Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

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?

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 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 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.

I'm not exaggerating at all. Agriculture has existed for millenia. Our forebearers seeds are not "natural" either. You think thats what a "natural" apple looked like 2000 years ago? The fruit and veg we have today have been so heavily bred as to be completely unrecognizable compared to what they were breed from.

Its funny when people refer to things as being "wild" varieties of our grocery store foods because those "wild" varieties are just what they used to look like a hundred years ago after only 3,900 years of agriculturual breeding instead of 4,000 years.

For example people thing that maize is "wild" corn. Maize isn't any more natural than corn is, its also a product of thousands of years of agriculture. The natural ancestor of corn, the plant that is actually natural, is tesonite, a grass.

This is teosinte





That look particularly edible to you? Its grass. You know how in a park or your yard when grass goes to seed and it forms those little stalks with all those little seed things. Yeah...thats what corn used to be until we spent thousands of years molding it.

Truth is there is nothing in the produce aisle of a grocery store that wasn't created by us. None of that is natural, none of that can you just find growing out in a jungle somewhere.

I didn't just pick corn because its the one plant that is true of, what I said is not an exaggeration. Any fruit or veg in the grocery store has been manipulated for thousands of years to be edible by us and does not resemble in any way shape or form its natural ancestor. The "natural" versions would be unrecognizable, not particularly edible and in some cases poison. Natural almonds for example, if you ate a handful of them you would be dead.

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.

I'm not exaggerating at all. Agriculture has existed for millenia. Our forebearers seeds are not "natural" either. You think thats what a "natural" apple looked like 2000 years ago? The fruit and veg we have today have been so heavily bred as to be completely unrecognizable compared to what they were breed from.

Its funny when people refer to things as being "wild" varieties of our grocery store foods because those "wild" varieties are just what they used to look like a hundred years ago after only 3,900 years of agriculturual breeding instead of 4,000 years.

For example people thing that maize is "wild" corn. Maize isn't any more natural than corn is, its also a product of thousands of years of agriculture. The natural ancestor of corn, the plant that is actually natural, is tesonite, a grass.

This is teosinte





That look particularly edible to you? Its grass. You know how in a park or your yard when grass goes to seed and it forms those little stalks with all those little seed things. Yeah...thats what corn used to be until we spent thousands of years molding it.

Truth is there is nothing in the produce aisle of a grocery store that wasn't created by us. None of that is natural, none of that can you just find growing out in a jungle somewhere.

I didn't just pick corn because its the one plant that is true of, what I said is not an exaggeration. Any fruit or veg in the grocery store has been manipulated for thousands of years to be edible by us and does not resemble in any way shape or form its natural ancestor. The "natural" versions would be unrecognizable, not particularly edible and in some cases poison. Natural almonds for example, if you ate a handful of them you would be dead.

From cyanide poisoning? Hybridization has not always worked out very well (and I'm not even going to begin to talk about GMOs). The wild Einkorn wheat that our ancestors grabbed off the stalk and ate was VERY different from the Emmer wheat which was popular during the Roman Empire and it was very different still from the Triticale wheats of today. At each stage the amount of wheat gluten increased and unfortunately, wheat gluten isn't particularly digestible. Now, some scientists believe that there is a "cross-reactivity" between the glyphosate residue that wheat now contains and the wheat gluten itself and that is why we have so much "gluten intolerance" of late. Even though wheat is not "Roundup ready" they spray it with Roundup (glyphosate) before harvest to kill the wheat plant and dry the wheat on the stalk and to make it easier to do "no-till planting". Glyphosate was developed as a strong chelating agent and it wreaks havoc in the gut. We would have been better off if they had left the wild wheat alone. Remember that mummified guy that they dug up in the Alps? The one they figured died about 3000 years ago? (I forget what they named him.) He had a bit of wild Einkorn wheat in his stomach but he had a lot more of other things. They said he was very healthy and strong (they figure he got knocked off by an adversary who got him from behind with an axe or something). We have this idea that our ancient ancestors were sickly and weak because we didn't have modern agriculture. Paleontologists are starting to say that our paleolithic ancestors were actually stronger and more resistant to disease than more modern humans. It appears that most of their children made it to adulthood. When agriculture came on the scene, it was a disaster of major proportions for children---infant mortality skyrocketed. And so it goes coming forward. If it weren't for modern medicine, a lot more of us wouldn't have made it to adulthood.

