April's CR Diary

I've been in love with food-scented body products lately, too, especially a chocolate body oil that smells heavenly and moisturizes wonderfully. There's a great retailer that sells all kind of amazing scented products, with some really amazing and original food ones: skindazzles.com. :)

Funny, but I cannot bear to wear those food-scented products even when I like the smell. When I worked for Origins, I was the only person who didn't flip over the chocolate line.

I had heard once that smelling an aroma that you were craving would satisfy that craving and help beat it.

I used vanilla-scented body wash in the bath that day and damn if I didn't crave vanilla ice cream for the rest of the afternoon. Hmph. :-)

My addiction has always been coconut-scented anything... to the point where my bathroom smells like the inside of a pina colada blender.

I'm with Gina. I like florals and "sexy" scents; somehow smelling like a fruit or candy just doesn't do it for me. I used to have a friend who would buy the expensive cologne (by Calvin Klein, I think) that smelled of vanilla and I used to just gag. Of course, she wore enough for three people, which might have contributed to the issue :-).

Okay, so I'm the only guy commenting. But it's aromatheraphy you're talking about, right? Part of my bathing routine is to apply orange-ginger oil on my body (after my yoga) then follow with ginger soap. I'm not sure I could do a chocolate scent. I don't want to tempt myself. I have two yoga teachers. One is a lady. She sometimes wears a vanilla scented body hand lotion. When she gives adjustments I feel like my mom just helped me with my yoga. Not bad, eh? At work I use an orange ginger hand lotion as I work on the keys. So I must need this citrus scent.
Cheers,
Arturo

First, I see that for some reason one can't get directly into the
survival curve graphic from the link. To see it, first go to the
full-text version of the study (
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2005/8711/8711.html ), and scroll down
to the thumbnail graphic for "Figure 1" (off to the right, under the
"Results").

What you'll see is that, again, the survival curves are *identical* ,
whether the animals got a low, medium, or high dose of aspartame (over a
*1250-fold* range of doses!), or whether they got no aspartame at all.
If anything, again, there was a very slight *increase* in late-life
survivorship in females fed the highest dose, although statistically it
came out as a wash. So even if, as the authors contend, there *was* a
small, late-life increase in risk of some cancers (which actually isn't
at all clear -- see below about the historical control data), the point
is that it had no overall effect on survival, indicating that it must
simultaneously have *decreased* the risk of other causes of death --
which, in these animals, is largely from a variety of cancers, even in
the aspartame-free animals. If something is increasing your risk of
dying from one thing and decreasing your risk of dying from something
else, you're no better and no worse off whether you do it or not -- it's
a risk-neutral activity.

A number of official toxicology and food safety science bodies have had
closer looks at the data, including some data than is not included in
the published report, and have higher expertise in analyzing both the
results and the methods used to obtain them, and their conclusions have
uniformly been that this study provides no evidence of an increased risk
of cancer in the rodents, or in some cases that the increased risk that
was characteristic of the animals and would not pan out in humans:

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) reviewed the results of the
rodent study, including their unpublished data, and concluded that it
did not demonstrate that aspartame caused cancer in these animals and
that some of the results were irrelevant to humans in any case:
----------------
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press_room/press_release/1472.html

... a number of major issues with the study were identified by the Panel
which made interpretation of the findings difficult. Notably, a high
background incidence of chronic inflammatory disease in the lung and
other organs was observed in all the animal groups including controls
which did not receive aspartame, as reported by the European Ramazzini
Foundation. This was considered to be a major confounding factor.

In detail the Panel concluded the following:

* The slight increase in incidence of cancers known as lymphomas
and leukemias in treated rats was considered to be *unrelated to
aspartame treatment* and most likely attributed to the high background
incidence of inflammatory changes in the lung. In addition, there was no
dose-response relationship with respect to increasing doses of aspartame.
* The findings in the kidney, ureter and bladder, observed mainly
in female rats, are *not specific to aspartame* and have been observed
with a number of chemicals administered to rats at high dose levels.
Such changes are normally the result of irritation or imbalances in
calcium metabolism specific to rats and are of *no relevance for humans* .
* Concerning the malignant tumors of the peripheral nerves, the
numbers of tumours were low with no clear dose- response relationship
over a wide dose range. There is also *uncertainty about the diagnosis*
of these tumours.

