Aspartame... is it really that bad?
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Anything in excess is bad that's why we all end up with weight issues, so I say moderation, and you'll be alright, remember when eggs was suppose to be really bad? well someone will always find something wrong with something. It's just human nature.....
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Diet sodas have been linked to the obesity epidemic in America. Really fake sugars in general. That's why it shocks me how many people on this weight loss site consume so much diet soda.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/diet-soda-weight-gain_n_886409.html
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/29/studies-why-diet-sodas-are-no-boon-to-dieters/
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/09/splenda_study.html0 -
Well, I was honest in the OP and said that I had cut aspartame out of my diet a while back. A logical conclusion would be that I'm leaning toward that side, and the content of my post suggests that I'm reconsidering and looking for additional input. So... even if I am leaning toward that side, so what? It sounds like you just have a problem with it because I don't agree with you. And what do you know? Coincidentally, that too suggests that you are self righteous. You've done nothing but disagree with people, tell them they're wrong, and spread around negativity. And no, you're not self righteous because of the factual content of your answers, it's due to your attitude. Is it impossible for you to talk without being so condescending? I don't see the need for it. Once again, if you're so against what I and others have to say, then take a hike!"I'm quite aware that it was not 'data driven info'... but I still welcomed it because as I stated in the first post, I was fine with opinions, personal experience or advice from medical professionals. It's great that you are so well informed, but the self righteous part isn't so great. What is I was politely trying to say is that you were being a jerk and it was uncalled for. If you don't like it or don't agree, move on. Don't drag the rest of us down with your negative attitude."
It's interesting that for somebody who opened this thread with a "tell me what you think", all of your subsequent posts seem to heavily lean to the "anti aspartame" side. I'm self righteous in answering your initial request with as much or as little fact based info as the anti's? OK. You've almost fawned over the links provided by the anti side but have ignored (at least as far as not responding) to the info and links provided by the pro aspartame people.
Troll much?
Additionally, I haven't 'fawned' over anything. I was very thankful for someone posting information for me to look at it, for being so nice, and for sharing with me even though she knew loudmouths like you would butt in and start drama. I made it clear in the reply that I would look at the posts later, or did you miss that? I had planned to with all of the posts people have provided, especially both sides so I could compare the info. So to say that I'm fawning over the links makes absolutely no sense, considering I haven't even checked them out yet.
Instead of picking apart what others say for inaccuracies and implications, go find something constructive to do. Or if that's really the only thing you can do to feel better about yourself, take it out of here.0 -
Lol, good point. Thus Diet Coke = cancer. Drink what you want people.
I heard breathing Oxygen causes cancer. Is this true?Why expose yourself to a carcinogen? There is cancer all over and stuff like this causes it.
What part of this didn't you understand?
Everyone who's ever had cancer breathed oxygen. It must be true.0 -
Well, folks, we're four pages in and let's see how the debate is going:
Team "It Aint no Thing" has provided several medical studies and some pretty solid science-based articles to back up their assertions.
That may be true, Bob, but Team "It Gives You Migraines!" is going to bury their fact-based arguments with so many anecdotes and "stuff that they heard from this one guy the other day but I can't remember where but I'm pretty sure he took a science class in seventh grade" that it'll give you a headache!
Can we agree that one team might be lacking a certain credibility that the other is looking for? C'mon team migraine, I want peer reviewed articles!
I love you already, can we be friends? Lol0 -
Why expose yourself to a carcinogen? There is cancer all over and stuff like this causes it.
Take the sugar, in moderation, and you'll be OK.
The sugar-fee thing is just advertizing, and all about putting a buck in someone else's pocket.
The sun is a carcinogen.0 -
Lol, good point. Thus Diet Coke = cancer. Drink what you want people.
I heard breathing Oxygen causes cancer. Is this true?Why expose yourself to a carcinogen? There is cancer all over and stuff like this causes it.
What part of this didn't you understand?
Everyone who's ever had cancer breathed oxygen. It must be true.
As someone who is a very recent survivor of cancer (remission declared 3 weeks ago) I once asked my oncologist about this very thing. He said that everything in diet soda is already naturally occurring in our bodies every day. Our bodies cant tell the difference between artificial and natural sugar.0 -
Splenda is Posion - Aspertame is Posion...You may not have symptoms now...but what's it doing to your body that you can't see?
http://naturalbias.com/splenda-isnt-so-splendid/
And here is DDT
http://www.3dchem.com/molecules.asp?ID=90
They are now thinking that aspertame is linked to lots of nuerological conditions like alzheimer, dementia and other bad stuff you don't want. So drink up and enjoy!
