Why Aspartame Isn't Scary

I just don't really like putting anything with the word "artificial" in my body, including the extremely processed white sugar. No aspartame cannot be proven to have bad health effects, but in a lot of cases when humans take something from nature (such as coca) and pervert it by refining and/or concentrating it chemically(such as cocaine), it generally has negative effects. And you may not have any negative impact from one can of soda, or even several in a day, but over a long period of time, even a low level exposure to something harmful (not that aspartame necessarily is or isn't) can potentially cause health effects.

And saying it is not toxic doesn't mean it's good for you, or okay to have in excess. Look what overuse of sugar can do, or overuse of white flour. Not technically toxic, but your body still doesn't like them.

*whiny voice* B-but it occurs in fruiiiiit....

Yes but in its natural form. The lab version of anything is almost never a perfect replica of what nature creates. Close, but not perfect.

All this is just opinion. I personally believe that unnatural substances aren't good for you because your body was not made to use them. Your body, a part of nature, can tell the difference. Even the taste is off. When was the last time you drank a glass of fresh squeezed grape or orange juice (both higher in methanol after breakdown than your average diet coke) and noticed the aftertaste that's in all diet drinks, and a lot of diet foods? Or ANY fruit or fresh squeezed unsweetened fruit juice you can think of?(This is not saying that the aftertaste is dangerous, merely that it signifies a difference between the artificial and natural) Scientifically, there may not be a known difference yet, but I trust my body saying there is a difference.

And yes, I am encouraging people to avoid this artificial junk (and any artificial junk they possibly can). You want "diet" sweeteners? How about you go buy a stevia plant and use that?

There is little here that Richard Heath didn't cover very well so for most I just say refer to his post. I do want to say a few things though.

Naturalists like this confuse me, I really don't get their worldview. Is the idea that anything produced by nature is good for human consumption because that is clearly untrue. Is the idea that things produced by nature are more likely to be good for human consumption than things produced by humans specificially for human consumption because that is also clearly untrue (do you think you'd be better off walking into a grocery store and eating something or walking into the forest and eating something).

Frankly is everything produced by humans for human consumption going to be 100% perfect for purpose, no. But there is no reason to expect that of nature either, in fact far far from. At least humans are trying to make something human edible, nature doesn't really give a *kitten*. That brings me to another point, how the word "artificial" and "natural" are used. I really want these defined for me as they are used by naturalists.

If the definition of "artificial" is anything that would not have been produced by nature without human intervention then all those things you think of when you think "natural" like banannas and apples and almonds and oranges and everything you can find in the produce department of a grocery store are artificial by that definition. None of them would exist in an edible form without direct human intervention. If, instead, you argue no no those are natural because although humans intervened they did so using natural processes...all they did is just select which seeds to plant. Well okay, but by definition then aspartame is also natural because guess what...although you may not be as familiar with the processes the processes used to make aspartame are also 100% natural processes, just directed by humans...like selective breeding. Would they have occured in nature as they are here without human intervention? No, probably not...but then again neither would banannas

So either all fruit, veg and nuts in your grocery store are artificial OR aspartame is natural. If you have a definition of artificial that states that aspartame is artificial while say the apple in your grocery store is natural that isn't completely arbitrary (like "anything that starts with "aspart" is artificial") then I'd like to hear it.


My suspicion is "artificial" is being defined here as "things created by a process that I personally do not understand or am completely unaware of". Well okay but ignorance isn't a good case for anything and also this is no criteria on which to base decisions about health.

So why make something like aspartame?

We like sweet things, but we don't like being fat...both aesthetically and for health reasons. What causes something to be "sweet"? Sweetness, saltiness, bitterness and alike all come down to a chemical interaction which involves a small molecule binding to receptors on your tongue and triggering a response. Picture the receptors as having a shaped pocket that only molecules of a certain shape can fit into and when they fit it triggers a reaction that leads to a signal being propogated to your brain.

So what causes variations in sweetness. Some things are slightly sweet, some things are very sweet...why isn't there just one "sweet". Well how "sweet" something is just a matter of how many "sweet" receptors on your tongue are triggered. Something can be more sweet if there are just a lot more molecules to trigger receptors OR alternatively if the molecule present just fits that receptor much better.

Picture it this way. If you have 100 molecules that can fit the receptor but not well then maybe 10 of them bind and cause the sweetness response. If, however, you have 10 molecules that fit the receptor very well then maybe all 10 bind and cause the same response.

As it turns out the molecule aspartame fits the sweetness receptor on our tongues much better than sugars like glucose or fructose or their combination sucrose. About 200 times better in fact.

What that means is if you have 200 sucrose molecules floating about it will trigger about the same amount of response as 1 aspartame molecule.

It isn't that aspartame has no calories, aspartame is essentially protein...it has the same calories per weight as protein does basically. No...its that you need 200 times LESS of it than you need of a carbohydrate like glucose to get the exact same amount of "sweetness". Therefore you can add 200 times LESS to your drink to get it sweet so instead of that carb 100 calorie drink you have 100/400 or 0.5 calories which is basically marketed as zero calories.

Not only that but aspartame when it hits your digestive system is broken down into phenylalanine and aspartate which are amino acids present in all proteins plus methanol in a 1:10 weight ratio which is an amount of methonal far less than you would get from something like fruit and has no danger associated with it.

As far as it "tasting bad" well that is completely subjective. Taste is really an interaction of tons of receptors on your tongue and not everyone "tastes" things the same because of it. Some people clearly hate the taste of aspartame while others enjoy it. Declaring that aspartame tastes bad like that is true for everyone is just silly because if that was true then it wouldn't be particularly marketable now would it.

We know what receptor aspartame binds to, we know the relative binding, we know the signal response from the binding, we know the metabolic breakdown products, we know where those breakdown products end up and what their effects are, we have numerous done studies in the clinic as to safety. What is the "risk" of aspartame? About as low as it gets honestly.

For reference:

Sweetness receptor and relative binding: Xu et al 2004 http://www.pnas.org/content/101/39/14258.long
General layman article on receptors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptor_(biochemistry)

The links on aspartame for metabolic breakdown, blood levels and safety have already been provided in this thread.