Artificially Sweetened Beverages Linked To BETTER Cancer Outcomes

Using a statistical analysis method called substitution modeling, Fuchs and his colleagues demonstrated that replacing one 12-oz serving of a sugar-sweetened drink per day with a 12-oz diet drink lowered recurrence and mortality risk by 23 percent – meaning that half of the benefit of artificial sweeteners can be explained by the fact that they are removing unhealthy sugar from one’s diet. The authors do not speculate what mechanism could be behind the other 23 percent, though they note that there is a possibility that people who favor diet beverages develop less aggressive tumors than those who do not.

“While the association between lower colon cancer recurrence and death was somewhat stronger than we suspected, the finding fits in with all that we know about colon cancer risk in general,” Fuchs said. “We now find that, in terms of colon cancer recurrence and survival, use of artificially sweetened drinks is not a health risk, but is, in this study, a healthier choice.”