Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

Seriously. If you want to see if something is carcinogenic don't test it in animals that develop spontaneous tumors 45% of the time anyways.

The logic for the SD rats is that this is an animal model in which it is easy to potentiate a response. If an agent changes the response rate from 1 in a hundred and doubles the rate one isn't going to see it very often and statistical significance will remain low.

In an animal model where the base rate is high, a small induced incidence rate change will appear easily. It's one of many reasonable early level two screening model for that - even if the results had been strong, other test are needed.
THere are a variety of products that test as carcinogens in mice and rats and that are not in humans (for a variety of reasons from different biology to volumetric clearance to "unkown". These models are pretty good for genotoxic (damage to DNA or RNA) carcinogens but would be next to useless for other types of factors (immunosuppression, form factor, contact...)....

One tests with tests that have been validated by prior work, the model chosen is from a bank of succesful tools - however none is really a perfect method. Plus we are slowly trying to move away from animal models ...

I don't drink aspartame because it tastes terrible, but drink whatever you want. I don't think it's likely to kill you but I also don't think it's particularly healthy. Give me unsweet iced tea over diet coke any day.

I'm not anti-aspartame, but I do find it odd, and perhaps a little inappropriate, that his is stickied on a fitness/calorie counting site. Is MFP somehow funded by an aspartame company?

I thought that was odd as well, but some people really love their diet drinks I guess.

I also thought it was odd that the article going around the other day comparing people who drank diet drinks (which included tea and flavored water) kept getting sold as 'diet SODA is healthy' when it did not isolate soda.

I would find it inappropriate if there weren't daily posts about people giving up drinks because of evil Aspartame. To me, this thread somewhat nips that in the bud (although I know we will still see them, and noobs probably won't read this).

Minor threadjack, since Pascal's wager is new to me--

Is it Pascal's wager? Don't both sides have to be indefensible by reason (going off of Wikipedia, so I'm trying to understand an area well outside my comfort zone). One side, aspartame is harmless is supported by reason (science). The opposite, that it is harmful, is not, rather being based on supposition unsupported by science? Is it still Pascal's wager? Just curious, I really don't know.

Pascals wager works for the "aspartame is bad" crowd.

"It doesn't hurt to NOT consume aspartame so why would you?"

It's used a lot when debating the existencr of a god too, but I won't go into that

This post is the perfect case of how the history of mankind repeats itself.

Indeed, throughout the history of mankind we have seen two things over and over: trying to explain the world with science of the time and improving the technology so that science falls behind.

Unfortunately, this case looks the same with the same mistakes. Trying to explain the world of the human body as a pure biochemical machine with the current knowledge of novel science of biochemistry and this is the flaw in the logic of this post! It's not your advanced skills, studies and understanding of biochemistry, it's that this is limited to the current advances in biochemistry itself!

So the real question would be:

"Can current Science assess the safety of artificial sweeteners?"

Or is this another "It'll never fly" case of science?

Anyway, the topic is interesting enough. So, I'm writing an article about it.

So, are simply supposed to sit around and wait until science can answer every single question before we do anything?

Thing is, science isn't simply the best tool we have for understanding the world around us (including our own bodies), it is the ONLY tool we have for doing so. And while we probably never will know everything there is to know, and sometimes get led a little astray, science does at least tend to head us in that direction. Read this: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

I was wondering about how artificial sweetener work. I'm guessing since it breaks down exactly like any food breaks down while being digested that the the reason one does not gain weight by consuming it (assuming they would gain weight from the alternative sweetener by over consuming, thus the industry making diet drinks for the new demand) would be because in this new molecular composition it tastes sweeter thus it is required to use much less of it than the alternative sweetener so not as many calories, thus not the cover consumption, thus not the weight gain? I've read some articles about artificial sweeteners (but don't even remember which ones) that seem to talk more about insulin issues than cancer or toxicity. I find this all very interesting and appreciate the conversation.

The reason diet soda is "diet" even though aspartame breaks down like anything else is because aspartame is about 700 times sweeter than sugar so you need 700 times less of it. It isn't that aspartame has zero calories it is that so little aspartame is used to sweeten a drink that its number of calories is negligible.

As I broke down in my post 180mg of aspartame is by weight about 162mg protein by weight. We know that protein is about 4 calories per gram so that means the aspartame in the soda is about 0.7 calories. That is so low they just call it zero. Actually I think with the aspartame is some carbs to bulk it when they add it so I think I've heard a can of diet soda actually has about 3 or 4 calories but that is low enough that they can call it zero.

I haven't really seen anything to support the idea that aspartame triggers insulin production. The assumption seems to be that because it tastes sweet our bodies would produce insulin but I am not sure that is actually true and not just based on "common sense" associated with how insulin is related to sugar and sugar tastes sweet and aspartame tastes sweet therefore...

I am not saying aspartame does not cause insulin production because I honestly don't know, I haven't seen anything to suggest that is true and I am skeptical since protein doesn't cause insulin production and aspartame is protein.

Protein is insulinogenic, possibly more so than carbohydrates. See here for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20060863

This isn't to say aspartame is insulinogenic. I would doubt it, just because the amounts ingested are so low compared to a high protein meal.