Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Alan Aragon on Aspartame and Cancer

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Have you seen the headlines? Social media and the internet at large are abuzz with the controversy surrounding the well-known artificial sweetener aspartame.  The recent classification of aspartame as a possible human carcinogen (category 2B) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has sparked a new wave of discussions, concerns, and media sensationalism. In this episode, Alan Aragon helps unravel the complexities and provide a more balanced perspective on this hot topic. Alan is no stranger to the podcast, but in case you’re not familiar with him, he’s a nutrition researcher and educator who’s been at the forefront of the evidence-based fitness movement for over a decade now and has helped countless fitness enthusiasts, professional athletes, and top coaches, and even influenced my own work. Alan has a knack for translating science into practical application, which you can see for yourself if you check out his research review, which was the first of its kind in 2008. In this podcast, you’re going to learn about . . . - The latest news and opinions on aspartame and its classification by the IARC - The negative connotations associated with artificial sweeteners and why people often overlook their benefits - Animal testing on artificial sweeteners and whether the findings can be applied to humans - Practical considerations for the consumption of artificial sweeteners, their place in a balanced lifestyle, and how much is safe to consume - And more . . . This episode offers valuable insights for anyone interested in artificial sweeteners, diet, and overall health, cutting through the confusion and fear to provide an evidence-based viewpoint. So, click play to listen and learn about aspartame and its effects on health. Timestamps: (0:00) - Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (06:36) - What is the latest news with aspartame? (13:30) - Do you have an opinion on what is going on with aspartame and the IARC? (18:28) - Do you think the negative findings of aspartame and artificial sweeteners has put a bad connotation on them? and prevents people from looking into the benefits of artificial sweeteners? (27:41) - My award-winning fitness books for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ (29:41) - If animal testing shows an increase in cancer risk can that really be applied to humans? (57:16) - Where can people find you and your work? Mentioned on the Show: My award-winning fitness books for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ Alan Aragon’s Research Review: https://alanaragon.com/aarr/ Alan Aragon’s Website: https://alanaragon.com/ Alan Aragon’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thealanaragon/

Hey there, I'm Mike Matthews and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode on a controversy that has been making the rounds over the last few weeks on social media and that is the recent classification of aspartame as a possible human carcinogen, a category 2B compound by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is associated with the World Health Organization. And with that, a whole new wave of discussions and concerns and argumentation has been sparked. And many people are wondering what to make of it. Is this classification warranted? Is it supported by the weight of

the evidence? Should you try to avoid aspartame at all costs? Or is it all overblown? Is it all a big nothing burger? Well, you are going to get answers to those questions in today's episode, as well as answers to other questions you may have about artificial sweeteners, other types of artificial sweeteners, for example, sucralose or Ace K or natural alternatives like stevia. And in today's episode, you are going to be learning from my guest, Alan Aragon, who has been on the show a couple of times and who is a nutrition researcher, an educator who has been at the forefront of the evidence-based fitness movement for over a decade now, and who has helped countless fitness enthusiasts, professional athletes, and top coaches,

and whose work has influenced my own and influenced my career significantly. His research review, for example, is the first research review that I ever came across, that I ever subscribed to and still subscribe to. And I've always appreciated how well Alan has been able to take science and make it accessible and practical to laymen, which has been my goal in all of my educational work. Hey, Alan, thanks for taking the time to come back on my podcast. I've been looking forward to this one. It's been a bit. Thank you so much, Mike. It's been a long time and I'm really happy to be back on. controversy du jour, which is aspartame and the possible health implications. Some new research

came out or new position, I guess you could say, on existing research. And a lot of people are talking about it. And so I wanted to get you on the show to discuss this WHO announcement and give some practical context and, I I guess highlight some of the details that have been lost in the headlines, so to speak. Yeah, the overarching principle about this thing is artificial sweeteners tend to trigger this emotional response in people. And it must be a primal thing where folks are, I mean, it seems like people are wired on both sides of the argument. Some people, yeah, some people are, they're so, they're very defensive of these chemicals. They clearly mean a lot to them. And then you have people on the other side who are vehemently opposed to them.

And you have these extreme arguments on either side. Yeah. And it's just, it's fascinating, I think, just from a human psychology, human behavior standpoint, because you're always going to have one camp who just wants to stay as close to, in quotes, nature as possible. But ironically, they're not going around in loincloths and bathing in rivers and streams and avoiding using their cars. And they're not resenting the fact that we figured out air travel or the internet. Maybe that's the next phase, though.

