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Coca-Cola and Pepsi Change Recipe To Avoid Cancer Warning
jones_supa writes "California has added 4-methylimidazole (a caramel coloring) to the list of carcinogenic compounds that require an explicit warning when added to foodstuffs. Incidentally, this has entailed the big two cola producers to modify their recipe to decrease the amount of the substance — just enough to avoid the warning. The change to the recipe has already been introduced in California but will be rolled out across the U.S. to streamline manufacturing. The American Beverage Association noted that there is not enough evidence to show the coloring to cause cancer in humans."
Everybody knows that everything causes cancer in California.
California needs to just put out a warning saying that life has been linked to incidences of cancer.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Carcinogenesis is generally stochastic. That means the probability is directly proportional to the dose. When you lower the dose but increase the population you end up with the same risk. So if 1000 doses given to one mouse causes cancer, then it's likely that 1 dose given to each of 1000 people will cause one case of cancer.
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The same 1000 cans argument can be made for aspartame as a sweetner, tail pipe exhaust, and smoking crack. What if you're that one person with a a genetic predisposition to get cancer from this substance? We should be doing what the EU has done for years- make manufacturers prove substances are safe for consumption before including them as ingredients.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
stochastic just means random. it doesn't imply any particular type of distribution.
Now all Coke/Pepsi has to do is remove the toxic sugar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM and it'll be perfect. ;-)
Thats like saying 50cm2 of water will drown someone, so therefor if you give 1000 people 0.05cm2 of water then someone will drown...
As I said in the DUI story, quantity does actually have a valid position in all of this - the body can handle X as a safe dose, and that stands for pretty much everything going, its not a case of X is a safe probability...
If if takes 1000 doses to give a small creature such as a mouse cancer, then the only situation where 1/1000th of that dosage is going to give a human cancer is by coincidence or if the subject is pre-disposed to cancerous diseases in the first place.
Fuck CA.
I live in the People's Republic of California, and I couldn't possibly agree with you more. This state is run by liberals who get their rocks off by telling other people how to run their lives. Not only that, the only part of the state that's mostly Democrat is the Pacific Coast, with almost all of the inland parts strongly Republican. However, most of the population is on or near the coast, so the rest of us suffer under the Tyranny of the Majority.
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Will Slurm be affected in any way, shape, or form? If so, and the New Slurm tastes horrible, can I hold out for a return of Slurm Classic?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Yes... but I can't tell you because if I do they'll be aware it hasn't been added yet and they'll add it.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Money. Because they don't have any to test.
Um, what? Stochastic means random, with calculable probability. An example would be metal fatigue, given a probability density function for load stress - it's definitely stochastic, but it isn't proportional to the load to the first power, rather, something like to the power of four, never mind that below certain values, you don't get fatigue in steels at all.
Thats like saying 50cm2 of water will drown someone, so therefor if you give 1000 people 0.05cm2 of water then someone will drown...
Yes, that's a very good illustration of just how unlike drowning carcinogenesis is. Drowning is deterministic, if you hold someone under water for 5 minutes they will die. If you expose someone to a carcinogenic treatment (say, gamma irradiation or inhalation of formaldehyde fumes) for a certain amount of time all you can predict is the probability that they will get cancer. See the difference?
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Thankfully, most states still do....
And they should, it is a perfectly legal activity....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
...is also present in dark beers and roasted foods. It is one of many substances, like acrylamide, formed during browning. So, even if they avoid it in cola drinks, we can expect California warning labels on more foods and beverages. (California OEHHA proposed slapping a warning label on everything containing acrylamide about five years ago, but they got a lot of pushback on that one).
But I'm not assuming all things are the same - I'm saying that assuming 1/1000th of a dose means 1/1000th of the probability, given that 1000/1000th (or 1) causes cancer is a stupid argument.
The human body doesn't work like that.
It's also interesting that California, cancer-paranoid as they are, still approved medical cannabis legislation, and famously so.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
So if 1000 doses given to one mouse causes cancer, then it's likely that 1 dose given to each of 1000 people will cause one case of cancer.
