Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

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  • Crafty_camper123
    Crafty_camper123 Posts: 1,440 Member
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    fromnebraska wrote: »
    Diet pop gives me diarrhea. That's why I avoid it.

    :D That's as good of a reason as any I suppose! Too many sugar free candies tends to have a laxative effect on some people why not diet pop? Just don't go around slapping diet cokes out of people hands screaming about their toxic laxative effects and I'll think you'll be good.
  • ImpreciseSeamstress
    ImpreciseSeamstress Posts: 13 Member
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    Is there something else that has that diety taste that doesn't react the same way chemically as aspartame? I'm willing to try a blind test, but I think boiling it would change the test.
  • Crafty_camper123
    Crafty_camper123 Posts: 1,440 Member
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    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Is there something else that has that diety taste that doesn't react the same way chemically as aspartame? I'm willing to try a blind test, but I think boiling it would change the test.

    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.
  • ImpreciseSeamstress
    ImpreciseSeamstress Posts: 13 Member
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    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.

    You have to store medicines at certain temperatures or they don't do what they are supposed to. It makes sense to me that drastically changing the temperature of something by boiling it could change it how it acts in your body.

  • Crafty_camper123
    Crafty_camper123 Posts: 1,440 Member
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    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.

    You have to store medicines at certain temperatures or they don't do what they are supposed to. It makes sense to me that drastically changing the temperature of something by boiling it could change it how it acts in your body.

    But that's medicine. I think it will be different. When heat is applied to something like an antibiotic, the heat breaks down the structure and makes it less effective. And there are certainly medications that are heat sensitive, and even need to be kept refrigerated or they will deteriorate at room temperature. I do not believe it will be the same with aspartame. Take your protein or fruit for example. Either cooked or raw, the compounds that are also present in aspartame would be present in the food even after cooking. Now, I do have a laymen' s understanding of all of this. But I do not believe that heat in this case would make the experiment inconclusive, or ineffective.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    What would boiling be changing though to remove the sweet taste - partial breakdown?
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Question with your water test. I thought you couldn't cook with aspartame because it doesn't withstand high heat. Wouldn't boiling it change it enough to possibly change the results?

    Wouldn't change it anymore than injesting it would. In both cases the methyl ester would be hydrolyzed. So it would convert aspartame into methanol and the dipeptide phenylaspartate. Not sure how long you'd have to boil it for to go to completion. Boiling alone probably wouldn't break the peptide bond between phenylalanine and aspartate which would happen by ingestion from peptidases.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Is there something else that has that diety taste that doesn't react the same way chemically as aspartame? I'm willing to try a blind test, but I think boiling it would change the test.

    Yeah, I mean all the artificial sweeteners are completely different from one another. Sucralose is nothing like aspartame chemicaly and stevia or acelfame K is nothing like either of them either. The only thing they have in common is that they are sweet...which is why it makes no sense to just lump them all together when one talks about their effects on the body if any. They aren't the same thing at all. Aspartame has more in common with protein (like you'd get from any protein source) than it does with sucralose which is just a chloronated sucrose disaccharide. So if you legitimately had some sort of reaction to aspartame it wouldn't make sense you would have the same reaction to sucralose for example.

    The issue with attempting a blinded test with different sweeteners is that they taste distinct from one another. In otherwords if you sweetened something with sucralose and then sweetened something else with aspartame you would be able to tell the difference between those two things by taste so you would know immediately based on taste alone which was which.

    If you could think of a way to mask them taste or make the taste the same regardless of sweetener used so you legitimately could not tell which was which though I suppose that would work. But the best would be to limit the number of other ingredients which is why I suggested water plus the sweetener alone and just using heating to break the methylester so it was no longer sweet.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    heybales wrote: »
    What would boiling be changing though to remove the sweet taste - partial breakdown?

    Yes exactly. But that same breakdown happens when you injest it. So I think it would be difficult to explain why breakdown in a bottle means it is harmless but breakdown in your stomach before it enters your intestine to be absorbed into your blood stream still somehow causes harm.

    Boiling it (again not sure for how long I haven't tried this myself) will likely cause a hydrolysis reaction that would break the methylester (-OCH3) at the carboxyl terminus of phenylalanine to yield methanol (CH3OH) and restore the carboxylic acid of phenylalanine (-COOH)

    aspartame.jpg

    The exact same thing would happen in your stomach under acidic conditions in the presence of hydrolyasis. In addition in your stomach peptidases would further decompose the molecule by breaking the peptide bond between aspartate and phenylalanine yielding the two seperate amino acids.

    In otherwords when you injest aspartame before it enters your intestine and goes into your blood stream it is completely decomposed into aspartate, phenylalanine and methanol....components that are found commonly in protein sources and fruits at much higher concentrations.