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.

I'm not exaggerating at all. Agriculture has existed for millenia. Our forebearers seeds are not "natural" either. You think thats what a "natural" apple looked like 2000 years ago? The fruit and veg we have today have been so heavily bred as to be completely unrecognizable compared to what they were breed from.

Its funny when people refer to things as being "wild" varieties of our grocery store foods because those "wild" varieties are just what they used to look like a hundred years ago after only 3,900 years of agriculturual breeding instead of 4,000 years.

For example people thing that maize is "wild" corn. Maize isn't any more natural than corn is, its also a product of thousands of years of agriculture. The natural ancestor of corn, the plant that is actually natural, is tesonite, a grass.

This is teosinte





That look particularly edible to you? Its grass. You know how in a park or your yard when grass goes to seed and it forms those little stalks with all those little seed things. Yeah...thats what corn used to be until we spent thousands of years molding it.

Truth is there is nothing in the produce aisle of a grocery store that wasn't created by us. None of that is natural, none of that can you just find growing out in a jungle somewhere.

I didn't just pick corn because its the one plant that is true of, what I said is not an exaggeration. Any fruit or veg in the grocery store has been manipulated for thousands of years to be edible by us and does not resemble in any way shape or form its natural ancestor. The "natural" versions would be unrecognizable, not particularly edible and in some cases poison. Natural almonds for example, if you ate a handful of them you would be dead.

From cyanide poisoning? Hybridization has not always worked out very well (and I'm not even going to begin to talk about GMOs). The wild Einkorn wheat that our ancestors grabbed off the stalk and ate was VERY different from the Emmer wheat which was popular during the Roman Empire and it was very different still from the Triticale wheats of today. At each stage the amount of wheat gluten increased and unfortunately, wheat gluten isn't particularly digestible. Now, some scientists believe that there is a "cross-reactivity" between the glyphosate residue that wheat now contains and the wheat gluten itself and that is why we have so much "gluten intolerance" of late. Even though wheat is not "Roundup ready" they spray it with Roundup (glyphosate) before harvest to kill the wheat plant and dry the wheat on the stalk and to make it easier to do "no-till planting". Glyphosate was developed as a strong chelating agent and it wreaks havoc in the gut. We would have been better off if they had left the wild wheat alone. Remember that mummified guy that they dug up in the Alps? The one they figured died about 3000 years ago? (I forget what they named him.) He had a bit of wild Einkorn wheat in his stomach but he had a lot more of other things. They said he was very healthy and strong (they figure he got knocked off by an adversary who got him from behind with an axe or something). We have this idea that our ancient ancestors were sickly and weak because we didn't have modern agriculture. Paleontologists are starting to say that our paleolithic ancestors were actually stronger and more resistant to disease than more modern humans. It appears that most of their children made it to adulthood. When agriculture came on the scene, it was a disaster of major proportions for children---infant mortality skyrocketed. And so it goes coming forward. If it weren't for modern medicine, a lot more of us wouldn't have made it to adulthood.

Really? For one thing, gluten intolerance doesn't exist, according to the researchers that originally came up with the idea. They've admitted they were wrong. Celiac disease is real, but it's still as rare as it was back in the time that Hippocrates wrote about it a couple thousand years ago.

Also, I know of nobody in any academic circles who think of our ancestors as weak. Our ancestors had a lower average lifespan, not from disease, but from being killed by predators. We didn't get to be dominant until the agricultural revolution, when we formed cities with protective structures to defend ourselves.

You make a lot of wild, unsubstantiated claims, with generous use of weasel words. None of them are true of course, which is why you can't support them. Please stop making things up and spreading misinformation.