Aspartame, Is It Bad?

[youngbex]

well on thursday, i grab a pop at lunch before i go back to school and when i walk in drinking my DIET coke, it was all that was left everyone just started getting upset and was like aspartame will kill you and will wreck your memorey, so i was like fuck who cares let me drink my pop, i wanna hear ure opinions on ASPARTAME

[GQBalla]

everything has aspartame in it now....umm sugar-free gum and all that jazz

[finboy]

dunno, but pop in general is horrible for you, i barely even drink it anymore, the amount of sugar in it is crazy.

[d-UNiT]

dude why were they getting mad at you its your fucking drink fucking twats, anyways yes aspartime is bad for you, but what the fuck isnt?.. its not like you are consuming it in high concentrations like 8L of pop a day so not really anything to get worked up about

[1badPT]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question536.htm

personally, i prefer splenda or sorbitol based sweeteners or acesulfame potassium based sweeteners. Both taste better and don't have the bitter aftertaste that aspartame has. The downside is both sweeteners cost more than aspartame.

[Impreza]

Doesn't aspartame mimic an amino acid? Which is obviously bad.

[youngbex]

cool, i was jsut wondering, but yes, everything is bad for you in some way or another, like running, get in shape but it is hard to your knees, everything is bad for you in one way or another

[Tyler883]

my 2 cents:

if you have problems with calories,or insulin, or overweight, I think you are better off taking your chances with aspartame, instead of the truck loads of sugar that are in pop.

However, if you are healthy enough not to have any of these problems or concerns, stick with the sugar.

[googe]

^^you make it sound like those are the only choices. theres a pretty easy solution, drink water.

aspartame is terrible for you. some people react differently, having a diet pop like once a year isnt likely to do anything. still not sure why people insist on ingesting poison, but its not that surprising i guess. a good writeup on documented dangers from aspartame (with references) is

http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/dangers.htm

haha, this is nice...



The absorption of methanol into the body is sped up considerably when free methanol is ingested. Free methanol is created from aspartame when it is heated to above 86 Fahrenheit (30 Centigrade). This would occur when aspartame-containing product is improperly stored or when it is heated (e.g., as part of a "food" product such as Jello).

Methanol breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde in the body. Formaldehyde is a deadly neurotoxin. An EPA assessment of methanol states that methanol "is considered a cumulative poison due to the low rate of excretion once it is absorbed. In the body, methanol is oxidized to formaldehyde and formic acid; both of these metabolites are toxic." They recommend a limit of consumption of 7.8 mg/day. A one-liter (approx. 1 quart) aspartame-sweetened beverage contains about 56 mg of methanol. Heavy users of aspartame-containing products consume as much as 250 mg of methanol daily or 32 times the EPA limit.(9)

splenda (also known as sucralose, make sure your protein powder doesnt have it, a lot do) is bad news too. how a synthetic organo-chlorine compound (in the same family as toxins, pesticides, fungicides) got approved as a food additive with no human testing is beyond me! :eek: they bioaccumulate too, which is when your body cant get rid of something by metabolizing it so it just hangs around (like lead and mercury), which can cause chronic poisoning.

[Wildcat]

ok no... it wont kill you. youd have to consume a truckload a day for a month and then maybe you might die.

id be more worried about booze and second hand smoke, hell even too much sugar.

[1badPT]

Originally posted by googe
splenda (also known as sucralose, make sure your protein powder doesnt have it, a lot do) is bad news too. how a synthetic organo-chlorine compound (in the same family as toxins, pesticides, fungicides) got approved as a food additive with no human testing is beyond me! :eek: they bioaccumulate too, which is when your body cant get rid of something by metabolizing it so it just hangs around (like lead and mercury), which can cause chronic poisoning.

actually its quite straightforward-mainy of the foods you eat contain chlorine, one of the most common substances of course being table salt (sodium choride). The chlorination process of sugar knocks off the energy rich hydroxy groups from the sugar molecule replacing them with chlorines. Sucralose ISN'T metabolized, therefore it does not accumulate like lead and mercury. A spoon full of salt contains far more chlorine ions than a spoonfull of commercially available sucralose (IE splenda).

Here is a reliable source for information on sweeteners in general, this link is for sucralose:
http://www.ific.org/publications/brochures/sucralosebroch.cfm

[1badPT]

I almost forgot - your source for information on sucralose is wildly misinformed. No human testing? Sucralose was discovered in 1976 and has over 20 years of test data availale. The first country to approve sucralose was none other than Canada in 1991 (yes before the complete tests were done, but there was already sufficient evidence that the product was safe when Canada approved). Granted the US's approval process was much quicker once it got started, but they approved pretty much after the rest of the world already had in 1998.

[SUPRAPHAT]

Aspartame blocks neurotransmitters if I remember Bio class correctly. As such your memory and and some brain functions could be effected over time.

This however would require atleast 1 died pop a day over many years but I have seen how some people drink diet pop so I could see it becoming a problem very quickly!

Splenda is better for you but gives products a cinnamin taste IMO and makes stuf taste like crap.

