Aspartame (Crystal Light, and other 'diet drinks')

So many mixed messages about aspartame! My cousin is a holistic nutritionist and she is VERY anti-aspartame. However one my magazines from work (nursing magazine) said they really are not that bad and don't cause all the memory loss or cancers that some believe they do. I also read a study they did on rats that did not show a real risk to them. I have read however that people who drink a lot of diet drinks tend to have a higher waistline. I think that is more diet pop related though. I buy the MIO bottles, they flavour your water with the tiniest bit and are so tasty! And it's still water in the end as opposed to diet pop.

I am trying to cut back on the chemical sweetners because I am not sure about their long term side effects. Also our body really does better with stuff that is grown naturally. So I have been adding a few more things with truvia in them and reducing the aspartame and splenda.
I still have the chemical sweetners time to time but just have cut back on how much and how often. Moderation is always better, even with stuff that is natural.

This topic has got me so confused, there is so much back and forth on it, I don't know what to think. I quit drinking regular pop all together, once in a while a diet soda is ok, but it makes me feel hungry. I always wonder if its aspartame or something else in it. I drink a lot of water, and add lemons to it when I get sick of regular water.

There was a study that showed that people who consumed artificial sweeteners via diet soda tended to weigh more and the hypothesis was that it caused them to crave sweets. I didn't read that study, only the notes from it. Conversely I did recently read a study that found that people who drank diet soda actually ate less sweet food compared to people drinking water, but that water drinkers ate more fruits and vegetables than the diet soda drinkers. They all lost weight, but that was because both groups (diet soda and water) were switched to their respective beverages from sugared soda.

It's widely understood that aspartame is the least healthy of artificial sweeteners on the market. Sucralose should not have any negative biological effects. Sodium saccharine was shown to cause bladder cancer in mice when they were fed, you know, like 10 times their body weight in the stuff per day until they were practically just peeing it back out. If you consume ten times your body weight in anything you would likely get bladder cancer as well...

Water > Sucralose > Saccharine > Aspartame

Sincerely, someone who has read enough studies to have no reason for drinking as much aspartame as she does but cannot seem to make the switch from Diet Coke to Diet Rite because OMG HAVE YOU TASTED DIET RITE? THAT STUFF'S NASTY.

Oh and truvia is supposed to be the "best" artificial sweetener. The stevia sweeteners are plant extracts with sugar alcohol added to "pad" them. These are the ones that are safe, per my pediatrician, to give to my toddler, and per my midwife, to drink while pregnant. Truvia is essentially dried stevia tea and sugar alcohol. Crystal Light used to have those water bottle flavor packets with stevia but I couldn't find them. I did find an off-brand powdered lemonade sweetened with stevia but it's in pitcher-sized packets.

There was a study that showed that people who consumed artificial sweeteners via diet soda tended to weigh more and the hypothesis was that it caused them to crave sweets. I didn't read that study, only the notes from it. Conversely I did recently read a study that found that people who drank diet soda actually ate less sweet food compared to people drinking water, but that water drinkers ate more fruits and vegetables than the diet soda drinkers. They all lost weight, but that was because both groups (diet soda and water) were switched to their respective beverages from sugared soda.

It's widely understood that aspartame is the least healthy of artificial sweeteners on the market. Sucralose should not have any negative biological effects. Sodium saccharine was shown to cause bladder cancer in mice when they were fed, you know, like 10 times their body weight in the stuff per day until they were practically just peeing it back out. If you consume ten times your body weight in anything you would likely get bladder cancer as well...

Water > Sucralose > Saccharine > Aspartame

Sincerely, someone who has read enough studies to have no reason for drinking as much aspartame as she does but cannot seem to make the switch from Diet Coke to Diet Rite because OMG HAVE YOU TASTED DIET RITE? THAT STUFF'S NASTY.

Do people who are overweight drink diet soda or does diet soda make people overweight? I tend to lean towards the former, tbh,

I know a person who's overweight and drinks normal soda. Does normal soda make you fat? Correlation or causation? We may never know...

But wait. My husband drinks normal soda and has never been overweight!

Could it be that soda has no effect and it's simple about amount of consumption vs what you're consuming?!






Nah. That's crazy.

There was a study that showed that people who consumed artificial sweeteners via diet soda tended to weigh more and the hypothesis was that it caused them to crave sweets. I didn't read that study, only the notes from it. Conversely I did recently read a study that found that people who drank diet soda actually ate less sweet food compared to people drinking water, but that water drinkers ate more fruits and vegetables than the diet soda drinkers. They all lost weight, but that was because both groups (diet soda and water) were switched to their respective beverages from sugared soda.

It's widely understood that aspartame is the least healthy of artificial sweeteners on the market. Sucralose should not have any negative biological effects. Sodium saccharine was shown to cause bladder cancer in mice when they were fed, you know, like 10 times their body weight in the stuff per day until they were practically just peeing it back out. If you consume ten times your body weight in anything you would likely get bladder cancer as well...

Water > Sucralose > Saccharine > Aspartame

Sincerely, someone who has read enough studies to have no reason for drinking as much aspartame as she does but cannot seem to make the switch from Diet Coke to Diet Rite because OMG HAVE YOU TASTED DIET RITE? THAT STUFF'S NASTY.

Do people who are overweight drink diet soda or does diet soda make people overweight? I tend to lean towards the former, tbh,

I know a person who's overweight and drinks normal soda. Does normal soda make you fat? Correlation or causation? We may never know...

But wait. My husband drinks normal soda and has never been overweight!

Could it be that soda has no effect and it's simple about amount of consumption vs what you're consuming?!






Nah. That's crazy.

Aspartame gives me headaches. I don't believe it gives you cancer and stuff like that but one glass of Crystal Light is instant headache for me.

This would be classified as a good reason to avoid products containing aspartame

Personally I avoid the artificial sweeteners, aspartame has been shown to be carcinogenic. Plus I read a report last week showing that people are ending up with MS like symptoms and loss of use etc, and being mis understood by a lot of doctors as MS when the underlying problem is aspartame poisoning, and once the sweeteners had been removed from their diet, normal bodily function returned, but it's your choice...

Also sweeteners of any kind are acidic to the body's PH balance along with other chemicals that we use on a daily basis, and the body needs to naturally retain fat to neutralise them as fat is alkaline. This is in part why people that are dependant on meds really struggle with their weight...

This is in part why people that are dependant on meds really struggle with their weight...

:indifferent: