Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

That is why I put "toxic" in quotes, because yes as you say water is not toxic. What is the LD50 of aspartame, I was unaware that there was a lethal dose of aspartame.

Putting something in quotes doesn't removing the misleading aspect of the statement.

The LD50 is around 10g/kg in what I've seen. These levels are unattainable in normal human consumption though and based on rats/mice studies.

The establishment of LD50 though still does not imply safe consumption at relative levels. To give a comparison the levels of arsenic found in apple juice a while ago wasn't even enough to reach the LD50 in an adult drinking gallons over their entire lives, but we know that arsenic causes nerve damage and isn't considered safe in any dose. There is an LD50 of sodium is 1.1 g/kg which the average American consumes every month. The differences between sodium, arsenic, and aspartame is that two of them are really well understood and been studied for centuries.

Quite frankly even decades of research around a particular substance doesn't guarantee safety. We are learning about chemicals and compounds all the time. Think of how long it took for smoking to be recognized as unsafe. In fact the American Medical Association was a big paid advertiser for tobacco for many years. So just because we have a few studies over the decades that say it's safe doesn't mean it doesn't warrant more investigation.

P.S. The NIH spends about 30 billion per year so I don't think their funds are running dry anytime soon.

I grew up with Saccharine, which was " absolutely 100% " safe....until it wasn't anymore......these days it's considered dangerous.....who would have thought it 50 or more years ago.

What is wrong with saccharine?

50% Phenylalanine, Aspartic Asic, and Methyl Ester which is basically wood alcohol. Yeah, not scary at all. Let me guess, MSG is perfectly safe, too?

You claim that the same building blocks in the protein are natural in everything we eat, they may be up to 4% of Phenylalanine, not 50%. Our bodies still don't know how to react to such high percentages.

When the body breaks down Aspartame, it breaks down the Methy Alcohol. The claim that they take in Fruit that you take in more methanol. In nature, this methanol in fruit is bound to pectic, which the body cannot break down and separate. In aspartame, this is pure & free in our bodies, and it turns into formaldehyde.

Aspartame, in time, breaks down into Diketopiperazine, basically a carcinogen. Still think its perfectly safe?

You're plenty intelligent, this is obvious by your posts. I'm just not sure why the bias. Aspartame is definitely not safe.

I'm not sure you are understand what a percentage means. Protein has phenylalanine and aspartate in 3.6% and 5.5% by weight amounts while Aspartame has it in 50% and 40% by weight amounts true...but we eat 100s of grams of protein while only eating a few milligrams of aspartame. You are not going to get more phenylalanine and aspartate from a diet soda than you are from a handful of nuts or a piece of meat. They are just amino acids, there is no toxicity associated with them.

Methanol IS toxic in that its further metabolized to formaldehyde. That said there is a lot more methanol in apple juice or orange juice or any fruit juice than there is in the amount you would get in a soda. Your comment about it being "bound to pectic" does not make any sense to me and I would ask you to provide a source for why you think this and why you think it is not metabolized as methanol. In both cases the amount of methanol is far far FAR below a toxic level. If you drank enough soda to get to toxic levels of methanol you would have died long before hand from drinking that much water.

As for aspartame being metabolized into Diketopiperazine I've never even heard of that compound so I would ask you to please cite your source for that information before I can respond. The metabolic breakdown products of aspartame is aspartate, phenylalanine and methanol and that is all as far as I am aware.

I have no bias here, these are just the facts.

Diketopiperazine isn't a compound, for starters. It's a class of molecules (piperazine rings with two ketones). As to DKPs being carcinogenic, I dunno. They use them in medicine.

5-Benzyl-3,6-dioxo-2-piperazineacetic acid is the specific DKP that's associated with aspartame. Apparently it's also found in cocoa powder.

PS: I have a Diet Dr. Pepper habit to the tune of 2L a day..... and have for a very long time. If something bad were going to happen it probably would have already..... lol

I'm admittedly not familiar with that compound class. Is it "associated" with aspartame meaning its potentially a step in its synthesis or is it a biological metabolic breakdown product as the poster who brought it up suggested.

It's a decomp product.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo00247a018

So if you had aspartame powder it would degrade slowly into DKP I imagine. That said I bet the biological breakdown of DKP follows a similar pathway and you would likely get phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol out of it in the end after it passed through the body. I'm not sure about that but the LD50 of DKP is quite high so it isn't toxic at the levels we are talking about regardless.

Diketopiperazine isn't a compound, for starters. It's a class of molecules (piperazine rings with two ketones). As to DKPs being carcinogenic, I dunno. They use them in medicine.

5-Benzyl-3,6-dioxo-2-piperazineacetic acid is the specific DKP that's associated with aspartame. Apparently it's also found in cocoa powder.

PS: I have a Diet Dr. Pepper habit to the tune of 2L a day..... and have for a very long time. If something bad were going to happen it probably would have already..... lol

Here is the MSDS for DKP http://pharmacycode.com/msds/Diketopiperazine . Its LD50 is 3800mg/kg. That means even if aspartame was pure DKP you would have to drink 1,500 cans of soda to reach that dosage.

To back that up, here's an abstract supporting it!

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/15918306_Toxicity_of_aspartame_and_its_diketopiperazine_for_Wistar_rats_by_dietary_administration_for_104_weeks

Thanks conquering. You have a chemistry or medchem background I assume?

ETA: Ah biochem cool.

Diketopiperazine isn't a compound, for starters. It's a class of molecules (piperazine rings with two ketones). As to DKPs being carcinogenic, I dunno. They use them in medicine.

5-Benzyl-3,6-dioxo-2-piperazineacetic acid is the specific DKP that's associated with aspartame. Apparently it's also found in cocoa powder.

PS: I have a Diet Dr. Pepper habit to the tune of 2L a day..... and have for a very long time. If something bad were going to happen it probably would have already..... lol

Here is the MSDS for DKP http://pharmacycode.com/msds/Diketopiperazine . Its LD50 is 3800mg/kg. That means even if aspartame was pure DKP you would have to drink 1,500 cans of soda to reach that dosage.

To back that up, here's an abstract supporting it!

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/15918306_Toxicity_of_aspartame_and_its_diketopiperazine_for_Wistar_rats_by_dietary_administration_for_104_weeks

Thanks conquering. You have a chemistry or medchem background I assume?

I answered that in the edit I just wrote on the last post. I'm just a lowly undergrad with one of my majors in biochem. I don't even know if I'll get the chance to finish the degree, so I can't say it's a background. Just an interest.

Well you sound like you know your stuff so I appreciate the info.

Now that that has been answered for me... I have also heard recently that the caramel colouring is actually the toxic/carcinogenic culprit in diet soft drinks, rather than aspartame. Anyone have scientific info on that?

Well no to be honest. Don't take that to mean that there is, it just means I haven't looked into it at all and I'm being honest about that. I don't know just means I don't know.

I, of course, would be very skeptical of such a claim and would want evidence provided before I believed it.