Coke is now sweetening all of their diet pop with Splenda so it's gonna taste even worse than it did before.

Jason

[Tyler883]

I agree with the above comment that we should switch to water.

I don't think the 48 teaspoons of sugar in a big gulp(source: Supersize me) is any safer than aspartame.

[InfiniteJoy]

I drink 10L of Diet Coke every single day :drool: :drool:

[googe]

Originally posted by 1badPT


actually its quite straightforward-mainy of the foods you eat contain chlorine, one of the most common substances of course being table salt (sodium choride). The chlorination process of sugar knocks off the energy rich hydroxy groups from the sugar molecule replacing them with chlorines. Sucralose ISN'T metabolized, therefore it does not accumulate like lead and mercury. A spoon full of salt contains far more chlorine ions than a spoonfull of commercially available sucralose (IE splenda).

Here is a reliable source for information on sweeteners in general, this link is for sucralose:
http://www.ific.org/publications/brochures/sucralosebroch.cfm

you seem to have confused what i said, i said its an organochlorine, which is in NO food products, and is not naturally occuring anywhere. inorganic chlorides (such as salt) are not necessarily dangerous at all.

organochlorines are synthetic chemicals, many of which are extremely toxic. have you heard of dioxin? its known as the single most carinogenic substance. it belongs to this family. other members include:

DDT (a banned insecticide due to harmful effects on the enviornment, with a half-life of 15 years)
Dicofol (classified as a Level III pesticide by the WHO, causes weird things like eggshell thinning in birds)
Heptachlor (another insecticide, been detected in humans 3 years after light exposure, higher doses given to rats cause them to go into convulsions and die...also banned for use near food and highly restricted)
Chlordane (a banned pesticide due to harmful effects to the environment and humans, breathing it causes people to go into convulsions and die)
Mirex (was used to kill fire ants, stopped manufacturing long ago, banned in most countries...exposure to it causes harmful effects on the nervous system, skin, liver, and reproductive system)
Pentachlorophenol (was used as a fungicide, toxic to humans, and banned for sale to the general public...has restricted industrial applications)
Polychlorinated biphenyls (commonly known as PCBs, used as dielectric fluids in electronics, used for adhesives, sealants, plastics, paint...very harmful to humans)

and then...splenda (sucralose).

haha, is that not scary enough? these products all have one thing in common, they were approved for usage, found to be toxic and bioaccumulate, having harmful longterm effects as well as being carcinogenic, then taken off the market.

with regard to it not accumulating in the body, are you aware that some people have been found to excrete no sucralose for 3 days? this, along with the fact that everything else in that family has this property, is pretty obvious that it shares that otherwise common denominator. the FDA themselves noted that some is obviously metabolized in their final rule, which is publicly available. japans governing body (forget the name) found even more than that to be metabolized.

so not surprisingly, people have had complaints of unexplained weight gain from regular consumption. the 0 calories claim is clearly wrong.

its been found post-approval that sucralose breaks down into dichlorofructose, which makes sense given the above info as well as people reporting unexplained weight gain. there is no doubt that some type of metabolism is taking place.

heh, that url you pasted as "reliable" is a copy and paste of the manufacturers brochure. did you not notice the first sentence is their marketing slogan? :) there is no place for trademarked marketing slogans in unbiased informational documents. anyway, the FDA themselves state several of those points are simply false.


Originally posted by 1badPT

I almost forgot - your source for information on sucralose is wildly misinformed. No human testing? Sucralose was discovered in 1976 and has over 20 years of test data availale. The first country to approve sucralose was none other than Canada in 1991 (yes before the complete tests were done, but there was already sufficient evidence that the product was safe when Canada approved). Granted the US's approval process was much quicker once it got started, but they approved pretty much after the rest of the world already had in 1998.


ok, a few corrections needed here. first of all, "20 years of test data" means absolutely nothing without context, so dont buy into that marketing. i hope you dont think it had anything to do with humans, cause it doesnt. :) it was virtually all short term tests in rats, and the results were already getting questionable. do you know how much test data there was on humans before it was approved by the FDA in 1998? in all that time only 23 humans were tested, with the longest trial lasting only 4 days! yet you say there was evidence that the product was safe in 1991 (which you apparently learned from said provably false website), way before any of this. for one thing there is a bit of a fallacy in that statement...you cant really have "evidence" of a chemical being safe, you can only have a LACK of evidence that it is harmful, and based on that, assume that it is safe. in any event, there was virtually no evidence either way pertaining to humans, so that is bogus what ever way you spin it.

the first test on humans done that lasted more than a few days wasnt performed until after FDA approval, and that only lasted 3 months, so its still useless. btw, as of 2005, there have only been 6 trials involving humans.

all testing was done by the manufacturer of course, bit of a conflict of interest there ;)

haha, "made from sugar so it tastes like sugar", its too bad people buy into that. thats like saying you can add another oxygen atom to a water molecule and say "hydrogen peroxide...made from water so it tastes like water!" :rofl:

if you want to bet your health on it considering all that, thats up to you...again i really dont see the problem with water myself :)

[Tyler883]

Originally posted by InfiniteJoy
I drink 10L of Diet Coke every single day :drool: :drool:

its only got a shelf life of 2 hours in my house ;)

[Canmorite]

Being diabetic, I have it a lot. It's not good for you that's for sure, but it's a decent substitute.