Maybe you have a marketing idea brewing here. I think you could start with bathing in rivers or just like natural bodies of water. I think you could start there. That could be the beginning of a movement. I know. So it's really interesting, man. I personally, I kind of love the fact that we figured out how to travel on freeways. And I'm glad that there's air travel now, instead of having to trek across the desert on some sort of workhorse or horse and buggies. that technology has marched forward to the point that you and I can communicate right now on different parts of the country. And I equate things like artificial sweeteners with positive aspects of food technology. It's sort of like they cracked the code to get us to be able

to have, for example, protein powder without just wanting to retch from the nasty taste of unflavored whey, for example. And it's not that nasty, right? But my point is artificial sweeteners have been a net benefit to various populations from people trying to mitigate obesity and diabetes and various cardiometabolic diseases associated with the overconsumption of total calories. And it has worked great in that regard. And of course, people argue over the research in this vein, but there's definitely a divergence between what's seen observationally in epidemiological studies, looking at large populations with no actual intervention going on versus studies that actually execute interventions

between an experimental group and a control group. And then they try to figure out potential causal connections between things like artificial sweeteners and energy intake, artificial sweeteners and glucose control, artificial sweeteners and body composition. So, you know, we have all that data, but I want to kind of revert back to what you and I were talking about in the beginning, which is people just get emotional over the idea that, holy crap, we figured out how to create substances that have a high degree of sweetness, but they essentially don't have metabolizable energy. That really freaks people out. And specifically in the case of aspartame, what is the latest brouhaha over?

We have this announcement from the WHO, right? And what's the substance of this announcement? And can we get into some of the details about what it really means and what data it's based on, your own personal take on, eventually we can get to some practical takeaways in terms of, because I know, because I hear from people who are now concerned and maybe they just like to have a can or two of diet soda per day. And yeah, they could get rid of the diet soda, and they don't necessarily have to replace it with a sugar-sweetened beverage, which maybe this is a big sugar conspiracy. Maybe big sugar wants us back on sugar. But they could give it up, but it adds pleasure to their day, and they would prefer not to give it up. But now they're concerned that maybe the couple of cans of diet soda per day, maybe it's going

to increase the risk of cancer by even a small amount. And that's something that would concern them because of the asymmetrical nature of that type of risk. Yeah, it might be a small degree chance, but if you do get it, you're screwed. So you want to do everything you can to make it as close to zero as possible. Yeah, definitely. Cancer is a scary thing, a real concern for various populations, and it's an unsolved disease. So understandably, people would get worried when they hear any sort of association, even if it's through just the mainstream news media that agent X or food X

or substance X is associated somehow, even if remotely with cancer. But the thing that happened with aspartame is that the World Health Organization, which is just one of the major government-tied health agencies, they have a subsidiary, if you will, or an arm of their organization called the IARC, and that stands for the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the IARC. And so the IARC has this classification system that goes category one, which is basically cancers to humans, a known human carcinogen. Category two A, which is a probable human carcinogen. And then category 2B, which is a possible human carcinogen. And then finally category 3, which has the lowest threat level, so not cancerous to humans. So what the IARC recently did was they announced their classification of aspartame as being in 2B, in category 2B, meaning a possible human carcinogen. Now, sort of the odd thing about

category 2B is that it doesn't require, A, any minimal, there's no minimum amount of human evidence to show that a substance qualifies for that category. And there is no specific dosing range or dosing threshold in animals to indicate that this thing is possibly carcinogenic to humans. So you can take a substance like aspartame and inject like just gallons of it into the eyeballs of animals. And then if something remotely carcinogenic happens, then you can categorize this substance in 2B because there was some indication of carcinogenicity in, let's say, rodents at these astronomical doses and therefore possible human carcinogen. I mean, that sounds like opinion. Yeah, it is. It absolutely is. And on the note of it being opinion, there is still the IARC is of

the World Health Organization is just one of the major health agencies worldwide. So there is the EFSA, the FDA, the FSANZ, there's JECFA. All those organizations have not, I guess, shined the warning sign or sounded the alarm signal on aspartame. Just the IARC of the World Health Organization. And so the World Health Organization is known to be relatively trigger happy about announcing stuff as being dangerous or carcinogenic. In recent memory, they've done this with coffee. So the IARC classified coffee in this possible human carcinogen category pretty recently. But then

enough evidence rolled out for them to have to retract that statement about coffee. And yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't say I'm very well acquainted with the coffee literature, but what I've read has indicated the opposite, even that it might have anti-cancer properties so long as you're not drinking like two grams of caffeine per day or something. Yeah. Yeah. No, there actually is evidence in the opposite direction for coffee. And there's cardioprotective evidence for coffee as well.

And so the World Health Organization, I mean, they've sounded the alarm whistle for coffee at some point in their history pretty recently. And so who knows really what's going to happen with the aspartame thing. But it's interesting to think of what the motivations are between, you know, about these warnings. We can think of some interesting conspiracy theories. Maybe there are some agents from Big Sugar infiltrating the artificial sweetener industry. I mean, ironically, given the state of the world, if that were actually the case, I wouldn't be surprised. I'd be like, well, yeah, I mean, you got to peddle sugar somehow.

And if you can get enough people to stop with the aspartame, erythritol, I'm sure that you saw that controversy as well. So, oh, it's the natural non-nutritive sweeteners. Those are dangerous too. Come on back to good old all natural sugar sweetened beverages. Now, of course, not saying that's happening, but given the world we live in, it would not surprise me. There are many people in the world who are mostly motivated by money.

It's that simple. If they can make a lot of money lying, cheating, and stealing, that's what they're going to do. And power structures tend to, they tend to filter, the crazier people tend to filter upward. The ones that are more psychopathic and sociopathic tend to filter upward. And so this is human nature. But that aside, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, given the specifics of the announcement. And do you have an opinion on what's going on here?