Finally the Panel concluded that based on all the available data to date
there is no reason to further review the previous scientific opinion on
the safety of aspartame nor to revise the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI)
for aspartame of 40 mg/kg body weight. Commenting on the AFC Panel’s
risk assessment, Dr. Herman Koëter, EFSA Acting Executive Director,
said: “EFSA considers that the results of this new study on aspartame do
not provide a scientific basis for reconsidering its use in foods. If
any new information would become available in the future, EFSA will
review these as a matter of priority.”
----------

The preliminary assessment of the study by the UK's Committee on
Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the
Environment (COC) noted that the "increase" in cancer incidence reported
by the authors was actually within the historical norm for these
animals, noted that there were no signs of actual aspartame toxicity
observed even at the highest dose, and again noted that, if anything,
rodents fed aspartame tended to live a little *longer*:
-----------
http://www.advisorybodies.doh.gov.uk/pdfs/cc066.pdf

"An increased incidence of lymphomas and leukaemias was reported in
rats. There are slight differences in historical control data for the
incidences of lymphomas and leukaemias in female rats between the
published data (average 13.4%, range 7.0-18.4%) and data presented to
the EFSA on 17 June 2005 (average 12.9%, average 4-25%). The incidences
of lymphomas and leukaemias in female aspartame-fed rats occurred over
the range of the historical control data sets presented in the paper.
Members considered that a small increase a tumour incidence over such a
wide range of doses was implausible. Members agreed that there may be
reasonable explanation for the differing historical control figures but
that the variation in control data casts doubt on the quality of the
study observations."

"Towards the end of the study (71 weeks of treatment onwards) there
appears to be a dose-related trend towards increased survival in the
females which becomes more marked as the study progresses. However, the
longest living animals of both sexes tended to be in the mid dose
treatment groups, rather the controls or high dose treatment groups."

"The top dose of 100,000 ppm (10%) is in excess of the OECD recommended
5% maximum for a diet mixture (OECD, 1998) and which suggests it might
have compromised the nutritional status of the animals or resulted in
otherwise spurious results. However the high dose does not appear to
have affected body weights or resulted in significant toxicity as
determined by clinical signs."
----------

After the study was released, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)
commisioned a re-analysis of available data from a large study of diet
and health in AARP members aged 50-71 years (ie, at the older ages where
the rodent study suggested an increase in cancers of the blood), looking
for any connection between intake of artificial sweeteners and blood and
brain cancers . They found that "Higher levels of aspartame intake were
not associated with the risk of overall hematopoietic cancer (RR for
>/=600 mg/d, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.76-1.27), glioma (RR for >/=400 mg/d,
0.73; 95% CI, 0.46-1.15; P for inverse linear trend = 0.05), or their
subtypes in men and women."

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/9/1654

Accordingly, the NCI issued this fact sheet:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/AspartameQandA

... whose summary states, "Development of these cancers was not
associated with estimated aspartame consumption, refuting a recent
animal study with positive findings for lymphomas and leukemias and also
contradicting claims regarding brain cancer risk."

Another study ( http://tinyurl.com/yuqxvg ), performed by pooling data
from several weaker "case-control" studies, found no statistically
significant changes in risk for cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx,
oesophagus, colon, rectum, larynx, breast, ovaries, prostate, or kidney
associated with artificial sweeteners, mainly aspartame, but OTHER THAN
saccharin; when the saccharin data were thrown in, they found a
significant DECREASE in risk of breast and ovarian cancer as well as an
increase in risk of laryngeal cancer. Their overall CONCLUSION: "The
present work indicates a lack of association between saccharin,
aspartame and other sweeteners and the risk of several common neoplasms."