Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

I apologize for not reading all of the posts in this thread, but it's a lot to jump into.

I don't know about you guys but I refuse to consume something that gives rats cancer. I'll stick to my birch xylitol and my stevia. Better to drink a tall glass of water than to drink a tall glass of diet coke, too. There isn't nearly as much aspartame in gum as there is in coke so I'll have a stick of gum every once in a while.

I would like to say several things. This is my first forum post on MFP and honestly, I was just bored this evening and decided to browse the threads. I read all of these messages, although not the ones from the previous thread. Here's my anecdote:

I'm in my 4th year of my Ph.D. studying conservation and ecology. Although I am an ecologist, I am much better read than most ecologists in molecular work.

Scientifically, I agree with those who say that aspartame, as far as science knows, is harmless.

Personally, fake sugars irritate my migraines. Included in my list of triggers are also: getting a sunburn, prolonged periods of loud noises, sleeping too long, not sleeping enough, not napping when my body says to, napping when my body says to, stress, not drinking enough water, drinking too much water, the smell of red onions, eating red onions, pulling a muscle, wearing my contacts too long, not wearing my contacts, having cold feet for too long, being hot too long, and thinking too long about my migraine triggers (jk, but seriously...)

You get the idea. Basically, if something is out-of-routine, I get a migraine. These migraines, by the way, got 10x worse when I entered grad school. Probably from a mix of stress and lifestyle changes. Mostly stress.

Way back when, before grad school, I switched from regular soda to diet soda and lost 20 lbs. It was amazing. I miss those days. I switched back after grad school because the migraines were getting awful and severely disrupting my work. I had gained those 20 back and now have another 30 post-grad school entry.

My point is that the neurological diseases like migraine, for which aspartame is a common trigger, are a mix of physiology, environmental changes, and nocebo effects. And unfortunately, it doesn't matter if we recognize that a trigger "sounds crazy," or if we know about nocebos. Once we've assigned meaning to a trigger, our messed up and overactive brains latch onto it.

In conclusion, I agree, as a scientist, that there are no studies to date conclusively linking fake sugars to diseases. But I also recognize that in some cases, like migraine, there is a real effect. Unfortunately for me, even a 12-oz stevia-sweetened soda causes a 3 day ordeal, so fake sugars are out. So I think, unfortunately, the answer will always be anecdotal. If you can eat it, great. If not, well, too bad.

EDITED: changed a typo "feed" to "feet"

It's an interesting thread thanks. I was wondering if anyone had an informed opinion about saccharin, as I prefer it's flavour to aspartame. I assume it's safe from what I've seen, and I'll probably keep consuming it in my coffee regardless, though I'm curious. I believe It was involved in another rat cancer scare, though it's since been shown to be safe for humans? I can't say I've looked into it properly.

I was wondering this as well, I also prefer saccharin and consume it daily in my coffee. I remember back when Sweet n Low had a warning label, which wasn't that long ago, and I'm sure had a lot to do with people's aversion and distrust of artificial sweeteners. Heck, I remember going to restaurants and the packets of sweeteners would be there on the table, and the warning label would be a conversation piece while we waited for our meals.

Thank you for speaking on aspartame in an educated way. Since we aren't farmers much anymore, like me and my grandpa, too much wrong has been done to our food. Cancer is widespread and not only pollution but our food supply is the problem I believe.

And this is why a number of scientists believe that Aspartame IS scary:

"Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine—the latter of which has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group. This is what provides the majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very weak, allowing the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol.

You may have heard the claim that aspartame is harmless because methanol is also found in fruits and vegetables. However, in these whole foods the methanol is firmly bonded to pectin, which allows it to be safely passed through your digestive tract. This is not the case for the methanol created by aspartame. There, it's not bonded to anything that can help eliminate it from your body. That's problem number one...

Problem number two relates to the fact that humans are the only mammals who are NOT equipped with a protective biological mechanism that breaks down methanol into harmless formic acid. This is why animal testing of aspartame does not fully apply to humans.