    Boiling it beforehand to pre-decompose the methanol from the dipeptide wouldn't change anything. But yeah if you are skeptical of that think up any method where you truly cannot tell if something has aspartame in it or not while limiting any other ingredients or at least ensuring all other ingredients are the same as an aspartame-free control and then try to guess which one has aspartame simply based on symptoms you get rather than on taste. I just figured the water method would be the cleanist as it doesn't introduce other variables of different ingredients.
  • ImpreciseSeamstress
    ImpreciseSeamstress Posts: 13 Member
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    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    If you could think of a way to mask them taste or make the taste the same regardless of sweetener used so you legitimately could not tell which was which though I suppose that would work. But the best would be to limit the number of other ingredients which is why I suggested water plus the sweetener alone and just using heating to break the methylester so it was no longer sweet.

    The aspartame tablets for sweetening coffee could be put in empty gel caps from amazon and other gel caps could have something else, but the only time I had one of those was one of my worst reactions ever. Not one I'm eager to replicate. One could take the tablet with their eyes closed so they can't see the difference.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.

    You have to store medicines at certain temperatures or they don't do what they are supposed to. It makes sense to me that drastically changing the temperature of something by boiling it could change it how it acts in your body.

    It changes it in the exact same way your stomach changes it before it even enters your blood stream, it breaks the methylester into methanol and a carboxylic acid termini on phenylalanine. This was in my original post, I'm not sure what is confusing about that.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Is there something else that has that diety taste that doesn't react the same way chemically as aspartame? I'm willing to try a blind test, but I think boiling it would change the test.

    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.

    Methylesters are heat labile in aqueous solutions, other sweeteners which don't have methylesters such as sucralose probably wouldn't be affected at all by boiling.

    Similarly aspartame is completely metabolized in our bodies and does not enter our blood intact at all. We do however absorb its breakdown products which are phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol. Sucralose on the otherhand is just not digested at all and passes right through you.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    If boiling it is slow you could probably speed up the reaction by adding some lemon juice or baking soda or anything else that catalyze the reaction.

    http://www.chemistryrules.me.uk/candrands/carboxylicacids.htm

    Carboxylic acid hydrolysis of esters is the reaction I'm refering to.
  • slossia
    slossia Posts: 138 Member
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    I’m always getting lectured by overweight people every time I drink a diet soda. I’m at my goal weight and am only 10 lbs heavier at 65 years old then when I graduated high school and have a 34 waistline. Am in perfect health and no bad number to deal with! So I’ll continue to drink my diet sodas and stay thin and let the overweight people think they know everything about what’s healthy.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    If you could think of a way to mask them taste or make the taste the same regardless of sweetener used so you legitimately could not tell which was which though I suppose that would work. But the best would be to limit the number of other ingredients which is why I suggested water plus the sweetener alone and just using heating to break the methylester so it was no longer sweet.

    The aspartame tablets for sweetening coffee could be put in empty gel caps from amazon and other gel caps could have something else, but the only time I had one of those was one of my worst reactions ever. Not one I'm eager to replicate. One could take the tablet with their eyes closed so they can't see the difference.

    Yeah that could work. If you isolate it in a gel cap you wouldn't be able to taste it. If you could have gelcaps that looked identical but contained either aspartame or something else inert like sugar that could work. Just have like 10 of them with only 1 of them with aspartame and a again seperate them into like labeled containers 1 through 10 where only your friend knows which number is the aspartame one. Then take one a week and see which if any gives you symptoms. Then no boiling required and the only variable is the aspartame.

    I think that is an excellent way of doing it actually, better than my version which takes more work. You'd have to be able to get gelcaps and assemble pills but that'd be not that hard to do.

    Typical aspartame amounts in a diet soda are something like 125mg which would be easy to fit into a gel cap.

    One thing to be aware of though is that most aspartame you buy from a store is already cut with something like maltodextrose to bulk it up so that 1 gram of "aspartame" in the container is only like 50 mg of actual aspartame. The reason they do this is that the amount of aspartame you need to sweeten something is so tiny they basically dilute it in something else to bulk it up so it is easier to handle. One of those little paper packets that contains white powder and labeled aspartame only a small amount of that powder is actually aspartame. You'd have to order pure aspartame online for this to work otherwise you would be underdosing yourself substantially.

    If the tablets you spoke of are pure aspartame then yeah grinding them and putting them into gelcaps would work and you'd know the mg dose you were getting.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    What i mean by pure aspartame. Aspartame is 200 times more sweet than sugar so if you took a teaspoon of pure aspartame into your coffee it would be like putting 200 teaspoons of sugar into it. Obviously that is not the level of sweetness anyone wants so when companies sell aspartame as a sweetener they sell it cut with something else like dextrose to limit the sweetness.

