Why Aspartame Isn't Scary
Replies
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nutmegoreo wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Jesus can we please let this dumb ancient thread just DIE?
I find such posts curious, if you didn't want to read it then why would you click?
It's OLD. OLD OLD OLD.
This thread is only one and a half.
You're sixty.
Two and a half years, actually.
Counting Calories 101 was started about two weeks before this one. It's still extremely relevant. Should that be killed off? Not to mention Sexypants, which is from way back in 2013 before I even joined.
You're right. It's not 2015 anymore is it?
Wait 2000 and what again? *kitten! I'm really behind the time!
A few months back, I almost wrote 1984 on something. I'd blame it on the aspartame, but I only recently started consuming it again. I must be old.
I won't say you're old, but I couldn't even write in 1984.1 -
ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Sorry but you don't get to decide what is "scary" to others.
But he does have the right to share valuable information regarding the reasons why there is nothing to fear.
You don't get to decide what is scary to others. Fear is an individual feeling. No matter what information you have. And that information's "value" is also an individual opinion. Why try to force something on people who don't want it. Just carry on enjoying your aspartame. There is no reason to force others to like it also.
So stating that there is no reason to fear something is equivalent to forcing it on people or demanding that they partake? How?9 -
nutmegoreo wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Jesus can we please let this dumb ancient thread just DIE?
I find such posts curious, if you didn't want to read it then why would you click?
It's OLD. OLD OLD OLD.
This thread is only one and a half.
You're sixty.
Two and a half years, actually.
Counting Calories 101 was started about two weeks before this one. It's still extremely relevant. Should that be killed off? Not to mention Sexypants, which is from way back in 2013 before I even joined.
You're right. It's not 2015 anymore is it?
Wait 2000 and what again? *kitten! I'm really behind the time!
A few months back, I almost wrote 1984 on something. I'd blame it on the aspartame, but I only recently started consuming it again. I must be old.
I won't say you're old, but I couldn't even write in 1984.
:laugh: :laugh: :huh:
:grumble:
3 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Jesus can we please let this dumb ancient thread just DIE?
I find such posts curious, if you didn't want to read it then why would you click?
It's OLD. OLD OLD OLD.
This thread is only one and a half.
You're sixty.
Two and a half years, actually.
Counting Calories 101 was started about two weeks before this one. It's still extremely relevant. Should that be killed off? Not to mention Sexypants, which is from way back in 2013 before I even joined.
You're right. It's not 2015 anymore is it?
Wait 2000 and what again? *kitten! I'm really behind the time!
Because you're old. Old old old.
LOL you got me!2 -
nutmegoreo wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »Jesus can we please let this dumb ancient thread just DIE?
I find such posts curious, if you didn't want to read it then why would you click?
It's OLD. OLD OLD OLD.
This thread is only one and a half.
You're sixty.
Two and a half years, actually.
Counting Calories 101 was started about two weeks before this one. It's still extremely relevant. Should that be killed off? Not to mention Sexypants, which is from way back in 2013 before I even joined.
You're right. It's not 2015 anymore is it?
Wait 2000 and what again? *kitten! I'm really behind the time!
A few months back, I almost wrote 1984 on something. I'd blame it on the aspartame, but I only recently started consuming it again. I must be old.
I won't say you're old, but I couldn't even write in 1984.
I didn't even show up until 86.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Sorry but you don't get to decide what is "scary" to others.
But he does have the right to share valuable information regarding the reasons why there is nothing to fear.
You don't get to decide what is scary to others. Fear is an individual feeling. No matter what information you have. And that information's "value" is also an individual opinion. Why try to force something on people who don't want it. Just carry on enjoying your aspartame. There is no reason to force others to like it also.
So stating that there is no reason to fear something is equivalent to forcing it on people or demanding that they partake? How?
I guess FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself" speech must have violated a lot of people's safe spaces.6 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
Just to be clear, i would have to drink 3200mg of aspatame. Considering there is about 180mg in a can of diet coke, i would have to drink about 17 cans a day (this is at 40mg/kg of body weight as done by the study).