According to Dr. Monte, the fact that methyl alcohol is metabolized differently in humans compared to other animals has been known since 1940. And according to the featured paper, rhesus monkeys do not appear to have the same defenses against methanol toxicity as mice do. This basically negates much of the animal research that has been used to 'prove' aspartame's safety."

Go!

ETA: Methanol is toxic to the liver and kidneys as well as being neurotoxic.

I looked up pectin and its metabolism and pectin is metabolized by the bacteria that live in our gut so anything bound to pectin would be released there in the large intestine.

I have not read this study, this is a preliminary look based on a google search of pectin and methanol. The abstract of the study describes that 90.7% of pectin is metabolised by our gut flora which releases methanol into our system.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/47/5/848.full.pdf


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9267548

"After the consumption of fruit, the concentration of methanol in the human body increases by as much as an order of magnitude. This is due to the degradation of natural pectin (which is esterified with methyl alcohol) in the human colon. In vivo tests performed by means of proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry show that consumed pectin in either a pure form (10 to 15 g) or a natural form (in 1 kg of apples) induces a significant increase of methanol in the breath (and by inference in the blood) of humans. The amount generated from pectin (0.4 to 1.4 g) is approximately equivalent to the total daily endogenous production (measured to be 0.3 to 0.6 g/day) or that obtained from 0.3 liters of 80-proof brandy (calculated to be 0.5 g). This dietary pectin may contribute to the development of nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver."

Note that the amount from an apple is significantly higher by several orders of magnitude than the amount you get from a diet soda.

So that is my answer to that. Does that satisfy your concern or did I just convince you that apples are toxic?

Run for your lives---it is that poison apple! That's probably the REAL meaning of the Snow White story! :happy:

Seriously, though, there is at least one researcher who considers fructose toxic because of the way that it is metabolized. Fruit, in normal amounts, is probably not a problem. But taking in a large amount of fructose (through drinking juices and soda pop in addition to eating sweets) probably contributes to NAFLD and eventually cirrhosis in individuals who consume a lot of those substances. Some researchers have already made the connection between "fruitarian" diets and pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs, as you may know, was a "fruitarian" for many years--he even named his company after his favorite fruit. The excessive amount of fructose in a diet composed exclusively of fruit is probably a risk. A balanced amount of natural foods are likely the best recipe for health.

I looked up pectin and its metabolism and pectin is metabolized by the bacteria that live in our gut so anything bound to pectin would be released there in the large intestine.

I have not read this study, this is a preliminary look based on a google search of pectin and methanol. The abstract of the study describes that 90.7% of pectin is metabolised by our gut flora which releases methanol into our system.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/47/5/848.full.pdf


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9267548

"After the consumption of fruit, the concentration of methanol in the human body increases by as much as an order of magnitude. This is due to the degradation of natural pectin (which is esterified with methyl alcohol) in the human colon. In vivo tests performed by means of proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry show that consumed pectin in either a pure form (10 to 15 g) or a natural form (in 1 kg of apples) induces a significant increase of methanol in the breath (and by inference in the blood) of humans. The amount generated from pectin (0.4 to 1.4 g) is approximately equivalent to the total daily endogenous production (measured to be 0.3 to 0.6 g/day) or that obtained from 0.3 liters of 80-proof brandy (calculated to be 0.5 g). This dietary pectin may contribute to the development of nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver."

Note that the amount from an apple is significantly higher by several orders of magnitude than the amount you get from a diet soda.

So that is my answer to that. Does that satisfy your concern or did I just convince you that apples are toxic?

