“The IARC will reportedly classify aspartame as a possible carcinogen. But this isn’t a food safety agency, and the context matters.”
“The IARC will reportedly classify aspartame as a possible carcinogen. But this isn’t a food safety agency, and the context matters.”
Soda companies could literally just switch to stevia or monk fruit tomorrow and it wouldn’t be a problem. The only issue is their refusal to change.
Aspartame doesn’t taste great, but stevia is just awful
I’m more of a monk fruit person myself too honestly.
A lot of people complain about it, but I don’t have any problem with it. I enjoy stevia-based sodas like Zevia or even hard seltzers with it (Truly has a few) with no problem. I wonder if it’s one of those things where it tastes different to various people like cilantro.
It is. They’ve done research and found that basically all artificial sweeteners have a genetic component. For me personally, stevia tastes like soapy bitter lawn clippings, while aspartame and sucralose taste basically normal. A few of my old standby drink mixes swapped to stevia a couple years ago, and I instantly noticed and couldn’t finish them.
I find stevia based sodas taste better anyway
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32811239/
TL;DR Stevia is shit and bad too
Yeah buuuuuuuuut bottom line et al
If you don’t mind me being pedantic, “et al.” is short for “et alia” which means “and other people”. “Etc”, short for “et cetera”, means “and other things”. You only use “et al.” when talking about people not named in a list.
The More You Know 🌠
Which I don’t understand. It literally would be cheaper for them to use stevia or monk fruit and call it a day than to quibble over something so trivial.
On the scale of Pepsi or Coke, a seemingly trivial amount like 1/2 a cent a can adds up to significant money. It’s amazing how companies pinch pennies when dealing in volume like that. They sold 32 billion cases of beverages in 2022. No idea what the real figure is, but let’s say 5,000,000,000 of those are diet drinks with aspartame… that’s 120 billion cans, so if the other sweetener cost only 1 cent more per can that’s 1.2 billion dollars.
Since the verdict on aspartame isn’t clear, they’d also have to tweak the formula for flavor, and switching would be somewhat of a PR admission that there’s something wrong with aspartame, I imagine they’re very reluctant to change anything.