No more aspartame in Diet Pepsi

I don't see it that way at all. The incidences of all kinds of health issues that we now spend ridiculous amounts of money combating have increased dramatically over my lifetime. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but there is a correlation with how our eating habits have dramatically changed -- after the typical diet remained relatively stable for a long, long time.

I can't pin any specific thing, such as Parkinson's disease or onset of Type II diabetes to any one thing -- for example, an artificial sweetener or a chemical preservative or some genetic modication of some food. We'ved fucked around with too many things, too quickly. What I can surmise, though, is that we have thrown a lot of strange -- and unnatural -- variables into the mix, and at the same exact time we have seen various health problems become more prevalent.

I do see it as gambling when you ingest all of those chemicals while blissfully trying to convince yourself that you are not gambling. Gambling, by definition, is taking a chance.

 

What should I call them? This thread started out talking about aspartame and Acesulfame K (what is still in Diet Pepsi). Aspartame is a methylester of apsartic acid and phenlalnanidipeptide. It was first sythensized by a chemists in 1965. It occurs nowhere in nature. Acesulfame K has a similar story -- except that it was discovered (again, by a chemist) by accident in 1967, not intentionally.

The prevalence of heart disease and Type II diabetes (just two things that get a lot of focus -- there is so much noise surrounding this, which is exactly my point) are not the result of people living longer. We have children, young adults, relatively young people seeing incidence of those things at levels we didn't used to. I would guess that sedentary lifestyles have contributed to it, as you suggest, but that is just ONE thing -- including our diets -- that has changed significantly and correlates with those things.

I'd suggest you may be getting the chicken and the egg confused. It seems likely that people are living longer due to technological advances that treat diseases -- and it seems likely that is happening despite the harm we have done to ourselves (with technological changes) that may be working to our detriment. If we have afflicted ourselves with a diabetes problem and at the same time we have come up with more ways to treat diabetes, it doesn't negate the fact that we would devote much fewer resources on dealing with the diabetes epidemic (freeing up things for better uses) if we weren't causing the epidemic at the same time.

Again, though, I am not even making those causal relationships, the way others are so eager to to tell us that "it causes cancer" or that it is "safe, safe, safe!" I'm saying that in the absence of knowing to what extent the introduction to our food supply of artificial ingredients synthesized in labs (Is that better?) is or isn't harmful, or has or hasn't contributed to a bunch of health problems that cropped up at the same time they appeared, I'll personally choose to sit on the sidelines and stick with natural foods. It seems like the safer bet to me.