Marx Marvelous: New Years Resolution: Die of Cancer Faster

The obvious answer for a New Years Resolution should have been "Quit Smoking." This is, of course, not going to happen anytime soon. First of all, I don't want to quit. Those horrible ads where they cut open that person's brain who died of an aneurysm because they smoked, doesn't really phase me. I smoke now, on average, five cigarettes a day. I've cut way back since April and I'm happy where I am. Surprisingly, I've kept it up too. Sometimes I smoke more (like when I'm heavily drinking [which is technically only on Friday and Saturday nights]) but it averages to five a day.

So my resolution is not to quit. I need a real incentive for that, like a boyfriend or asthma. Until then, I'm still going to look cool.

However, I did decide to do something else for 2006: Cut back on sugar. Two of my roommates have already done this and I'm sort of tagging along. My primary target for the sugar saving: Coffee. For the last six years my morning cup of joe has been this:

1 average cup coffee + enough half and half to tinge the color light brown + two table spoons of sugar = my morning coffee

Recently this had changed into one Starbucks coffee and 6 packets of sugar. So since I've gained about 15 pounds at work and my teeth are rotting out of my skull, I decided to cut the sugar out of my coffee. I've been experimenting heavily with artificial sweeteners. There are three primary sweeteners that I know of: Sweet N' Low, Equal and Splenda. The only one I haven't tried is Equal and that's because no one I've ever met uses it.

With this idea in my mind, I asked people what they used as substitutes. it became quickly obvious that people are also very dedicated to their artificial sweeteners. My parents are die-hard Sweet N' Low users, my mom even carrying those pink packets in her person, just in case of emergency. My friend Ely told me he was used to the taste of Splenda, that real sugar didn't even taste good to him anymore. My roommate told me he liked the taste now too. It seemed to me that Splenda was addictive. When I mentioned Sweet N' Low, their eyes would bug out like any addict and they yelp, "That stuff will give you cancer."

And I ignored that these two smoked.

But there have been numerous reports that the saccharine in Sweet N' Low is lethal. Cancerous, even. The wikipedia explains the problems with Sweet'N Low as such:

In Canada, where saccharin is currently banned except for diabetic use only, the artificial sweetener used in Sweet'N Low is cyclamate. Ironically, cyclamate is banned in the United States. Both bans extend from the same set of experimental results from the 1960s in which a blend of saccharin and cyclamate was linked to bladder cancer in animal test subjects. The results were inconclusive and the US and Canada ended up each banning one of the two products. [ Wikipedia]

I started with Splenda.

Splenda is repellent. It tastes the way I imagine crystallized cancer would. One packet in my coffee makes it undrinkable and wretched. It's like I accidentally knocked thinly sweet bile into my coffee. Fuck Splenda.

Sweet N' Low is different. I don't mind it. In fact, the taste of one packet of Sweet N' Low in my large cup of coffee is enough to give the vague illusions of sweetness. It's okay and does the job.

But am I really going to die of bladder cancer because of it? I looked a little more. Everyone has heard that saccharin causes cancer in mice. Well does it? Yes. But it appeared that bladder cancer occurred in only male mice and this was later shown to be because of the sodium in the injections:

Cohen said his research showed that when the sodium form of saccharin combines with rat urine, it creates crystal-like stones in the bladder of the animal. Those stones, in turn, lead to cellular changes that cause cancer.

But human urine is vastly different from rat urine, Cohen said, and does not react with saccharin the same way. "We now have enough understanding to know that this is a rat-specific phenomenon," he said in an interview earlier this week. [NYTimes]

In the end, it looks like Sweet'N Low is safe and so is all that saccharin. Another important point is that saccharin has been around for 20 years and there has been no increase in bladder cancer. And as Dr. Whelan says:

The real preventable causes of cancer include cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse (particularly in conjunction with smoking), overexposure to sunlight, promiscuous unprotected sex (a risk factor for cervical cancer), high-dose exposure to radiation, occupational (high-level of exposure to) chemicals, and some pharmaceuticals. Knowledge of these causes is derived from studies of people, not rodents. [ACSH]

So kids put a check mark by all of the things you do that really give you cancer:

Cigarette Smoking