    So a packet of something like Equal which is an aspartame based sweetener has 1 gram of material in it but most of that is dextrose and maltodextrin. What that means is if you look at a can of diet coke and it says 125mg of aspartame and then you decided to buy some Equal thinking it was aspartame and you added 125mg of Equal to a pill it would actually only be 37mg of aspartame.

    So to get pure 125mg of aspartame you would have to order actual pure aspartame which I'm not sure if you can just buy that in a store or not though I'm sure you could get it online.

    EDIT: yeah, here is an example https://www.amazon.com/NuSci-Aspartame-Powder-Calorie-Sweetener/dp/B006Q4UDSI

    notice the serving size is 1/32 of a teaspoon lol so yeah I guess you might find it difficult to weigh it out accurately without an analytical balance.
  • Crafty_camper123
    Crafty_camper123 Posts: 1,440 Member
    edited July 2018
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    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Is there something else that has that diety taste that doesn't react the same way chemically as aspartame? I'm willing to try a blind test, but I think boiling it would change the test.

    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.

    Methylesters are heat labile in aqueous solutions, other sweeteners which don't have methylesters such as sucralose probably wouldn't be affected at all by boiling.

    Similarly aspartame is completely metabolized in our bodies and does not enter our blood intact at all. We do however absorb its breakdown products which are phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol. Sucralose on the otherhand is just not digested at all and passes right through you.
    That makes sense... (I think. :lol:) I really appreciate how you are able to put things in a scientific yet understandable way. It's a true talent you have. Thank you.

    @ImpreciseSeamstress You could possibly crush those tablets and find a sugar that would have a similar texture. I would have someone else do this for you so you don't recognize the one laced with aspartame. In this case sugar (powdered or granulated) would be the control. HOWEVER, while this sounds like a really interesting thing to do, and if you're willing to do it out of your own curiosity, great. If you feel like doing it to prove something to a bunch of people on the internet that really have no impact on your daily life... maybe don't. But if you do, I would be interested to see your findings.

    Would you have to do something like this on an empty stomach in a fasted state? (IE first thing in the morning), and then eat or drink nothing but water for a couple hours after? I would imagine it would be good to eliminate other food and drink sources so it does not add other variables to the expiriement?

    ETA: Aaron posted while I was typing. What he said. Finding an aspartame source similar to that of a soda is probably best.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited July 2018
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    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Crafty_camper123 wrote: »
    ImpreciseSeamstress wrote: »
    Is there something else that has that diety taste that doesn't react the same way chemically as aspartame? I'm willing to try a blind test, but I think boiling it would change the test.

    I think @Aaron_K123 stated that boiling it will simply get rid of the sweet taste. But to my understanding the chemicals that make aspartame what it is, phenylalanine and methanol will still be present. I have no clue what boiling would do to other artificial sweeteners though.

    Methylesters are heat labile in aqueous solutions, other sweeteners which don't have methylesters such as sucralose probably wouldn't be affected at all by boiling.

    Similarly aspartame is completely metabolized in our bodies and does not enter our blood intact at all. We do however absorb its breakdown products which are phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol. Sucralose on the otherhand is just not digested at all and passes right through you.
    That makes sense... (I think. :lol:) I really appreciate how you are able to put things in a scientific yet understandable way. It's a true talent you have. Thank you.

    @ImpreciseSeamstress You could possibly crush those tablets and find a sugar that would have a similar texture. I would have someone else do this for you so you don't recognize the one laced with aspartame. In this case sugar (powdered or granulated) would be the control. HOWEVER, while this sounds like a really interesting thing to do, and if you're willing to do it out of your own curiosity, great. If you feel like doing it to prove something to a bunch of people on the internet that really have no impact on your daily life... maybe don't. But if you do, I would be interested to see your findings.

    Would you have to do something like this on an empty stomach in a fasted state? (IE first thing in the morning), and then eat or drink nothing but water for a couple hours after? I would imagine it would be good to eliminate other food and drink sources so it does not add other variables to the expiriement?

    ETA: Aaron posted while I was typing. What he said. Finding an aspartame source similar to that of a soda is probably best.

    I would echo this sentiment. If you want to investigate on your own whether or not aspartame is causing symptoms you are experiencing then that blinded gelcap method is a way of doing that if the symptoms are not in any way life threatening. That said I am in no way endorsing this, just saying it is a way of doing it if you want to...I don't want to feel like I am compelling people to do things they don't want to do. If you never want to touch aspartame again then that is fine, totally understood. You have nothing to prove to the internet as Crafty stated.
  • JimKeegan555
    JimKeegan555 Posts: 29 Member
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    What about other effects of Aspartame? Are there any proven studies WRT metabolism or insulin response etc?

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