Aspartame, Is It Bad?

[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

[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