For me, I'll stick to Stevia thank you.0 -
bump0
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Bottom line ... Arguments on both sides. Some of us choose to avoid artificial sweeteners...and foods containing ingredients we can't pronounce. Note: I said we choose. Sugar substitutes are common. What about artificial fats? Was it olestra?0
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Splenda is Posion - Aspertame is Posion...You may not have symptoms now...but what's it doing to your body that you can't see?
http://naturalbias.com/splenda-isnt-so-splendid/
And here is DDT
http://www.3dchem.com/molecules.asp?ID=90
They are now thinking that aspertame is linked to lots of nuerological conditions like alzheimer, dementia and other bad stuff you don't want. So drink up and enjoy!
For me, I'll stick to Stevia thank you.
That naturalbias website is incredible. It has articles on "how sugar can ruin your life", "are you eating toxic meat", "why you should avoid farm raised fish" "dangers of tap water" and "dangers of electromagnetic radiation."
It was hard to read any of the articles though as EVERY link on the page came back with a 404 file not found error. Some webmaster needs to sharpen his/her skills......0 -
Gotta love the fact that the word BIAS is right there in the URL.
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When aspartame was being developed, my brother worked w/ the wife of one of the engineers on the team.
He absolutely *FORBID* his family to consume it.
Maybe I'm a *simpleton* here, but I don't need a lengthy scientific explanation as to why.
THAT convinced me to stay away from it.
And, on a side note: I read The Sugar Fix...lengthy (OVER my head) discourse about High Fructose Corn Syrup.
My take-away? Since I have a CHOICE....it's not something I HAVE to consume- and I can find products that are HFCS free
so why not err on the side of staying away from it too.
Result: My belly fat melted away, and so did my hubby's (who isn't dieting, just eating what I buy)....so I think I made the best choice there.0 -
Bottom line ... Arguments on both sides. Some of us choose to avoid artificial sweeteners...and foods containing ingredients we can't pronounce. Note: I said we choose. Sugar substitutes are common. What about artificial fats? Was it olestra?
Agreed. What I noticed in general on this message board is that people who support natural foods, products, ingredients, etc get made fun of and receive condescending replies. I don't know why and I don't really care to understand it.0 -
When aspartame was being developed, my brother worked w/ the wife of one of the engineers on the team.
He absolutely *FORBID* his family to consume it.
Maybe I'm a *simpleton* here, but I don't need a lengthy scientific explanation as to why.
THAT convinced me to stay away from it.
And, on a side note: I read The Sugar Fix...lengthy (OVER my head) discourse about High Fructose Corn Syrup.
My take-away? Since I have a CHOICE....it's not something I HAVE to consume- and I can find products that are HFCS free
so why not err on the side of staying away from it too.
Result: My belly fat melted away, and so did my hubby's (who isn't dieting, just eating what I buy)....so I think I made the best choice there.
Indratsing, so not a caloric deficit but simply the lack of ingesting HFCS melted away belly fat. Or maybe post hoc ergo propter hoc?0 -
Bottom line ... Arguments on both sides. Some of us choose to avoid artificial sweeteners...and foods containing ingredients we can't pronounce. Note: I said we choose. Sugar substitutes are common. What about artificial fats? Was it olestra?
Most of these "ingredients you can't pronounce" happen to be naturally occurring chemicals in "natural food."
Aspartame is phenylalanine and aspartic acid. If you were to read an ingredients list for chicken breast, it would contain both aspartic acid and phenylalanine, ergo, should we no longer eat chicken, since it may contain ingredients we can't pronounce?
There's no such thing as a one ingredient food to the human body, it doesn't recognize food, it recognizes the chemicals that are in the food, and it can't tell the difference between aspartic acid and phenylalanine from a diet soda, or from a chicken breast.0 -
When aspartame was being developed, my brother worked w/ the wife of one of the engineers on the team.
He absolutely *FORBID* his family to consume it.
Maybe I'm a *simpleton* here, but I don't need a lengthy scientific explanation as to why.
THAT convinced me to stay away from it.
And, on a side note: I read The Sugar Fix...lengthy (OVER my head) discourse about High Fructose Corn Syrup.
My take-away? Since I have a CHOICE....it's not something I HAVE to consume- and I can find products that are HFCS free
so why not err on the side of staying away from it too.
Result: My belly fat melted away, and so did my hubby's (who isn't dieting, just eating what I buy)....so I think I made the best choice there.