Do you think there's maybe the possibility of some truth here? Or do you think it's almost certainly just wrong like coffee and this is going to end up getting retracted as well? I don't know if it's going to get retracted. I just know just from looking at the numbers and just seeing the doses required to reach the levels of concern are just so astronomical. I mean, they're so far out. Can you give some context there just for people, again, put it in whatever terms you want, it could be diet sodas or... Right, right. The acceptable daily intake or the ADI is set at 40 to 50 milligrams per kilogram per day, depending on which organization that you're going with their guidelines of. Now, this is based on doses that are many, many,

many times more than what humans would ingest. And so they always leave some sort of safety margin after they just, in animal models, they just really run, they run these toxicity studies where these escalating doses go far above and beyond what humans could possibly ingest. And so this acceptable daily intake level of 40 to 50 milligrams per kilogram per day is in a 75 kilogram person, that's 3,037.50 milligrams per day, which is the equivalent of 17 to 21 cans of diet soda per day, still being a safe intake of aspartame. It wouldn't necessarily be a safe intake of caffeine. If a can of soda has somewhere between, let's say, 1 to 200 milligrams of caffeine, of course, that would be an issue. But I personally don't know

anybody who consumes 17 to 21 cans of diet soda per day. I did know somebody who consumed about 10 cans of diet soda a day. I'm not going to name him to protect the guilty. But when you think of maybe the average diet soda intake of your average health nut fitness bro is going to be, I don't know, somewhere between one and three cans a day. And after that, they start feeling guilty or they just know that, you know, if they have a fifth can of whatever diet soda they're drinking, then they're going to be crossing the line in terms of usually it's caffeine intake, you know, what people consume. What with the additional energy drink, maybe some pre-workout as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And a lot of people in our circle are pretty conscious of the caffeine thresholds that disrupt their sleep and that are just excessive. I guess we call the scientific consensus of an upper safe limit of caffeine intake for adults at the general population level and as a statistical average

is 400 milligrams per day. So that's the equivalent of about four to five cups of coffee a day as being the upper safe limit of caffeine intake for non-pregnant adults. And so, yeah, if somebody's consuming even up to four energy drinks a day, and there's a maximum of 100 milligrams of caffeine in their energy drink, and they don't drink much caffeine outside of that, you can still make an argument for that being relatively safe, or just kind of biologically neutral. But 17 to 21 cans of diet soda being the equivalent of the acceptable daily intake limits, that amount is really far above what people in the general population and

even in the fitness population and people who love their, you know, getting revved up through their energy drinks, that's far less than, far more than what they drink. the evidence over the last 10 years or so has been in the direction of potentially harmful effects, whether it's related to the gut microbiome, this cancer controversy is not a new one. When I go back to my entry into the fitness racket 10 plus years ago, people were saying this then with less evidence to point to, even if the evidence currently is weak, there now is, you could say maybe weak evidence, whereas 10 years ago, there was maybe very little of anything. It was more just a speculation. However, I have seen people acknowledge some of what you just said about this WHO classification, and it is certainly not the final nail in the coffin, like some people are saying,

but it would appear to some people that the developments, a lot of these bigger developments that have occurred in the case of Astrid and other artificial sweeteners have tended to be negative findings rather than neutral or positive findings. Do you think that there's any validity to that perspective? Or is that something that's maybe more skewed by the availability of information sensationalized in the media or social media? Because that just that gets people talking, it's people clicking, listening, as opposed to maybe neutral findings that are boring. I have a little bit of a cynical view on that, Mike. It's like, if you were an officer in the IARC and you're being paid a certain salary, what are you being paid for? Okay, you're being paid to make sure that public health is in order. But what if there's nothing to report on? What if there's nothing exciting, nothing publishable, nothing newsworthy to report on? That's either going to potentially hurt your salary or it's

going to hurt your ego or it's going to hurt both. And so I think that people are dying for attention at every level and they're starving for significance. They're starving for recognition for something. So some news is better than no news. Some discovery, even if it's spurious, is better than no discovery. So that's a little bit of cynicism on my part as far as what the World Health Organization is spitting out, what their subsidiary, the IARC, is spitting out in terms of these things. The reason I can make those speculations is because when you look

at the boring part, the actual findings in PubMed, the larger weight of the evidence from the larger systematic reviews and meta-analyses, you really come down with a whole lot of nothing. Aspartame has been studied over the course of hundreds of studies. I mean, if you look at animal data, attempts at human data, everything else, human data on various short and longer endpoints, softer and harder endpoints. It really just, you come down with just a whole lot of null effects. And that's just not exciting to report on. That's not something worthy of gaining a salary over reporting on. That's not newsworthy. It doesn't even get people talking in the gym. And you think about like, you're going to be in the gym with your buddy,

like, hey, did you see that new study that showed that aspartame is more or less just benign and it doesn't matter? Oh, okay. Anyway. Right. And the categorization of these potential carcinogens, that whole spectrum of known human carcinogen, probable human carcinogen, and then aspartame in the possible human carcinogen, and all the way at the bottom with the not carcinogenic to humans. The very top tier, so known human carcinogen is the IARC put any alcoholic beverage in any amount as a known human carcinogen. in terms of their logic and in terms of how diligent they're trying to be, or even, you know, maybe cynically how newsworthy they want to be and how relevant they want to be. They're, they're willing to put like a, it's almost, it's almost like edgy. I know. Right. It would be, it would be kind of cool. It's almost like scientific shit posting, you know, that's a great, that's honestly, that's a great way to put it.