[davidI]

I just avoid sugar and sugar substitutes. Then again I man up and eat for nutrients and not taste.

(This said when I go out drinking shit hits the fan and everythign is fair game)

[youngbex]

well im not fat at all, so i am not to worried about my calorie intake:rofl:

[1badPT]

googe:

there are plenty of arguement made on both sides so really it comes down to what side you believe.

I'll leave it at this:

Compare the 3 main types of sweeteners on the market right now:

1) Sugar which is metabolized and contains a relatively high amount of calories

2) Aspartame which is metabolized but contains a relatively low amount of calories and has an odd taste and cannot be heated

3) Sucralose which is not metabolized and itself contains no calories, has a sweet taste like sugar and maintains its molecular structure when heated.

Its no secret that sucralose has become wildly popular due to the recent fad of carb reduced diets (ala Atkins, So Beach, etc.). The difference with Sucralose is that its not only superior to (and selling better than) Aspartame but a lot of people who aren't on any diets are also substituting sucralose for sugar in their diets. What you have is two industries that are losing a lot of market share and their only way to fight back is to put the new product through the rumour mill. If you do a search for "the truth about splenda" you'll find a bunch of websites that look different but have almost the exact same text on each site-to me I think most of the anti-sucralose campaign is being supported at least to some degree by #1 and #2 on my list. Food for thought anyways.

[googe]

Originally posted by 1badPT
googe:

there are plenty of arguement made on both sides so really it comes down to what side you believe.

I'll leave it at this:

Compare the 3 main types of sweeteners on the market right now:

1) Sugar which is metabolized and contains a relatively high amount of calories

2) Aspartame which is metabolized but contains a relatively low amount of calories and has an odd taste and cannot be heated

3) Sucralose which is not metabolized and itself contains no calories, has a sweet taste like sugar and maintains its molecular structure when heated.

Its no secret that sucralose has become wildly popular due to the recent fad of carb reduced diets (ala Atkins, So Beach, etc.). The difference with Sucralose is that its not only superior to (and selling better than) Aspartame but a lot of people who aren't on any diets are also substituting sucralose for sugar in their diets. What you have is two industries that are losing a lot of market share and their only way to fight back is to put the new product through the rumour mill. If you do a search for "the truth about splenda" you'll find a bunch of websites that look different but have almost the exact same text on each site-to me I think most of the anti-sucralose campaign is being supported at least to some degree by #1 and #2 on my list. Food for thought anyways.

i agree with everything here except #3, which the FDA disagrees with as well

http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr980403.html



b. Sucralose metabolism. The majority of ingested sucralose is excreted unchanged in the feces and most of what is absorbed appears unchanged in the urine, with only minor amounts appearing as metabolites (Refs. 3, 4, and 5). Mice (El46) and rats (El37) were found to metabolize less than 10 percent of the absorbed sucralose, while rabbits (El24) (20 to 30 percent), humans (El38 and E145) (20 to 30 percent), and dogs (El33) (30 to 40 percent) metabolize greater quantities of the absorbed sucralose. Results from the submitted animal and human pharmacokinetics data identified three major sucralose metabolites (Ml, M2, and M3) in urine in addition to unchanged sucralose.

but, the calories would be the least of my worries. btw, i dont think anything i said can be considered a rumor, as its all documented and comes from data provided by the makers of splenda themselves.

i have the same way of thinking as davidI myself, i honestly cant understand people that have no will power to resist junk food and sweet food. girls especially, its a weird addiction...

[1badPT]

For working out, when I'm in a bulk phase, I couldn't care less, I'm only concerned about getting as many calories as possible, so if some happen to come from sugars or other forms of carbs, I'm not too worried. When I'm cutting however, Sucralose and A-K are great ways to keep food tasting good without adding calories.

In general though, I wouldn't consume large portions of any sweetener, but specifically the only sweetener that really concerns me and that I go out of my way to avoid is aspartame.

[Wildcat]

im not sure if this was mentioned, but it takes ALOT less artifical sweetner to make a product up to taste as opposed to surgar. to prove it take pop for example, place a can of diet pepsi and regular pepsi in the sink, the diet should float. [/bill nye the science guy]

[youngbex]

good information, thanks:thumbsup:

[1badPT]

Originally posted by Wildcat
im not sure if this was mentioned, but it takes ALOT less artifical sweetner to make a product up to taste as opposed to surgar. to prove it take pop for example, place a can of diet pepsi and regular pepsi in the sink, the diet should float. [/bill nye the science guy]

this is true - A-K and sucralose are 200 times sweeter than sugar. Although splenda is made to measure like sugar, a cup of splenda actually has only 288 mg of sucralose - slightly more than a quarter of a gram!

Put in the same terms

One cup of sugar = 192 000 milligrams vs 1 cup of splenda which contains 288 milligrams of sucralose