Science pundits followed the leading questions presented by journalists to say that people should be cautious about their aspartame consumption.

Though, when you look at the statement itself, it’s pretty mild. It says, among other things, “with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake.” That’s a crazy amount to consume. Personally I wouldn’t advise anyone to drink 9–14 cans of anything in single day. You wouldn’t want to drink that many cans of anything containing supposedly normal and natural sugar.

I’ve always found the skepticism about aspartame and other “artificial”…