And I mean, we've got human beings at the top of these organizations at the helm of the ship, and they need to think of stuff that's newsworthy. And it's kind of absurd to think or to go by these guidelines by the IARC and think that a single Bud Light is going to get you in grave trouble. You know what I mean? And that is the effect that such pronouncements have. I've seen it firsthand. People will worry about these things and understandably so, not because they're stupid. It's often because they actually understand that there are things they don't know. And so it's that awareness of what they don't know that actually makes them concerned. Like, well, maybe there is, maybe I am

missing something about alcohol and maybe every drink that I take materially increases my risk of cancer. I don't know. What do I know? I'm a sales guy. I'm a CEO of a business or I know things about certain things and then I just know nothing about that. So I'm leaning on experts to help me understand because I don't have time to become scientifically literate and spend who knows how many hours sifting through the research on alcohol to come to a final determination that I could explain starting with first principles. I can't do that. Right, right, right. There's a lot of time and energy and resources involved in being knowledgeable about these things. But even, you know, your average layperson can understand that there's a difference between, let's say,

a glass of red wine and a fifth of Jack, okay, in terms of health effects. And so we can take the differences between, let's say, a glass of red wine and, you know, a liter of vodka. We can take that principle and transfer it over to artificial sweeteners. So artificial sweeteners are a pretty diverse group of compounds. You've got, well, like what we've been talking about, there's aspartame, there's sucralose, there's stevia, or stevia, as some people call it.

There's acelfime K, there's saccharin, and there's a few others floating around, but those are the biggies. Now, stevia, though, wouldn't, that's not normally considered an artificial, right? Or did I not hear that right? I guess there might be a technical difference versus maybe a philosophical difference. But I guess maybe we can say low calorie.

I guess normally it's like, okay, well, the stevia or stevia comes from the leaf of the plant versus being synthesized in a lab. Yeah, no, that is correct. So maybe it's more accurate to say these low-calorie sweeteners or non-nutritive sweeteners. And so they're a pretty diverse group. And don't forget erythritol because that one, I'm sure you saw, because that one's going to give you a heart attack, so don't do that. That's kind of an interesting story too, Mike.

It's like correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. And in this case, in the case of erythritol, it's guilt by association because, you know, these people with these major cardiac events and these cardiovascular diseases, their bodies are literally producing erythritol over time. And so erythritol is just kind of guilty by association there. It's not that people are actually getting cardiovascular disease from consuming erythritol. So that was an interesting story as well. And that blew up in the news for a second. But this aspartame thing, it just sort of casts this light on artificial sweeteners

as just a bunch of dangerous group of compounds, but they're very diverse. And when you look at the actual literature, the artificial sweetener that seems to consistently phase plant is saccharin. So saccharin is the one that causes these disruptions in the gut microbiome. Saccharin is the one that, through these disruptions in gut microbiome, will cause adverse effects on glycemic control. And also, saccharin, when compared with sucralose and aspartame, it also was not effective at controlling body weight through mechanisms definitely that have to do with thermic balance, but definitely probably through the appetite regulation pathways. So saccharin could be a problematic artificial sweetener. used to show this. This was in, it's about, I want to say almost 10 years ago that Suez and colleagues looked at this and then their research about, oh no, you know, artificial sweeteners

really kind of disrupt the gut microbiome. This was based on saccharin. The problem with getting up in arms and alarmed about saccharin is that you're not going to find it used the vast majority of commercial products. You're really only going to find it in significant amounts in those pink packets at IHOP or Denny's. So we're looking at an artificial sweetener that's almost commercially extinct, which happens to be the one that has the most adverse potential. So gut biome stuff, that really belongs to saccharin. And aspartame and cancer, it just seems to have a nice ring to it. But when you really look at the data, the evidence just really is not there to blow the alarm whistles. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, then you will probably like my

award-winning fitness books for men and women of all ages and abilities, which have sold over 2 million copies, have received over 15,000 four and five star reviews on Amazon, and which have helped tens of thousands of people build their best body ever. Now, a caveat, my books and programs cannot give you a lean and toned Hollywood body in 30 days, and they are not full of dubious diet and exercise hacks and shortcuts for gaining lean muscle and melting belly fat faster than a sneeze in a cyclone, but they will show you exactly how to eat and exercise to lose up to 35 pounds of fat or more if you need to lose more or want to lose more and gain eye catching amounts of muscle definition and strength. And even better, you will learn how to do those things without having to live in the gym, give up all of the foods or drinks that you love or do long grueling workouts that you hate. And with my books and programs, you will do that.

You will transform your physique faster than you probably think is possible. Or I will give you your money back. If you are unsatisfied with any of my books or programs, the results, anything, for whatever reason, just let me know and you will get a full refund on the spot. Now I do have several books and programs including bigger, leaner, stronger, thinner, leaner, stronger, and muscle for life. And to help you understand which one is right for you, it's pretty simple. If you are a guy aged 18 to let's say 40 to 45, guy aged 18 to let's say 40 to 45, bigger, leaner, stronger is the book and program for you.

