Why Aspartame Isn't Scary
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@Aaron_K123 -- no, I'm not offended at all. I know what I don't know. And thanks for the empathy. To be honest, it's not a factor for us any longer. Neither of us really likes diet soda (or any soda). But what you said makes sense.
I'm very much a layman, so I trust the scientists. What I appreciate about you is you don't assume you know everything as a scientist and have an open mind, while still respecting the science.
My wife is like 99% better now, but it's hard to say what worked the most (again, too many variables). We eliminated fried foods, toxins, did green juicing for two years, she took supplements, ate a Mediterranean Diet and got rid of gluten (which has some pretty solid studies behind it for Fibro pain, MUCH more conclusive than anything else except maybe going vegan/gluten free) and eliminated cow dairy, which she tested allergic to.
And I'm not even sure about the gluten. Because, if you remove gluten and cow dairy, it used to be (this has changed since she got it), that meant you're eating mostly whole foods and not heavily processed crap, which could have actually been what turned it around. Again, hard to say for sure.2 -
I hope this isn't considered off topic. I thought as this was a discussion on aspartame and it's safety it seemed a good place for it.
I recently have started using low cal sweeteners myself, and having been trying several of them out. I am not diabetic, but would like to stay that way, and believe I was on my way to it. So sweeteners that do not spike blood sugar are important to me. One of the ones I have been trying out is Equal. But I noticed the main ingredient is a filler, dextrose. This confused the heck out of me. Equal supposedly is great for diabetics because it doesn't spike blood sugar, but how is that possible with dextrose as the main ingredient?1 -
ChaoticMoira wrote: »I hope this isn't considered off topic. I thought as this was a discussion on aspartame and it's safety it seemed a good place for it.
I recently have started using low cal sweeteners myself, and having been trying several of them out. I am not diabetic, but would like to stay that way, and believe I was on my way to it. So sweeteners that do not spike blood sugar are important to me. One of the ones I have been trying out is Equal. But I noticed the main ingredient is a filler, dextrose. This confused the heck out of me. Equal supposedly is great for diabetics because it doesn't spike blood sugar, but how is that possible with dextrose as the main ingredient?
I'm guessing it is because the amount is so small (even with the dextrose, it's less than 1 gram of carbohydrates).1 -
ChaoticMoira wrote: »I hope this isn't considered off topic. I thought as this was a discussion on aspartame and it's safety it seemed a good place for it.
I recently have started using low cal sweeteners myself, and having been trying several of them out. I am not diabetic, but would like to stay that way, and believe I was on my way to it. So sweeteners that do not spike blood sugar are important to me. One of the ones I have been trying out is Equal. But I noticed the main ingredient is a filler, dextrose. This confused the heck out of me. Equal supposedly is great for diabetics because it doesn't spike blood sugar, but how is that possible with dextrose as the main ingredient?
High-intensity sweeteners like aspartame are often bulked with something like dextrose or maltodextrin just to provide you enough material to work with. Since the aspartame is 200x sweeter than sugar there is too little there to actually handle realistically. Bulking agents still need to be a food product, you don't want it to be talcum powder or something, but clearly it doesn't need to be what provides the sweetness. So typically companies use some sort of sugar as a bulking agent, dextrose or maltodextrin are common, but much less than you would need to actually sweeten anything.
So yes, "zero calorie" sweeteners aren't zero calorie. But the amount of dextrose present in one of those packets is considerably less than what you would use to actually sweeten a drink.
Aspartame itself actually has calories, equivalent to that of sugar. Its protein and its digested as such and protein has 4 calories per gram same as sugar does. The reason it is "zero calorie" is because you need so little of it to sweeten a drink. It isn't zero calories, its 200x less calories because you need 200x less of it to get equivalent sweetness to table sugar.
Sweetener packets are probably going to have 2-4g of carbs in them that are caloric from the bulking agent, so you are talking like 8-16 calories worth of carbs. That is barely anything. Thats basically the amount you get if you stare too long at the bakery section. It is not an amount that is going to be a problem for someone who is diabetic let alone someone who is concerned about diabetes but not yet diabetic.
If you really want to avoid this it is possible to purchase pure aspartame with a tiny little scooper but given how little you have to transfer to not be overpoweringly sweet its difficult to work with. But then you could technically cut it with whatever you want.
I mean here you go, this would last you a looong time for $30.
https://www.amazon.com/NuSci-Aspartame-Powder-Calorie-Sweetener/dp/B00566EPOA
That is the equivalent sweetness to buying 45 kilograms of sugar. That is enough to flavor over 14 thousand drinks, you could use that to sweeten two drinks a day for 20 years. You'd probably want to cut it with something to be able to work with it but not sure what you'd cut it with other than sugar. I mean any sort of soluble powder that is digestible could work just that typically is sugar.3 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »@Aaron_K123 -- no, I'm not offended at all. I know what I don't know. And thanks for the empathy. To be honest, it's not a factor for us any longer. Neither of us really likes diet soda (or any soda). But what you said makes sense.