Even if that's true, keep in mind the lifetime risk for a male developing cancer is on the order of 40% already. 1/1000 is barely background noise.
I was quite the Diet Coke addict for a couple years before cutting way back earlier this year. Still, I wish there were some flavorful beverage that I could enjoy without worrying about whether it'll cause me diabetes or cancer or weight gain, as pretty much all soda/diet soda has been shown to do in high enough doses. I also can't stand coffee (too bitter) or tea (mashed leaves floating in lukewarm water.... mmmm), so it's mainly ice water for me these days.
California's large Mexican population makes Mexican Coca-Cola readily available. The bottles are Spanish, with English stickers stuck on after import. Read the sticker carefully, they do make some HFCS soda in Mexico too; but most are real sugar. Also, the Mexican Coke comes in green 355 mL bottles. I just wish it came in the little 8 oz. bottles; but you can't have everything.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
the American Beverage Association is a trade organization that represents the beverage industry in the United States. Its members include producers and bottlers of soft drinks, bottled water, and other non-alcoholic beverages.
the American Beverage Association frankly has no idea at all if this chemical is hazardous, at what levels and under what conditions. they have published no known study. they have 25 lobbyists across seven firms and their purpose is to limit warning labels on their products regardless of the actual science.
to clarify, The Center For Science in the Public Interest (we like them. theyre good guys) concluded 4-methylimidazole is added as a caramel coloring in some dark beers and soy sauces. its bad. to further cut past the knee jerk spinjob article from OP, heres the release from CSPI:
http://www.cspinet.org/new/201102161.html
and a quote out of the article as to what precisely theyre targeting...
"Federal regulations distinguish among four types of caramel coloring, two of which are produced with ammonia and two without it. CSPI wants the Food and Drug Administration to prohibit the two made with ammonia. The type used in colas and other dark soft drinks is known as Caramel IV, or ammonia sulfite process caramel. Caramel III, which is produced with ammonia but not sulfites, is sometimes used in beer, soy sauce, and other foods. "
Good people go to bed earlier.
Lets use a different water based argument shall we? 20 liters of pure water, if ingested in 10 minutes, will cause water intoxication, However, no doctor in their right mind would suggest that 1000 people each consuming 1/1000th of 20 liters in 10 minutes would result in 1 person suffering water intoxication just because of their consumption.
This is irrelevant because carcinogenesis is completely unlike water intoxication. Let me say this again, carcinogenesis is a stochastic process. If that's too hard for you, I'll rephrase it. Carcinogenesis is a random process.
It's like playing the lottery. If you buy 1000 tickets, you have X chance of winning. If 1000 people each buy 1 ticket, that group of 1000 has the same chance of containing a winner.
Does that make sense to you now? I'll go a little further.
In order for a carcinogen to damage DNA, that carcinogen has to come in contact with your DNA. The probability of two molecular species interacting is directly proportional to their concentration. Lowering the concentration of that carcinogen lowers the probability of that interaction, but as long as the concentration is non-zero, the probability of DNA damage is also going to be non-zero.
Now, that doesn't mean that every carcinogen is going to behave this way. Some carcinogens are metabolized by the body, which will lead to non-linear results. But as a first approximation, the low dose linear model is the standard for risk assessment. If you propose that there is a threshold effect, then it's up to you to demonstrate that it exists.
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That article is alarmist and misleading. .4ppm... Which is about what you would get from any browning process.
A) Coca-coal doesn't 'add it'. It is created when caramel is made. BTW, Coca-cola doesn't make caramel, they buy it from suppliers.
B) a serving has
FDA say 250ppm is where the issue might begin. However, the studies regarding 4-MI see an effect in rats over 1250 ppm:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2366200/?tool=pubmed
And anyone who had a parody of the item they are allegedly looking into cannot be trusted. Clearly they are biased.
And why, exactly, makes you think the CSPI are the good guys? Because everything I read from them is always misleading, it is always biased, and it is always full of logical fallacy's. They are either following an agenda that falls under naturalist fallacies, or they are just incompetent.