If you are a gal, same age range, thinner, leaner, stronger is going to be for you. And if you are a guy or gal, 40 to maybe 45 plus muscle for life is for you. And can you speak to another argument that I've seen made, which is that, okay, fine, the dose makes for the poison. And if you use super doses in animals produce significant increases in risks of cancer or other problems, then smaller doses used in humans will produce smaller risks. And yeah, they'll acknowledge that, but they're going to also say, but even a small increase in the risk of something very serious, it could be cancer or it could be gut microbiome issues that obviously that's an emerging field of research and scientists are learning more and more about how important it is to have good gut health. And if you don't, there are many things that can go wrong. Again, I've seen the argument made that,

okay, fine, even if it is a smaller increase and it doesn't, it wouldn't make for a great headline, we want to probably try to avoid even just a small increase in our chances of developing serious health issues. What are your thoughts about that? I think that folks who are worried about that are just not aware of just how much you would have to consume in order to cross these thresholds of harm. So with pretty much all the stuff in the food supply, all the substances, ingredients, foods, even things like saturated fat, heaven forbid, there is a threshold of intake

below which you're really looking at one big nothing burger. So you're looking at, there is a threshold below which you're seeing just biological neutrality. So no effect, one way or another. And with certain things, there's even a benefit at low doses. Whereas when you cross over a certain threshold, you're looking at grave harm. Even using the IARC's classification system, for example, sunlight. So solar radiation, that is a class one human carcinogen per the IARC's system, warning system. That's funny that you say that. I was going to ask that earlier. Is that on the list? Because

yes, it is. Yeah, yes, it is. And what's interesting about sunlight is that if you don't get any of it, you are putting yourself in grave danger. So without a certain minimum of sunlight, and let's say your diet is somewhat poor and you're not supplementing with vitamin D. So without sunlight, you are going to be vitamin D deficient. And if you incur vitamin D deficiency, you will incur a constellation of adverse effects on multiple bodily systems from musculoskeletal to cardiometabolic. And so a little sunlight is actually not just good for you, but some would say it's even essential. A little too much sunlight, well... Even if you supplement with vitamin D, okay, fine, you can avoid that, but you are not going to get the circadian rhythm-related benefits and other benefits of going outside and getting some sun on your body and in your eyes. That's absolutely true. It's not just a matter of, ah, you know, I can just supplement

with vitamin D and get everything I need from sunlight. No, there's psychobiological effects of sunlight that affect all kinds of things from mood to, and like you mentioned, our circadian rhythm sort of, it can either be in alignment with our exposure to sun or we can really throw it out of whack. And so in small doses, moderate doses, sunlight is essential and it's good for you. After a certain threshold, you're getting sunburns, you're getting melanomas, and then you're getting six people carrying you off in a casket. So I'm not going to say the same thing is true with every artificial sweetener where small doses are always good for you. But I would still say those small doses of artificial sweetener are very likely better for

you than dumping a bunch of teaspoons of sugar in whatever it is you're going to do to sweeten it. And I would even say that small enough doses of artificial sweetener really kind of just disappear into the ether of the universe, biological neutrality. And something that you're speaking to here is, I think should be explicitly mentioned, is the context of somebody's lifestyle on the whole. How do they eat? How do they exercise? How do they sleep? How do they manage stress? And so on. You can have a person who does a lot of these things well, and their body is a very anti-cancerous environment. It'd be very hard, if not impossible, for cancer to flourish. Now, that's not to say that cancer doesn't occur to those people. There are exceptions to every rule.

But as a rule, if you're doing the basic things that I mentioned well, and you're doing that consistently, I think that also just for people individually to give them some encouragement that they need to acknowledge that statistically speaking, it would be very hard, very, very, very unlikely for them to develop cancer so long as they're doing those things correctly. And there could be exceptions, of course, but it just would be very hard to believe that given that, if you added a couple of diet sodas a day, that's going to be enough to kill them. A chemical that powerful would just be in all kinds of foods and beverages. And there's a lot of scientific evidence that hasn't caught that yet. Somehow this has evaded a large body of research. a large body of research. Yeah. I mean, there's likely massive differences in scale, even if you compare just standing outside and breathing in the city. If you live in New York or LA, the amount of exposure just carcinogenically that you're getting compared to, let's say,

drinking a six-pack of diet sodas a day are just worlds different. You're probably putting yourself in greater carcinogenic danger by just stepping outside of your house. And the probabilities are just vanishingly small that you're going to incur some kind of harm from these things. And this is reflected in, you know, this is just not just my speculation. In the largest, most recent systematic review that all of these agencies are just converging on the same conclusion. It's like all the research lines of evidence from mechanistic, from cell cultures to these rodent studies, to human studies, like every line of evidence

is essentially showing a lack of carcinogenicity. Well, from aspartame in particular and from artificial sweeteners as kind of a group. As somebody who respects science and respects the principle of science, one of the things that researchers are supposed to do is withhold absolute levels of certainty. Whether you're looking at something with absolute confidence or absolute certainty, we're supposed to avoid absolute certainty because

