Wrongly labeled foods!

Can't you take paint off of a car with soda? That's a little scary.

Hell, dihydrogen monoxide won't just take off the paint of a car if it gets to the metal it will corrode it so badly the metal will literally fall apart!. Diet coke has huge levels of dihydrogen monoxide in it as well.

The citric acid, Phenylalanine does not come from natural sources. It's all chemically processed.

Lol what? Could you please explain to me what the difference between natural phenylalanine and "chemically processed" phenylalanine considering its a rather basic small molecule comprised of only a handful of atoms in total. Its a single amino acid, its simple. In my book whether you cook it up in a lab or cut it out of an animal if its molecular structure is the same its the same thing.

The citric acid, Phenylalanine does not come from natural sources. It's all chemically processed.

Lol what? Could you please explain to me what the difference between natural phenylalanine and "chemically processed" phenylalanine considering its a rather basic small molecule comprised of only a handful of atoms in total. Its a single amino acid, its simple. In my book whether you cook it up in a lab or cut it out of an animal if its molecular structure is the same its the same thing.

Isn't one D-phenylalanine and one L-Phenylalanine?

Well all amino acids save glycine are chiral so yeah I mean there is D and L-phenylalanine. If you just synthesized phenylalanine using some sort of solid-phase chemistry you would get a pretty much 50-50 enantomeric mixture of the 2 where as if you synthesized it in the lab biologically say with bacteria then it would be pure L-phenylalanine. Given that the chirality of amino acids in life is L-based I don't think D-amino acids would be digestable and would likely just pass through you without a caloric yield.

That said I stand by what I said, if it is the same molecule it doesn't matter whether it was synthesized or cut out of a cow. D and L are not the same molecule, they are optically isomeric. I'll admit I'm not sure in what context phenylalanine even came up in I just saw this post and had to roll my eyes a bit. As a biochemist I have a sore spot for people who equate the word "Chemical" with being bad, may have knee-jerked a bit there. What was the context in which phenylalanine was being discussed?

The citric acid, Phenylalanine does not come from natural sources. It's all chemically processed.

Lol what? Could you please explain to me what the difference between natural phenylalanine and "chemically processed" phenylalanine considering its a rather basic small molecule comprised of only a handful of atoms in total. Its a single amino acid, its simple. In my book whether you cook it up in a lab or cut it out of an animal if its molecular structure is the same its the same thing.

Isn't one D-phenylalanine and one L-Phenylalanine?

Well all amino acids save glycine are chiral so yeah I mean there is D and L-phenylalanine. If you just synthesized phenylalanine using some sort of solid-phase chemistry you would get a pretty much 50-50 enantomeric mixture of the 2 where as if you synthesized it in the lab biologically say with bacteria then it would be pure L-phenylalanine. Given that the chirality of amino acids in life is L-based I don't think D-amino acids would be digestable and would likely just pass through you without a caloric yield.

That said I stand by what I said, if it is the same molecule it doesn't matter whether it was synthesized or cut out of a cow. D and L are not the same molecule, they are optically isomeric. I'll admit I'm not sure in what context phenylalanine even came up in I just saw this post and had to roll my eyes a bit. As a biochemist I have a sore spot for people who equate the word "Chemical" with being bad, may have knee-jerked a bit there. What was the context in which phenylalanine was being discussed?

I'm not sure how it came up, I think it started with food labeling, then someone mentioned diet coke and all heck broke loose! lol. I'm a food chemist but I develop products rather than ingredients, and do labeling more often nowadays so I don't really know the answer to how it's different, but something in the back of my brain is telling me it is (maybe I'm wrong, it's the "you learned this at one point" voice lol).

I haven't read this, but it looks promising! http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0302759

Maybe it came up in context of aspartame? Aspartame is just a methyl ester of L-aspartate and L-phenylalanine so in that context no it is the exact same pheylalanine that you would find in protein. D-phenylalanine wouldn't cause you any harm anyways though it would just pass through you essentially. Aspartame is just protein. It is digested, just like protein and is 4 calories per gram...just like protein. The only reason that aspartame is "DIET" is because it is 200 times sweeter to our tastebuds than sugar so you need 200 times less of it to flavor a drink and therefore the amount of calories fall low enough to be called "zero" by the FDA basically.

Here is the thing. There is a disorder called PKU (phenylketonuria) where suffers cannot metabolically digest phenylalanine and large amounts of phenylalanine become toxic. As a result of this disorder I believe FDA started having things that contained phenylalanine labeled as containing phenylalanine so that those with PKU would be aware. Problem is when the general populace sees a big chemical-sounding word in their ingredients list along with a "warning, this contains X" they assume X is bad somehow. So I think that's where that got started. No...phenylalanine is not bad for you with the rare exception of you having PKU.

The citric acid, Phenylalanine does not come from natural sources. It's all chemically processed.

Lol what? Could you please explain to me what the difference between natural phenylalanine and "chemically processed" phenylalanine considering its a rather basic small molecule comprised of only a handful of atoms in total. Its a single amino acid, its simple. In my book whether you cook it up in a lab or cut it out of an animal if its molecular structure is the same its the same thing.

Isn't one D-phenylalanine and one L-Phenylalanine?

Well all amino acids save glycine are chiral so yeah I mean there is D and L-phenylalanine. If you just synthesized phenylalanine using some sort of solid-phase chemistry you would get a pretty much 50-50 enantomeric mixture of the 2 where as if you synthesized it in the lab biologically say with bacteria then it would be pure L-phenylalanine. Given that the chirality of amino acids in life is L-based I don't think D-amino acids would be digestable and would likely just pass through you without a caloric yield.

That said I stand by what I said, if it is the same molecule it doesn't matter whether it was synthesized or cut out of a cow. D and L are not the same molecule, they are optically isomeric. I'll admit I'm not sure in what context phenylalanine even came up in I just saw this post and had to roll my eyes a bit. As a biochemist I have a sore spot for people who equate the word "Chemical" with being bad, may have knee-jerked a bit there. What was the context in which phenylalanine was being discussed?

Chirality doesn't mean there aren't necessarily metabolic pathways for a molecule. D-PA is metabolised and has seen uses for pain management. Parkinson's, etc...