Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

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  • MercenaryNoetic26
    MercenaryNoetic26 Posts: 2,747 Member
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    Why? because I'm taking antibiotics that have given rats cancer, so fawk it. I'm still alive! Been throwing splenda and equal in everythang! living dangerously here...
  • tokengirlstfu
    tokengirlstfu Posts: 1 Member
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    I personally believe that hugging is an exercise.

    We should all do this exercise more often
  • idontcarroll
    idontcarroll Posts: 216 Member
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    Ha, I'm just going to let you all continue to drink the fluoride filled water. Enjoy!
  • LeslieTSUK
    LeslieTSUK Posts: 215 Member
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    Personally, between sweetners in my coffee and coke zero/pepsi max, I probably have a lot of it over a 6 month period, being diabetic I have to get a full blood work done quite often, and so far, over 35 years using them, my blood works all within normal ranges.

    I don't crave sweets or chocolates or cakes, glucose levels constantly low, so I could be classed as a test subject of 1 lol..

    Simple point is, if it works for ya, use it, if it gives ya problems, don't use it.

    END OF LINE:
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
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    Ha, I'm just going to let you all continue to drink the fluoride filled water. Enjoy!
    Usually I would think this is a joke about conspiracies, but you can never be too sure around these parts if someone is dead serious about a post like that.
  • Alyssa_Is_LosingIt
    Alyssa_Is_LosingIt Posts: 4,696 Member
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    Bump.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,526 Member
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    Haven't seen this thread in awhile........................and I support it.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
    9285851.png
  • Alyssa_Is_LosingIt
    Alyssa_Is_LosingIt Posts: 4,696 Member
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    ninerbuff wrote: »
    Haven't seen this thread in awhile........................and I support it.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
    9285851.png

    It used to be stickied, and I am sad that it's not anymore! I've seen a lot of fear mongering regarding aspartame in the forums lately, and it's getting old. Thought I'd give this one a bumpity bump in the hopes that some lost souls would read it...
  • Angel_Grove_
    Angel_Grove_ Posts: 205 Member
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    EvanKeel wrote: »
    Oh wow! Very informative. I had been wondering about aspartame myself. A guy I know said he cut out aspartame and sucralose and what he calls "fake sugars" and claimed to lose 40 pounds in a month. (He was about 290.) I didn't tell him this, but I think he lost that weight because he cut way down on calories, but he attributed the loss to the cutting out of fake sugars instead.

    And if he weighed the same as a duck, he'd be made of wood. Thus, we could burn him as a witch...if we were in the business of burning witches, that is.

    ^^This.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,526 Member
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    annecsmith92 wrote: »
    Just don't ingest it at a constant rate for long periods of time! The process that occurs when ingested can be broken down into the part that you guys really want to know. The aspartame is broken down in your system into methanol which is broken down by alcohol dehydrogenase. This converts is to a formal aldehyde, more commonly known as Formaldehyde. So just don't drink too much of it!
    And the SAME happens while ingesting tomatoes and citrus fruits. You probably want to know about that.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
    9285851.png

  • So_Much_Fab
    So_Much_Fab Posts: 1,146 Member
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    Science aside, I choose not to use artificial sweeteners and I don't feel like I need to justify that decision to anyone. If "you" want to have at it - I wouldn't try to convince you otherwise.
  • Alyssa_Is_LosingIt
    Alyssa_Is_LosingIt Posts: 4,696 Member
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    So_Much_Fab wrote: »
    Science aside, I choose not to use artificial sweeteners and I don't feel like I need to justify that decision to anyone. If "you" want to have at it - I wouldn't try to convince you otherwise.

    And that's your choice - I have no problem with people choosing to avoid something for personal reasons.

    It's the people that go around claiming that the sky is falling and we're all going to die because aspartame. When people begin fear-mongering and spreading misinformation, then it isn't a "personal" reason anymore. It's getting people all worked up over something that isn't accurate. That's when the science is important.
  • tuckerrj
    tuckerrj Posts: 1,453 Member
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    I've been consuming the equivalent of a 2 liter bottle of diet soda (or tea) daily for the last 25 years. My blood work, blood pressure & general health are excellent. So there's some anecdotal (sic?) evidence for you.
  • Delilahhhhhh
    Delilahhhhhh Posts: 477 Member
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    When I joined last October this was one of the first threads I read on MFP, I'm so glad I did. It also gave a good insight into how many funny people are in this forum and how many people do not read the original post...... and this response still makes me laugh!
    BrettPGH_ wrote: »
    I strictly stay away from the stuff. My doctor says it is poison!

    You should get a new doctor. One who knows what "poison" means. That's kind of important.

  • Jackattacks28
    Jackattacks28 Posts: 9 Member
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    Great read, I have never been worried about aspartame, pepsi maxx is pretty much my life blood, if anything was going to kill me id be glad it was pepsi maxx lol.
  • curtishissam
    curtishissam Posts: 14 Member
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    JTick wrote: »
    Bump to read later.
    This...

  • jeanmariemcp
    jeanmariemcp Posts: 17 Member
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    Still tastes like poop.
  • jennifershoo
    jennifershoo Posts: 3,198 Member
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    Bump B)
  • azulvioleta6
    azulvioleta6 Posts: 4,196 Member
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    I ended up in the hospital several times before my doctors figured out that aspartame was making my brain swell. I have serious neurological issues and this is a VERY BAD THING for me. Obviously not everybody has a reaction to it, but for some of us, it absolutely is not safe to consume.

    I will get a migraine-like headache if I even eat one stick on Nutri-sweetened gum.
  • jissellc
    jissellc Posts: 76 Member
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    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Hey everyone. I've seen my fair share of posts on the forums with regards to the dangers of aspartame and how it is a poison or a toxin or a carcinogen. Wanted to clear some things up about aspartame if I could just to explain why I personally believe there is absolutely no reason to fear aspartame.

    What is aspartame?

    For my fellow biochemists just simply saying its a methylester of phenylalanine and aspartate is enough to answer that question but figure I should take the time to explain what that means. Phenylalanine and aspartate are 2 of the 20 naturally occuring amino acids found in all protein. As our sequence information databases grow we know more and more about what the average amino acid composition of proteins is. Here is a download of our sum total sequence information from protein from the UniProt database. http://web.expasy.org/docs/relnotes/relstat.html Section 6 shows the amino acid frequencies which shows phenylalanine (Phe, F) at 3.6% of protein and aspartate (Asp, D) as 5.46%. This information will come in handy later. Amino acids are connected to one another naturally via a peptide bond between the carboxylic acid group and the amino group of each individual amino acid. Aspartame is simply a dipeptide of phenylalanine and aspartate where the terminal carboxy group is substituted for a methylester.

    All amino acids have the following structure:

    Amino-Acid-Structure-MFL.jpg

    Aspartame's structure is this:

    aspartame.gif

    And the natural dipeptide between aspartate and pheynlalanine (aspartyl-phenylalanine) is this:

    A790010.png

    Aspartame's structure is just a natural dipeptide of phenylalanine and aspartate where the terminal carboxylic acid group has been methylated on the oxygen to form a methyl ester so instead of COO- it is COCH3. That is the only difference.

    What happens to aspartame when we ingest it?

    As with any protein aspartame is hydrolized in the stomach acid and metabolically broken down in the intestine to the breakdown products of aspartate, phenylalanine and methanol in a weight ratio of 4:5:1. What that means is that 10mg of aspartame will be broken down in your body to 4mg of aspartate, 5mg of phenylalanine and 1mg of methanol before it enters your blood. [citation: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408440701516184]. No aspartame enters your blood intact.

    How much of each metabolite do you get from ingesting one diet soda?

    So the metabolic products of aspartame are aspartate,phenylalanine and methanol in a 4:5:1 ratio. One can of diet coke has about 180mg of aspartame. That means it is broken down to 72mg of aspartate, 90mg of phenylalanine and 18mg of methanol.

    How much of those metabolites are in other foods?

    As mentioned phenylalanine and aspartate are naturally occuring amino acids found in all proteins. Protein is about 5.46% aspartate and about 3.6% phenylalanine on average. So let us say you have a 4oz piece of chicken breast. A small 4oz chicken breast has about 24g of protein. That means that in that chicken breast there is .036*24*1000 = 864mg of phenylalanine and .055*24*1000 = 1320mg aspartate. That means to get the same amount of aspartate and phenylalanine from diet coke as you do from one 4oz chicken breast you would have to drink 18 diet cokes. In my diet I eat around 180g of protein in a day which means to equal the amount I get from my normal diet of whole foods I would have to drink 135 cans of diet coke.

    Methanol is a biproduct of all fermentations. As such it is present in things that ferment, including things that are in the process of ferminting whether we think of them as alcohol or not. That means things like fruit. So how much methanol is present in 1 8oz glass of orange juice for example? Well according to this study of presence of methanol in a variety of orange juices [citation: http://archive.food.gov.uk/maff/archive/food/infsheet/1993/no17/table1.htm] the amount of methanol averages around 125 mg/kg. 8oz is 0.23kg so that means that 8oz of orange juice has about 29mg of methanol in it. Recall that a diet soda the aspartame content would break down to about 18mg of methanol. In otherwords orange juice, or really any fruit juice, has more methanol in it per oz than soda.

    Conclusion

    We know what aspartame is, we know its structure, we know its composition and we know exactly what happens to it in the human body. We are very familiar with the metabolic breakdown products of phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol all of which are found in higher amounts in natural whole foods such as fruits and proteins. There is no reason at all to suspect that aspartame presents any sort of toxic or carcinogenic risk from the chemistry of the molecule and indeed toxicology studies of aspartame in humans show no toxic dose level [citation: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408440701516184]. Stories of the toxicity of aspartame are heresay, anecdotal and fear mongering and are not supported by either the chemistry, the biochemistry, the toxicology or the epidemiology.

    Yet online on the internet we get stuff like this:

    aspartame-kids.jpg

    Sensationalistic irrational garbage.

    Great post. As a bio major I found it informative. I would like to know the sources for your post for further research. Thanks

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