then when you are 100% certain that something is a certain way, then you kind of automatically close your mind to the possibility of that not being true. So I'm not going to adopt 100% certainty that artificial sweeteners are completely harm-free, but I would adopt enough certainty to feel like reasonable use of artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, is not going to affect me or anybody within this lifetime and possibly the next lifetime. Maybe it'll start showing up in the third lifetime, but within this lifetime or the next, you are putting yourself in more danger stepping outside and taking a deep breath at an intersection. That probability point is important because in my experience, many people were not taught to think that way, I think is the issue. I don't think it's necessarily just a matter of being quote unquote stupid. It's just not an

element of critical thinking. I think that it's taught in school. And I think to about six or eight months into COVID, when there was enough data to actually start to figure out how much of a risk does it pose to us individually based on what cohort of people we would sort into. I remember I recorded a podcast because I had looked into some actuarial data at that time based on what was available regarding COVID. And I made this point where I was saying, look, statistically speaking here, let me run through these numbers. If we're talking about severe illness or death, like having severe trauma, right? In this case, I'm referring to a car crash, something that would put me in the hospital or kill me. I remember one of the things that was more dangerous than COVID statistically was driving my car 30 to 45 minutes a day. That was one of them, like a normal kind of commute. Maybe it was 30

to 60 minutes a day per day on a highway. Another one was walking around in a city. At that time, I lived near Washington, DC. So if I wanted to go walk in DC for, I think it was about 45 minutes a day, because of course you can just get hit by a car. That can happen when you're walking around a city. That was statistically more dangerous. And there are one or two other rather mundane kind of just daily activities that were statistically more dangerous that posed more of a risk to me than COVID. And my argument at the time was, okay, so I now officially do not care. I'm not going to be afraid of COVID for me personally. And here's why, just because I'm for the same reason, I'm not going to be afraid. I drive my car every day

and I'm not afraid. I understand something could happen and that's life. And I accept that risk. And I live my life or I go out for a walk when I'm in Georgetown. Yeah. I'm walking around for more than 45 minutes and something could happen. And I remember getting a fair amount of flack for that. Some people took the point and other people took it very personally. There just seems to be a similar, we already commented on this, but there seems to be a similar kind of dynamic in play here with, with these artificial sweeteners. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's really interesting how there's this polarization of folks who, it's just like with the COVID thing, when people push back against artificial sweeteners or non-nutritive sweeteners, biologically neutral at the doses that we normally consume,

there's still pushback that people, they kind of relate it to COVID and saying, oh yeah, just like how the vaccines are supposed to be safe and effective and quote safe and effective. Yeah, these artificial sweeteners, I'm sure they're safe and effective, said sarcastically and stuff. You know, I think it's different. I think it's different there. I think that with the vaccines, there's more potential to make a few bill, a few billies, a few tens of I don't know. I don't know what the slang term is for a billion. What do they say? I think Iraq is a thousand or is that tens of, I don't know what the slang term is for a billion. What do they say?

I think a rack is a thousand or is that 10,000? I don't know. So I just know large is a thousand. So 10 large is 10,000. So yeah, I'm off on my mafia speak. I don't think they go up into the billions. Yeah, a few like tens of millions large, I guess. Right, right. Exactly. And, and so it's a little easier to buy the idea that shenanigans could have happened if you just make

a vaccine mandatory for the entire earth, a few people are going to benefit very nicely versus the artificial sweetener thing. You know, you're bringing up something that I was going to comment on. And that is that there is this growing distrust of authority, particularly with the WHO. And I do personally think that they did a poor job in many ways with handling various aspects of the COVID crisis and particularly points around messaging and policies they were advocating for. And so many, many people I think are justifiably, even people who are not, who before COVID didn't have much of an opinion one way or another on the WHO or even had a positive opinion. After seeing that, they've concluded that the WHO is just not a credible institution. And we see that

more widely, right? Even science more widely. I think, again, I think it's partially justified that you have a lot of people now who they are less inclined to take any sort of scientific finding at face value or scientific recommendation at face value. And so now people are, they're not sure who to believe or what to believe. Yeah. And that's why it's so frustrating. It's just so exasperating for the general public because they don't know who to believe because how could you possibly know? If the legendary World Health Organization, how could they be wrong, right? Oh yeah, but they've been wrong many times about many things. Now we have this weird thing where the World Health Organization has seemingly turned

against food technology. They've got their hands in a lot of things and it's confusing to folks. It would take a whole lot of consistent human data showing carcinogenic effects at reasonable doses. I mean, even if the doses were really high to the tune of, who knows, I don't know, maybe a dozen or a couple dozen drinks a day showing cancerous effects in humans, but they're far from having shown that but they're far from having shown that, like very far from it, not even close, not even remotely. And so the cancer evidence in humans for aspartame in particular is just super far-fetched. But, you know, the categorizations are what they are. And we humans, we like to simplify things in black and white terms. Is substance X cancerous?