Run for your lives---it is that poison apple! That's probably the REAL meaning of the Snow White story! :happy:

Seriously, though, there is at least one researcher who considers fructose toxic because of the way that it is metabolized. Fruit, in normal amounts, is probably not a problem. But taking in a large amount of fructose (through drinking juices and soda pop in addition to eating sweets) probably contributes to NAFLD and eventually cirrhosis in individuals who consume a lot of those substances. Some researchers have already made the connection between "fruitarian" diets and pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs, as you may know, was a "fruitarian" for many years--he even named his company after his favorite fruit. The excessive amount of fructose in a diet composed exclusively of fruit is probably a risk. A balanced amount of natural foods are likely the best recipe for health.

Not sure why you started on a tangent about fructose. The point here is no, I don't think fruit is toxic...the authors of those studies I doubt feel that fruit is toxic, you don't feel that fruit is toxic and yet fruit has considerably more methanol content than a soda with aspartame.

So you have two choices here. You can either admit that methanol is not a reason to consider aspartame toxic or you can claim that 18mg of methanol IS something to be concerned by in which case you need to justify why you aren't concerned by fruit and also why you think that low dose would have a meaningful affect on the body.

Well I suppose you have a third choice which is the choice you have taken thusfar which is just to not acknowledge these points and change the topic to yet another reason you feel aspartame is toxic thus moving the goal post.

I wasn't trying to "move the goal post"--you really should lighten up (getting so annoyed is really not good for your b.p.). My point was and always has been--why expose ourselves unnecessarily to additional synthetic chemicals? Many of the estimated 80,000 synthetic chemicals are not avoidable so why not avoid the ones that we can avoid? I can live quite well without Aspartame (and even added sugar, for that matter). By the way, I did acknowledge at least some of what you said. The dose really does make the poison.

I looked up pectin and its metabolism and pectin is metabolized by the bacteria that live in our gut so anything bound to pectin would be released there in the large intestine.

I have not read this study, this is a preliminary look based on a google search of pectin and methanol. The abstract of the study describes that 90.7% of pectin is metabolised by our gut flora which releases methanol into our system.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/47/5/848.full.pdf


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9267548

"After the consumption of fruit, the concentration of methanol in the human body increases by as much as an order of magnitude. This is due to the degradation of natural pectin (which is esterified with methyl alcohol) in the human colon. In vivo tests performed by means of proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry show that consumed pectin in either a pure form (10 to 15 g) or a natural form (in 1 kg of apples) induces a significant increase of methanol in the breath (and by inference in the blood) of humans. The amount generated from pectin (0.4 to 1.4 g) is approximately equivalent to the total daily endogenous production (measured to be 0.3 to 0.6 g/day) or that obtained from 0.3 liters of 80-proof brandy (calculated to be 0.5 g). This dietary pectin may contribute to the development of nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver."

Note that the amount from an apple is significantly higher by several orders of magnitude than the amount you get from a diet soda.

So that is my answer to that. Does that satisfy your concern or did I just convince you that apples are toxic?

Run for your lives---it is that poison apple! That's probably the REAL meaning of the Snow White story! :happy:

Seriously, though, there is at least one researcher who considers fructose toxic because of the way that it is metabolized. Fruit, in normal amounts, is probably not a problem. But taking in a large amount of fructose (through drinking juices and soda pop in addition to eating sweets) probably contributes to NAFLD and eventually cirrhosis in individuals who consume a lot of those substances. Some researchers have already made the connection between "fruitarian" diets and pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs, as you may know, was a "fruitarian" for many years--he even named his company after his favorite fruit. The excessive amount of fructose in a diet composed exclusively of fruit is probably a risk. A balanced amount of natural foods are likely the best recipe for health.

Not sure why you started on a tangent about fructose. The point here is no, I don't think fruit is toxic...the authors of those studies I doubt feel that fruit is toxic, you don't feel that fruit is toxic and yet fruit has considerably more methanol content than a soda with aspartame.

So you have two choices here. You can either admit that methanol is not a reason to consider aspartame toxic or you can claim that 18mg of methanol IS something to be concerned by in which case you need to justify why you aren't concerned by fruit and also why you think that low dose would have a meaningful affect on the body.