I'm very much a layman, so I trust the scientists. What I appreciate about you is you don't assume you know everything as a scientist and have an open mind, while still respecting the science.
My wife is like 99% better now, but it's hard to say what worked the most (again, too many variables). We eliminated fried foods, toxins, did green juicing for two years, she took supplements, ate a Mediterranean Diet and got rid of gluten (which has some pretty solid studies behind it for Fibro pain, MUCH more conclusive than anything else except maybe going vegan/gluten free) and eliminated cow dairy, which she tested allergic to.
And I'm not even sure about the gluten. Because, if you remove gluten and cow dairy, it used to be (this has changed since she got it), that meant you're eating mostly whole foods and not heavily processed crap, which could have actually been what turned it around. Again, hard to say for sure.
Thanks, I'm glad to hear that you weren't offended and that your wife is doing much better now. Wish you the best.1 -
Just to be clear, aspartame is just as caloric and just as digestable as any other sugar or protein. The only reason it is "low calorie" or "zero calorie" is it binds to the sweetness receptors in your mouth 200x time stronger than typical sugars and thus can trigger them with much smaller amounts. It isn't that aspartame has less calories than sugar, its that you need 200x less aspartame to achieve same level of sweetness. So if you used 200 calories of sugar you could have instead used 1 calorie of aspartame for the same sweetness.
That's really it.11 -
I stupidly just created a new thread on aspartame, because I only came up with very old posts when I searched "aspartame cancer." Well, this may be an old thread, but it is still very topical!
Thanks to @Aaron_K123 for all the insight. It is really useful! Your original post is a great primer in the chemistry of aspartame. I only wish that you could refresh it to fix the broken links. It would make a good blog entry, if you haven't done that already. (Not that many people read the blogs.)
What got me onto this are the recent publications, including this one in a large (ish) human population, which show small positive (more cancer) effects in the populations who use aspartame:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003950
My comment on the above is that the positive effects are small or non-existent (within errors), and people who use aspartame tend to do so because they tend to gain weight or they may have other medical conditions inducing them to do so, so there could be a correlation but not a causality.
People are also still banging the gong on the rat studies, such as this one
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33845854/
@Aaron_K123 does have in interesting point about the rats chosen being prone to tumors in general. Also, it seems like a full-life daily dose of 2000ppm aspartame (where increased tumors seem to appear) is kind of extreme. No one would ever eat that much every single day starting in childhood. In an 80kg human, wouldn't that be 160 grams per day? That's thousands of packets or ~800 diet cokes. If I understand that correctly, I'm really glad I'm not a test subject!1 -
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May not be active anymore but I am not dead...havent succumbed to the aspartame, yet. Fear over it seems to come culturally in waves and I havent seen a lot of fearmongering about it lately so assume its probably not coming up that often here either.7 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »
May not be active anymore but I am not dead...havent succumbed to the aspartame, yet. Fear over it seems to come culturally in waves and I havent seen a lot of fearmongering about it lately so assume its probably not coming up that often here either.
Glad to see you are still kickin1 -
All I know is that I used to get migraines - then I cut out all aspartame, saccharin and sucralose and I have not had a migraine since. That was about 14 years ago. If I eat or drink anything that has those in it I can taste it immediately and stop. And there are somethings that stuff is in that is so irritating! Protein powder for one - and any of those "health" drinks.1
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^^^ I admit I am too lazy to form my own words in response to an already well covered point so am quoting Aaron from previous page.....
" I try to avoid making assumptions about whether or not something might cause migraines in a particular person or whether that response is "real" or psychosomatic. Maybe it does maybe it doesn't, as far as I know pretty much anything can be a migraine trigger (or be perceived to be a migraine trigger) but it clearly doesn't in everyone and there is no clearly defined causal link.
If someone tells me they get migraines when they ingest aspartame I would say "oh okay, best to avoid then". But if they say I get migraines when I ingest aspartame, therefore its dangerous and everyone should avoid it...that is when I call BS."3 -
FairlyLisa wrote: »All I know is that I used to get migraines - then I cut out all aspartame, saccharin and sucralose and I have not had a migraine since. That was about 14 years ago. If I eat or drink anything that has those in it I can taste it immediately and stop. And there are somethings that stuff is in that is so irritating! Protein powder for one - and any of those "health" drinks.
Just because you have issues with something doesn't mean it is bad or scary, except for you maybe. I know a person who is extremely allergic to onions and other things from that family of food. If they came and said that because they affect her that way they are bad for everyone most people would have issues with that. However, that is what your argument boils down to assuming that it was cutting them out that stopped your migraines and not some other thing that you didn't realize was cut out at the same time. It does not change the fact that aspartame is not scary.1 -
Fairly Lisa you may just having been sharing your own experience and as such it is valid.
As long as you don't extrapolate from that to "it is bad for everyone"
Which your post didn't do - we are all just pre emptively counter- acting3
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