Yes or no? We don't think, okay, for whom is it cancerous? And what context was this speculation of carcinogenicity seen? What species? We don't think in those terms. It's a whole lot easier for people to think, okay, I just need to avoid aspartame if I don't want to get cancer. But A, that's not true. And B, the World Health Organization is only one of several health,

major health agencies globally, and it is in the minority with respect to its categorization of aspartame as remotely carcinogenic. And there's other things to think about too, Mike, you know, like does big aspartame have control over, over the, over the information? I mean, clearly, clearly not in this case, right? Right. They need to hire, hire a new folks, new, new, new scientists, right? So it's, it's just improbable. And it is a game. Everything is a game of probabilities with health. It's improbable that, even if we look at something like red meat and try to draw an analogy,

red meat is on the IARC's list for being a possible human carcinogen. If I'm either possible or probable, I have to look that up. But it's on the watch list. Another thing, we gave the alcohol example, but you have to look at probabilities. If somebody consumes red meat in moderation and they're not consuming the fattiest cuts of red meat they can in the most charred format possible, and the rest of their diet is good, their lifestyle

is good, heck, maybe they may even stack some red wine on top of that red meat on an occasional dinner. The charred flesh. Yeah, right. The charred flesh with the red wine on top is the cancer cocktail, I suppose. It is all about probabilities, and there's always going to be trade-offs. Like, for example, if somebody...

I'll go back to the protein example. If somebody has trouble hitting, let's say, the heralded 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight dose of protein a day, where all kinds of good things start happening in your life. If they have trouble hitting that, and you tell somebody, hey, down a couple scoops of protein powder, down a couple

scoops of high quality protein powder. Uh-oh, it's got a minuscule amount of aspartame in it. Is there still going to be a net benefit? Of course there is. Even theoretically and just objectively, there's going to be a net benefit. Despite that minuscule amount of aspartame in there, it still would fall under the category of biological neutrality below a certain dose. Aspartame is not something like cyanide where minuscule doses can take your ass out. Aspartame is more like a hypothetical carcinogen in animal models if they consume what a human would take to consume in gallons of highly concentrated stuff. And then you start having bigger problems. The water example is an interesting one when you think of dose response and harm thresholds. So water is obviously essential, but water poisoning can happen if you sit there and consume,

you can incur hyponatremia and very dangerously low blood pressure and very dangerous electrolyte imbalances if you try to sit there and consume a gallon or two of water in a sitting. I mean, people can die from excessive water consumption acutely. Are we going to stop with water? Are we going to just assume that water is a bad thing? Well, no. And that's not a perfect parallel, but hopefully it illustrates some of the point I'm trying to make. There's a spectrum there from cyanide to water and aspartame is somewhere on the spectrum and it's closer to water than it is cyanide,

if I'm hearing you right. Closer to water, dude. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And that's everything that I wanted to cover in terms of this specific topic. Now, this conversation could branch off in many ways and get much longer, and that would be enjoyable. But we're coming up on an hour here. And I think you've done a great job explaining this current controversy, giving some context, helping people come to their own understanding and they can make their own decisions. And I actually, I'll say that I do understand. So my sports nutrition company Legion, we've used natural sweeteners like erythritol and stevia, which now you have me wondering, is it actually stevia? I've always said stevia. I never

looked at how to pronounce it correctly, but monk fruit. And the reason why I made that decision early on, it was against my financial interests. It's much cheaper to use artificial sweeteners, artificial flavoring, artificial food dyes. However, I wasn't concerned about the flavoring. With the sweeteners and the food dyes in particular, early on, this was eight years ago or so. And after looking at research myself and then speaking with some other smart people who know more about this stuff than I do, my question was simply, okay, so knowing how people who are into fitness and into supplements, how many different things they often will be using, they'll be using, let's say protein powder. And that's not going to be just one scoop a day. It's probably a few scoops a day. And then let's say there's a pre-workout. Let's say there's a post-workout. Maybe there's a green supplement and other potentially sweet

powders type products. And then if we add on top of that, there might be some diet soda. There might be an energy drink or two. there might be gum, I don't know. But the total load, if I were to use artificial sweeteners in my products, I just didn't feel comfortable for myself or more so for others, encouraging people to have eight to 10 plus servings a day of whether it's sucralose or ace k or aspartame more or less every day forever and so the question i posed to some people early on was is there a scenario where this may not be great for people's health i wasn't worried about cancer per se but particularly i had some questions regarding gut health because there were some indications that in some people that it may not be biologically neutral like some people may actually respond worse to these chemicals than others.

And so at the time, the consensus among the people I spoke to was that it's possible. That's not an unreasonable hypothesis. And so I had to make a decision early on, which way do I go? And so I went with what I felt was the quote unquote safer, maybe you could say even more responsible decision given that I'm selling things for other people to ingest. It's not just me. And interestingly, on that point, I spoke with a woman recently, a researcher named Dr. Eliza Marroquin, who specializes in gut microbiome and has been involved in quite a bit of research. And in that episode, if people want to learn more about gut microbiome and artificial sweeteners,

I'd recommend they go check it out because apparently, according to what she was explaining, there is emerging evidence that there does seem to be an individualized component to nothing about cancer, but just how people's bodies respond to some of these artificial chemicals. And so for that reason, I've stuck with, I chose to go with natural and I've stuck with it. And I'm glad I did just because I actually, I have a conscience and it would be a problem for me if I knew that, you know, Legion is a fairly big company at this point. We sell millions of bottles of product a year. It's just if I knew that I might be actually harming people's health, and it might be a lot of people, I would have trouble sleeping at night and I'd have to do something about that.