Well I suppose you have a third choice which is the choice you have taken thusfar which is just to not acknowledge these points and change the topic to yet another reason you feel aspartame is toxic thus moving the goal post.

I wasn't trying to "move the goal post"--you really should lighten up (getting so annoyed is really not good for your b.p.). My point was and always has been--why expose ourselves unnecessarily to additional synthetic chemicals? Many of the estimated 80,000 synthetic chemicals are not avoidable so why not avoid the ones that we can avoid? I can live quite well without Aspartame (and even added sugar, for that matter). By the way, I did acknowledge at least some of what you said. The dose really does make the poison.

I'm actually not annoyed, I think people read annoyance into my posts because I am blunt and brusk but I'm not angry or anything so no worries. Why I was concerned by the goal-post move is earlier I took a long time to show where aspartyl-phenylalanine actually WAS very common in natural foods and gave chicken breast as an example after you stated that it did not occur in nature (page 2 of this thread) You just changed the topic and didn't respond and I was concerned you would just be doing that again here.

There is no difference between natural and "synthetic" chemicals. Chemicals are chemicals, what matters is how they interact not where they came from. Whether they are made in the gut of an animal or in a vat in a plant they are both synthesized. If you gravitate towards natural chemicals and try to abstain from synthetic chemicals you aren't really doing much of anything useful. There are "bad" natural chemicals and there are "good" synthetic chemicals and vis versa. Their origin has nothing to do with their mode of action.

If methanol comes from fruit or if methanol comes from a methyl addition to a compound caried out in a large vat it doesn't matter...it is still methanol. Same goes for any chemical. This idea that somehow food isn't just a collection of chemicals

I simply don't think we are smart enough to know the long-term effect of many chemicals, let alone the combined effects of a LOT of them. Since we have been perfectly designed to exist in the natural world (without added man made chemicals) I am inclined to vote with my dollars and opt for the least exposure to added chemicals and I advise others to do the same. We already know that many pesticides have estrogenic activity in the body--why would we want to knowingly consume them? And I'm not trying to "move the goal posts" here--I am honestly trying to discuss whether added man made chemicals of any sort are necessary or desirable. With cancer rates rising among the young (breast, colorectal and oral cancers are particularly striking as they used to be seen almost exclusively starting in the 5th decade), it may be time to strongly question our "better living through chemistry" mindset.

I looked up pectin and its metabolism and pectin is metabolized by the bacteria that live in our gut so anything bound to pectin would be released there in the large intestine.

I have not read this study, this is a preliminary look based on a google search of pectin and methanol. The abstract of the study describes that 90.7% of pectin is metabolised by our gut flora which releases methanol into our system.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/47/5/848.full.pdf


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9267548

"After the consumption of fruit, the concentration of methanol in the human body increases by as much as an order of magnitude. This is due to the degradation of natural pectin (which is esterified with methyl alcohol) in the human colon. In vivo tests performed by means of proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry show that consumed pectin in either a pure form (10 to 15 g) or a natural form (in 1 kg of apples) induces a significant increase of methanol in the breath (and by inference in the blood) of humans. The amount generated from pectin (0.4 to 1.4 g) is approximately equivalent to the total daily endogenous production (measured to be 0.3 to 0.6 g/day) or that obtained from 0.3 liters of 80-proof brandy (calculated to be 0.5 g). This dietary pectin may contribute to the development of nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver."

Note that the amount from an apple is significantly higher by several orders of magnitude than the amount you get from a diet soda.

So that is my answer to that. Does that satisfy your concern or did I just convince you that apples are toxic?

Run for your lives---it is that poison apple! That's probably the REAL meaning of the Snow White story! :happy:

Seriously, though, there is at least one researcher who considers fructose toxic because of the way that it is metabolized. Fruit, in normal amounts, is probably not a problem. But taking in a large amount of fructose (through drinking juices and soda pop in addition to eating sweets) probably contributes to NAFLD and eventually cirrhosis in individuals who consume a lot of those substances. Some researchers have already made the connection between "fruitarian" diets and pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs, as you may know, was a "fruitarian" for many years--he even named his company after his favorite fruit. The excessive amount of fructose in a diet composed exclusively of fruit is probably a risk. A balanced amount of natural foods are likely the best recipe for health.