The 4-MI levels in soda aren't even worth noting, but hey6 they can't get funding by being honest and reasonable.
Fuck. Them.
Which is in NO WAY an endorsement of ABA.
I mean, look at this:
"But the levels of 4-MI in the tested colas still may be causing thousands of cancers in the U.S. population."
False. There is no evidence of that at all. Unless there are people drinking 100's of cans of soda everyday for weeks on end.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First off, lots of things that are "perfectly legal activities" when done in private where only consenting adults are exposed to them cease to be perfectly legal activities when they affect people other than adults voluntarily participating in the activity.
Secondly, California allows public smoking, it just prohibits most indoor workplaces (though there are some exceptions) from subjecting workers to tobacco smoke. In doing so, its rules are in line with those in the majority of US states. (There are some localities, notably Calabasas, in California with stronger smoking bans than the state has, but those are local rules, not state rules.)
Because you didn't read through the implications of your quoted material.
So, note that that article obliquely references the study which is centered on the effects of acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is carcinogenic? Well, no shit.
But it's everywhere. Every time you walk beside the road and smell car exhaust, you're getting filled up with acetaldehyde.
But, thankfully, millennia of co-evolution has promoted the anti-tumor agents in cannabis to offset the carcinogenic elements generated by smoking it. At this point, after all the co-evolution, you get net zero cancer increase. It's a complete offset. Or you even get a cancer decrease.
Read up on the NIH/UCLA studies conducted by Donald Tashkin. Here are some references:
Smoking anything is going to get you some carcinogens. In fact, smoking marijuana results in about 200 different carcinogens. And yet no cancer. It's a puzzle. Something else it at work here. Consider the idea: "anti-tumor."
And what happens if you vaporize , rather than burn? It reduces the carcinogens from 200 to 2.
Hey, you could parlay the anti-tumor property of cannabis by taking the cannabis in a non-burned form. Without the acetaldehyde and other carcinogens from smoking, you'd only get a strong anti-cancer effect.
You could use that to offset an exhaust-sucking urban life's inherent extreme, often acetaldehyde-driven carcinogenicity. Whoa, everyone can benefit from a medical marijuana prescription. I hadn't realized it before.
To put things in perspective, life style choices (poor diet, alcohol, smoking, overweight, lack of exercise, viruses etc.) & occupational exposures (e.g. hexavalent chromium, asbestos) cause 42% of cancers in the UK. However, the Center For Science In The Public Interest (CSPI) publication (that kicked all this off) claims 4-MeI might cause 0.008% of cancers (i.e. 8 times the Californian 1 in 100,000 action level) if everyone drank 12 fl oz of cola a day over 70 years.
If you take this seriously, you really should become an physically fit, teetotal, non-smoking, asexual vegetarian with an ideal BMI. Doing this could be as much as 5250 times more important that giving up cola.
Also, the predictions only work if the handful of very high dose animal experiments (that show carcinogenesis) are naively extrapolated to very low level human exposures... while assuming (without evidence) a strictly linear relationship between dose and cancer risk for 4-MeI i.e. a linear no-threshold response (LNT), ignoring other dose-risk relationships e.g. threshold (harmless) and hormesis (beneficial) responses at very low levels. Indeed, the CSPI admits that researchers are investigating if 4-MeI might reduce certain cancers by modifying hormones. Lastly, judging the toxicity of chemicals in humans from animal experiments is not straightforward, a massive dose of TCDD Dioxin kills lab rats stone dead but gives us humans a nasty case of acne (see Viktor Yushchenko). So all in all, just more evidence that people are rubbish at properly assessing risk when fear gets in the way.
Parkin et al., 2011. 16. The fraction of cancer attributable to lifestyle and environmental factors in the UK in 2010. Br J Cancer 105(S2), S77–S81.
Kaiser, J. 2003. HORMESIS: Sipping From a Poisoned Chalice. Science 302(5644), 376–379.