My point with saying all that is if people listening would rather stay away from artificial sweeteners, and in my case, for example, aspartame, it might be just a nocebo effect. But one reason I stopped with artificial sweeteners, I mean, it's just not really a part of my normal diet. But I did notice this in the past, before I had my own protein powder to use. And before I switched to natural protein powders, there was a point after a couple, probably two scoops, maybe three that were sweetened with probably aspartame and Ace K that it just seemed to, like my stomach would get a little bit upset. And I would notice that with other artificially sweetened, whether it's sodas, like I could have small amounts, but there was a point where my

stomach, I would feel it. And I just, something would just feel off. And again, it might be a nocebo effect. The counter argument to that is at that time I had no expectations at all. I was just having protein powder. And I noticed like, I can have one or two scoops of this, but once I get beyond three, I don't feel very good. And I noticed that also with other artificially sweetened products. And so for people listening who, if you want to just stay away from these chemicals, simply because you're just not sure how your body's going to respond to them, I would say I understand that position. What are your thoughts on all that?

Well, to me, you're just going the extra mile. And with the position you're in, I totally see how you would have made that decision because you're in, in essence, you're sort of the, you're providing the constant supply of people's choice for, for the product they're going to be on potentially indefinitely for, for their lifetime. Right. And so I can see how you would take a much, um, safer, potentially more, more noble position on that. And that's great. I think that's great to go the extra mile. And there's actually some really interesting research on anti-cancer effects of stevia.

So it's not only something that doesn't have the probability of causing cancer, there's actually anti-cancer effects with it. But that sort of speaks to a previous point that I made that, you know, artificial sweeteners are a heterogeneous group in terms of their potential for harm and their biological effects. And as a science person, it's important to consider all the evidence. It's important to listen to folks like yourself with the perspectives and the experiences that you've had. Because ultimately with what we do with research, we try to gather up enough subjects to see whether the majority of them experience an effect

in one direction or another. And this is why anecdotes, although they're often challenged by things like confirmation bias, expectation bias, et cetera, they still can't be ignored. You can't just flat out ignore anecdotes. And the fact that you mentioned that you noticed these effects without any expectations, I mean, that is something worth considering. It's something worth listening to. And anybody who considers himself a science-minded person or a researcher, we need to listen to these

things. So I'm glad that you shared that and brought that up. And it also goes back to the idea that 100% certainty in one direction or another is counterproductive to the forward movement of knowledge. You know, there could be a spectrum, a safety spectrum across the range of non-nutritive sweeteners, where certain sweeteners are on the higher end of safety and certain sweeteners are on the lower end of safety. There's just not necessarily enough data for us to determine that. I think ultimately, like a practical takeaway, I hold the position that people's plain water intake should always outweigh their diet soda intake. So if your fricking soda cans are outweighing the amount of plain water that you drink in a day, then there could be kind of an issue there. Not just necessarily

from a carcinogenic standpoint, but also... Yeah, the aspartame is probably a non-issue compared to some of the other actual issues. Right. So yeah, there's a lot of things to think about. I will gladly admit that we don't know everything about this topic and people who are dogmatic and put the like just slam the gaffle you know and just say that this is exactly how it is that's not very scientific so that's for that's for just getting people to stop scrolling that's those are the scroll stoppers yeah right right exactly exactly just capture the attention right the the headlines and stuff but yeah everybody has to remain open-minded on both sides of this thing well that was a great

discussion again alan i really appreciate it and we've covered all everything that i wanted to cover is there anything that um is still kind of bouncing around in your head that you didn't share that you wanted to share before we wrap up? I was talking to the technician prior to this, Damian, and I'm like, you know, I'm skeptical that we'd actually be able to talk about artificial sweeteners for 45 minutes. You know, I'm open to seeing if that's even possible. Apparently it was, and it was great, dude. So I'm happy. Well, we did it. An hour on a subject that a lot of people are wondering about.

So I hope that everybody still listening enjoyed the conversation. And why don't we wrap up quickly with where people can find you, your work, your research review, anything in particular that, in addition to that, that you want them to know about? You can find all my stuff at alanaragon.com. And this includes my research review, my monthly research review, my book, my books, actually, and the upcoming conference appearances. So just go over to alanaragon.com. I, my biggest social media audience is Instagram. And so my Instagram handle is at the alanaragon.com. My biggest social media audience is Instagram. And so my Instagram handle is at the Alan Aragon. I have no idea what's going to happen with threads. I'm not really sure even,

you know, the Instagram folks know what's going to happen with threads. I only saw the last graph I saw is that user engagement had basically fallen off a cliff. That's what I saw. Yeah, yeah. It's just, yeah, who knows, man? It's a mad game out there with social media. But yeah, I just, I want to thank you, Mike, for inviting me on again. It's always great, great questions. And I appreciate everything that you do as well.

So, I mean, you know, just the person you are as well as what you do for the industry. So thank you. Well, I mean, you know, just, just the person you are as well as what you do for the industry. So thank you. Well, thank you, Alan. I'm flattered and looking forward to our next discussion. I'm sure we can figure out another one of these. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future.

I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.