Mehmet Oz said Donald Trump defended his diet soda habit by claiming it might help prevent cancer, an explanation Oz repeated in an interview with Donald Trump Jr. Oz said Trump argued that if diet soda can kill grass when poured on it, it must also kill cancer cells inside the body.
Oz said the exchange happened on Air Force One, where he noticed a Fanta sitting on Trump’s desk. When he asked about it, Oz said Trump replied, “You know, this stuff’s good for me – it kills cancer cells,” before joking that the orange drink could not be unhealthy because it was “fresh squeezed.”
The remarks landed in the middle of a familiar public-health debate. Most diet sodas are sweetened with aspartame, a sugar substitute that is about 200 times sweeter than sugar. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans in group 2B, a label that has fueled scrutiny even as regulators and researchers continue to debate the strength of the evidence.
Doctors quickly used the comments to remind the public that diet soda does not prevent cancer. A 2022 cohort study in France involving more than 100,000 participants found that aspartame was linked to a 15% higher risk of cancer, although the study did not prove cause and effect. Investigators at Cedars-Sinai have also reported that artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, are associated with changes in different parts of the intestine.
The exchange also fits Trump’s long-running habit of defending sweet drinks and fast food as part of his own version of healthy living. It comes as the health department is updating US nutrition guidelines, including a revision of the food pyramid that is expected to emphasize “real food.” That makes the latest defense of Diet Coke and Fanta more than a joke on a plane; it is another flashpoint in a broader argument over what Americans should trust when it comes to food, sugar substitutes and health claims.
What Trump says he believes, and what doctors say the evidence actually supports, are not the same thing. On the science available now, diet soda is not a cancer treatment, and the public is being warned not to mistake a personal habit for medical advice.