Not sure why you started on a tangent about fructose. The point here is no, I don't think fruit is toxic...the authors of those studies I doubt feel that fruit is toxic, you don't feel that fruit is toxic and yet fruit has considerably more methanol content than a soda with aspartame.

So you have two choices here. You can either admit that methanol is not a reason to consider aspartame toxic or you can claim that 18mg of methanol IS something to be concerned by in which case you need to justify why you aren't concerned by fruit and also why you think that low dose would have a meaningful affect on the body.

Well I suppose you have a third choice which is the choice you have taken thusfar which is just to not acknowledge these points and change the topic to yet another reason you feel aspartame is toxic thus moving the goal post.

I wasn't trying to "move the goal post"--you really should lighten up (getting so annoyed is really not good for your b.p.). My point was and always has been--why expose ourselves unnecessarily to additional synthetic chemicals? Many of the estimated 80,000 synthetic chemicals are not avoidable so why not avoid the ones that we can avoid? I can live quite well without Aspartame (and even added sugar, for that matter). By the way, I did acknowledge at least some of what you said. The dose really does make the poison.

I'm actually not annoyed, I think people read annoyance into my posts because I am blunt and brusk but I'm not angry or anything so no worries. Why I was concerned by the goal-post move is earlier I took a long time to show where aspartyl-phenylalanine actually WAS very common in natural foods and gave chicken breast as an example after you stated that it did not occur in nature (page 2 of this thread) You just changed the topic and didn't respond and I was concerned you would just be doing that again here.

There is no difference between natural and "synthetic" chemicals. Chemicals are chemicals, what matters is how they interact not where they came from. Whether they are made in the gut of an animal or in a vat in a plant they are both synthesized. If you gravitate towards natural chemicals and try to abstain from synthetic chemicals you aren't really doing much of anything useful. There are "bad" natural chemicals and there are "good" synthetic chemicals and vis versa. Their origin has nothing to do with their mode of action.

If methanol comes from fruit or if methanol comes from a methyl addition to a compound caried out in a large vat it doesn't matter...it is still methanol. Same goes for any chemical. This idea that somehow food isn't just a collection of chemicals

I simply don't think we are smart enough to know the long-term effect of many chemicals, let alone the combined effects of a LOT of them. Since we have been perfectly designed to exist in the natural world (without added man made chemicals) I am inclined to vote with my dollars and opt for the least exposure to added chemicals and I advise others to do the same. We already know that many pesticides have estrogenic activity in the body--why would we want to knowingly consume them? And I'm not trying to "move the goal posts" here--I am honestly trying to discuss whether added man made chemicals of any sort are necessary or desirable. With cancer rates rising among the young (breast, colorectal and oral cancers are particularly striking as they used to be seen almost exclusively starting in the 5th decade), it may be time to strongly question our "better living through chemistry" mindset.

What food do we eat that was produced by nature exactly? Can you name something in the grocery store that you can just find growing out in the wild?

All of the foods we eat have been manipulated to increase their nutritional value or taste for human consumption. For good reason too because frankly what is truly "natural" is usually not that edible, if you doubt that just wander off into the nearest forest and try to eat. I really don't understand the idea of someone who disdains "chemicals" and goes and picks up an apple, like an apple you find at the store is something that wasn't also created by humans.

Are you saying that you only trust things that we have been eating for hundreds of years? Well okay but then you have to avoid pretty much everything you find in a grocery store including the produce section.

I think you exaggerate a bit. The heritage seed movement is all about saving the seeds that our forebears grew. Don't get me started on modern agriculture. Since this thread isn't about that, I will simply say that we will rue the day when we allowed independent family farms to be taken over by Big Ag.