2008 Woodie Awards
Science Q & A
Q. Does diet soda cause cancer?
Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: Sci/Tech
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A. Apparently this question has been concerning a lot of you, lately. Didn't you all read Professor Cohen's nice article about checking into cancer myths and being skeptical of the "studies" that get forwarded to every poor soul in your electronic address book? You should have-it would have saved you some anxiety! Nevertheless, allow me to put your poor minds at ease.
It is quite unlikely that drinking soda will cause cancer, or lupus or multiple sclerosis or brain tumors, for that matter, since those myths were going around a couple years ago, beginning, apparently, in 1998. In 2005, the media started panicking people, again, by circulating information about a study that was released linking cancer (Lymphoma and Leukemia, to be precise) and aspartame consumption in lab rats.
Firstly, let us examine the implications of the study. According to the research, average sized people (say 140 pound women or 180 pound men) drinking three or four diet sodas each day would be consuming the same amount given to the lab animals in the study. Considering that aspartame has been on the market since early 1980s, one would expect to find a regular epidemic by now if these claims were true. In the words of the Calorie Control Council, "Aspartame has been used by hundreds of millions of consumers around the world for over 20 years. With billions of man-years of safe use, there is no indication of an association between aspartame and cancer in humans." An article printed this past spring stated that the "European Food Safety Authority reviewed the data and said it did not support the study's conclusions." Many European countries do not even trust the safety of genetically modified food…I highly doubt that they would take these soda/cancer claims lightly.
Secondly, the methods used by the researchers were highly criticized, as well. One of the main problems is that rather than sacrificing the animals at some point during the study, they allowed the animals to die of natural causes. Since cancers are prevalent in old age, anyway, it is hard to draw a link between the aspartame and cancers subsequently found in their bodies. Furthermore, the researchers hypothesized that the cancer might be a result of the way that methanol is produced as a byproduct of aspartame. However, a quote from WedMD stated, "You can actually find six times more methanol in a glass of tomato juice than in a beverage sweetened with aspartame…And there is no difference in the way that methanol is metabolized by the body when it comes from aspartame or from some other source like tomato or orange juice."
It is quite unlikely that drinking soda will cause cancer, or lupus or multiple sclerosis or brain tumors, for that matter, since those myths were going around a couple years ago, beginning, apparently, in 1998. In 2005, the media started panicking people, again, by circulating information about a study that was released linking cancer (Lymphoma and Leukemia, to be precise) and aspartame consumption in lab rats.
Firstly, let us examine the implications of the study. According to the research, average sized people (say 140 pound women or 180 pound men) drinking three or four diet sodas each day would be consuming the same amount given to the lab animals in the study. Considering that aspartame has been on the market since early 1980s, one would expect to find a regular epidemic by now if these claims were true. In the words of the Calorie Control Council, "Aspartame has been used by hundreds of millions of consumers around the world for over 20 years. With billions of man-years of safe use, there is no indication of an association between aspartame and cancer in humans." An article printed this past spring stated that the "European Food Safety Authority reviewed the data and said it did not support the study's conclusions." Many European countries do not even trust the safety of genetically modified food…I highly doubt that they would take these soda/cancer claims lightly.
Secondly, the methods used by the researchers were highly criticized, as well. One of the main problems is that rather than sacrificing the animals at some point during the study, they allowed the animals to die of natural causes. Since cancers are prevalent in old age, anyway, it is hard to draw a link between the aspartame and cancers subsequently found in their bodies. Furthermore, the researchers hypothesized that the cancer might be a result of the way that methanol is produced as a byproduct of aspartame. However, a quote from WedMD stated, "You can actually find six times more methanol in a glass of tomato juice than in a beverage sweetened with aspartame…And there is no difference in the way that methanol is metabolized by the body when it comes from aspartame or from some other source like tomato or orange juice."
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