As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. navigates Capitol Hill this week to meet with senators about his nomination to head up the Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration, there will be a lot of conversation about ways to “make America healthy again.” Unfortunately, people should brace for a flurry of articles using the language “linked to” to imply a direct connection between certain foods, additives, and dyes and poor health outcomes. It’s a common form of misdirection media love to use to stoke fear and limit people’s choices.
In 2023, there was a period of several weeks dedicated by the media to the supposed dangers of aspartame, based on a classification by an affiliate of the World Health Organization that declared aspartame “possibly carcinogenic.” The report kickstarted a frenzy to ban the common artificial sweetener deemed safe for consumption by the United States, Canada, and the European Union that would terrify any casual consumer of diet sodas.
It shouldn’t. The research on aspartame’s “link” to cancer hinges on an individual consumer weighing 132 pounds and drinking 12 to 36 cans of diet soda in one day to reach the threshold for meaningful risk.
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