Aspartame was developed 50 years ago, while working on anti-ulcer medication. Not sure where you were going with your original story, as it was always intended for human consumption, it just turned out to be useless for ulcers.0 -
Well go and ask at your next examination, I'm not arguing or calling your dentist incompetent, just pointing out facts about acid erosion with regard to carbonated drinks as is part of the topic of the general conversation.I have a real sensitivity to aspartame now due to drinking quite a bit when I was younger. Now I have digestive problems when I have anything with aspartame in it.
The main issue that I have with it is that it tricks your body into thinjking that insulin has entered your blood stream, but when it looks for it, it cannot find it.
My dentist was horrified when I told her I had more than 2 cans of pop a week.......Forget about the aspartame, it's more about the acid in the soda - it wears away your dental enamel faster than anything.
THANK YOU!!
I'm always amazed when I read these posts especially replies such as "I drink 6 cans of diet coke a day, and I'm fine" because the chances are that your teeth are badly damaged and you don't realise it. As a dental hygienist I see this problem every single day, teeth badly eroded from acid in carbonated drinks, fruit juice and sports drinks. Avoid them for the sake of your teeth!
if my teeth are badly damaged, not only do I not know it but the dentist I see 2x a year also doesn't seem to know it either.
How about your hygienist? In my 10 yrs post qualification only 1 dentist I have worked with has ever mentioned it to a patient. Obviously I can't see your mouth, so can not pass opinion on you personally
wouldn't my dentist notice if my teeth were badly damaged? I'd not use a dentist that didn't know or didn't tell me of damage to my teeth. He readily tells me that soda is staining my teeth. So, he'd warn me about stains but not about serious damage?
I don't know your dentist, so its not my place to say. The problem with diagnosing erosion is that erosion thins the enamel, so is not as obvious as a cavity. The evidence is that carbonated drinks are extremely acidic and that it causes acid erosion on enamel if heavily consumed . The worst case I've seen was a 9yr old child drinking 2 litres diet coke a day who had lost most of his tooth enamel. I know it happens because I see the evidence everyday as people drink more and more soft drinks.
Again, if you, a hygienist sees it and recognizes it, 1) wouldn't my hygienist see and recognize it and 2) wouldn't my dentist see and recognize it? Especially since you say this is well known problem with soda drinkers and the entire dentist office is well aware of my 6-8 cans per day habit. I've used 3 dentists regularly (meaning for 4 or 5 years) in the past 15 years. Surely 1 of them or 1 of the hygienists would have seen the issue and told me, wouldn't you think? What are the odds that I'd have 3 incompetent dentists and a bunch of incompetent hygienists over the past 15 years or so?
It is possible that you do have very strong enamel and therefore the effect of the acid is less on your teeth than on most, but you wanted articles: http://www.livescience.com/7198-acids-popular-sodas-erode-tooth-enamel.html. Again, this doesn't really have to do with the aspartame debate, it's more on the acid wear of phosphoric acid on teeth. Here's another article on bone density and soda intake: http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/features/soda-osteoporosis. The connection here is that phosphoric acid stops the body from absorbing calcium effectively - which would affect both teeth and bones. And a little more: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/phosphorus/.
Now back to the aspartame debate: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/DOCKETS/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000196.txt. Now bearing in mind that the author of this document works for the Centre for Apartame Toxicity. Here's the statement from the FDA made in 2006 that says that they don't agree with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that aspartame causes cancer because there wasn't enough information to come to that conclusion, but they also say they didn't get the full study. http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2006/ucm108650.htm
Again, I'm not saying anyone should go or no go, I'm explaining that there are much better things to drink and so for myself (as someone diagnosed with aspartame poisoning by my medical professional) I choose not to. I should be allowed to make that decision. It's not so much about the building blocks as the chains that are used to bind those building blocks. I'd rather eat a chicken breast, something that humans have been consuming for centuries rather than something chemically built that has not had that kind of history - we're only now being able to determine what effects using aspartame has on peopel that regularly consume it over long periods of time - it may have been developed 50 years ago, but diet pop was really what spurred it on to super stardom. Diet Coke was introduced in 1982 - 30 years is only just long enough to start reviewing that kind of evidence.0 -
All I know is that Jan 15, 2011...my 47 year old step-mother died from a massive stroke. The Dr's determined it was from a blood clot that formed in her leg making way to her brain, and cutting off oxygen. The Dr's also said that this was most likely a direct link to the large amounts of diet soda she consumed, containing aspartame.
That scared me enough to say I NEVER, ever, drink anything with aspartame. I also avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup and all other artificial, non-organic sweetners.
Some people obviously won't have this extreme of reactions, but it does happen...and I would rather avoid that.0 -
Well go and ask at your next examination, I'm not arguing or calling your dentist incompetent, just pointing out facts about acid erosion with regard to carbonated drinks as is part of the topic of the general conversation.I have a real sensitivity to aspartame now due to drinking quite a bit when I was younger. Now I have digestive problems when I have anything with aspartame in it.
The main issue that I have with it is that it tricks your body into thinjking that insulin has entered your blood stream, but when it looks for it, it cannot find it.
My dentist was horrified when I told her I had more than 2 cans of pop a week.......Forget about the aspartame, it's more about the acid in the soda - it wears away your dental enamel faster than anything.
THANK YOU!!
I'm always amazed when I read these posts especially replies such as "I drink 6 cans of diet coke a day, and I'm fine" because the chances are that your teeth are badly damaged and you don't realise it. As a dental hygienist I see this problem every single day, teeth badly eroded from acid in carbonated drinks, fruit juice and sports drinks. Avoid them for the sake of your teeth!
if my teeth are badly damaged, not only do I not know it but the dentist I see 2x a year also doesn't seem to know it either.
How about your hygienist? In my 10 yrs post qualification only 1 dentist I have worked with has ever mentioned it to a patient. Obviously I can't see your mouth, so can not pass opinion on you personally
wouldn't my dentist notice if my teeth were badly damaged? I'd not use a dentist that didn't know or didn't tell me of damage to my teeth. He readily tells me that soda is staining my teeth. So, he'd warn me about stains but not about serious damage?
I don't know your dentist, so its not my place to say. The problem with diagnosing erosion is that erosion thins the enamel, so is not as obvious as a cavity. The evidence is that carbonated drinks are extremely acidic and that it causes acid erosion on enamel if heavily consumed . The worst case I've seen was a 9yr old child drinking 2 litres diet coke a day who had lost most of his tooth enamel. I know it happens because I see the evidence everyday as people drink more and more soft drinks.
Again, if you, a hygienist sees it and recognizes it, 1) wouldn't my hygienist see and recognize it and 2) wouldn't my dentist see and recognize it? Especially since you say this is well known problem with soda drinkers and the entire dentist office is well aware of my 6-8 cans per day habit. I've used 3 dentists regularly (meaning for 4 or 5 years) in the past 15 years. Surely 1 of them or 1 of the hygienists would have seen the issue and told me, wouldn't you think? What are the odds that I'd have 3 incompetent dentists and a bunch of incompetent hygienists over the past 15 years or so?
It is possible that you do have very strong enamel and therefore the effect of the acid is less on your teeth than on most, but you wanted articles: http://www.livescience.com/7198-acids-popular-sodas-erode-tooth-enamel.html. Again, this doesn't really have to do with the aspartame debate, it's more on the acid wear of phosphoric acid on teeth. Here's another article on bone density and soda intake: http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/features/soda-osteoporosis. The connection here is that phosphoric acid stops the body from absorbing calcium effectively - which would affect both teeth and bones. And a little more: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/phosphorus/.
Now back to the aspartame debate: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/DOCKETS/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000196.txt. Now bearing in mind that the author of this document works for the Centre for Apartame Toxicity. Here's the statement from the FDA made in 2006 that says that they don't agree with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that aspartame causes cancer because there wasn't enough information to come to that conclusion, but they also say they didn't get the full study. http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2006/ucm108650.htm
Again, I'm not saying anyone should go or no go, I'm explaining that there are much better things to drink and so for myself (as someone diagnosed with aspartame poisoning by my medical professional) I choose not to. I should be allowed to make that decision. It's not so much about the building blocks as the chains that are used to bind those building blocks. I'd rather eat a chicken breast, something that humans have been consuming for centuries rather than something chemically built that has not had that kind of history - we're only now being able to determine what effects using aspartame has on peopel that regularly consume it over long periods of time - it may have been developed 50 years ago, but diet pop was really what spurred it on to super stardom. Diet Coke was introduced in 1982 - 30 years is only just long enough to start reviewing that kind of evidence.
Phosphoric acid has been excluded by scientists as the cause of lower calcium absorption. The actual cause happens to be caffeine. The fun part is that calcium is actually leached and eliminated on a constant basis, what scientists found is that caffeine actually speeds this process up, but for reasons that they haven't figured out yet, the body responds to this by actually slowing down calcium loss after the caffeine wears off. The end result? The body loses the same amount of calcium in a 24 hour period, regardless of the amount of soda consumed.
As for the acid erosion, like I mentioned earlier, there are many other foods and drinks that are equally acidic as soda, heck, even saliva can be just as acidic, and sometimes even more acidic than soda, and that's in your mouth 24/7.0
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