Soo...... i think i am good.
they chose the amount specifically because the FDA says that amount is safe. Yet the study proves that this amount in fact is not safe. The study was only for 90 days, if lower rates of aspartame simply cause a lower rate of damage then if youre looking at a lifetime of consuming it, you will still have more neuron death than the rats did in this study. If youre looking at 1 can of diet coke a day then you could say 90 days x 17 = 4 years for you to get to the same amount of neuron death as the rats in the study suffered in 90 days. Also, the neuron death was very significant, even a fraction of that would be bad. So I dont think anyone is good when they are eating aspartame. But that's just my advice to you.
Its also proof that it is a carcinogen, as it showed that free radicals were increased due to the aspartame.
I've had personal experience with someone who drank around 8 cans of diet coke a day for 10 years and yes her memory was very bad and the addiction was very real. I do not think it's just a coincidence that she happened to have memory problems when aspartame is proven to damage the hippocampus.
Argue that you think it's really safe if you want and keep on drinking it, I dont mind. But I wouldnt drink it. There are a lot more studies out there if you want to read up on it, I just chose that one at random really because it looked well done. It's your life anyway.
None of this has even shown to translate into humans. Also, context and dosage apply. Rats taking in their body weight in aspartame is bad. You cannot state the same for normal amounts of aspartame. It doesn't work like that. You would have to test rats at normal intake levels. Heck, even water has toxic levels. And just because it has toxic levels doesn't mean you can generalize it and say all levels of water are toxic. Do you know that apples contain cyanide?
It goes against the required reserach ethics to perform a damaging study on human subjects, which is why the closest available and ethically approved thing has to be used instead, in this case it is rats which were actually manipulated to make their metabolism more in line with human metabolism (something ignored in a lot of studies and something great about this one). They did not take their body weight in aspartame, they took 40mg per kg of bodyweight, which is the amount which the FDA says is safe for human consumption. The argument that "oh anything is poisonous in high enough quantities" does not apply here.
I fail to see how submitting humans to a study in which they are prescribed a substance in quantities deemed safe by the FDA would violate any ethical standards.
well firstly if the research hypothesis states that they predict neuron damage or anything like this will occur, then the study wont be approved for humans. Secondly the brains of the rats were dissected to be properly studied because how are you going to study the effect on the brain in the human subjects?
I didn't realize we still lived in the 1800's when the only way to see the brain was dissection.
if you knew anything about it then you would know it's too difficult to study the brain properly without dissection.0 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
For your reading pleasure:
http://seriecientifica.org/sites/default/files/scl_enc_butchko.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2013.EN-399/pdf
The first one you linked is by "scientists" from "Research and Development, The NutraSweet Company," Meaning there is a very strong research bias. Meaning I know that the study is worthless before even continuing to read beyond the first few lines. If you want to find a decent study on anything then try to find one where there is no research bias or conflict of interest in the people involved. (These people get paid by NutraSweet to produce research which says that NutraSweet products are safe, this is something you must be aware of when reading any kind of research).
The second one I dont have time to read through right now but I might get back to you later.
Discrediting science based on funds shows a lack of understand for how research is conducted. You need to understand the parameters of the study and evaluate the techniques... not the source of money. All studies must receive funding somehow. You really should watch the video I posted. Layne Norton is a very well respected scientist and has first hand knowledge. He even addresses your fund concerns.
And under the parameters of your study, it would never translate to humans.
one of the first things you learn when learning how to read and interpret papers is to look at who has written the paper and to see if there is an agenda there. One of the things I learnt in even the first year of my degree is how corrupt the FDA is and how corrupt a lot of research is, believe it or not. It is very bad to start reading papers about aspartame where all the researchers are working for and paid by nutrasweet haha. This is just really basic seriously, it's bad that you didnt know that and would just read anything without thinking about who is writing it and why. It is completely discredited due to a thing called conflict of interest/research bias. Even if you decided to reference that paper in an essay you would probably be marked down badly for choosing such a biased example.
I dont know where you got the idea that the parameters of the study I chose to link it would never translate to humans. This just seems like very wishful thinking because you want your opinion to be correct, probably because you dont want to look bad for having been promoting aspartame as safe for so long then having to go back on what you were saying. The parameters of the study were actually very good. The research methods were nice.
Not sure what degree taught you a conspiracy theory but that aside what do you like about the study methods? I found the thing that stood out for me is that they use folic deficient mice. One way to test for folic deficiency is elevation in methylmalonic acid levels, which is one of the suspected culprits here. What does a folic deficiency manifest in? Well among other things, neurological problems similar to what you see in this, cherry picked, study so in other words, the researchers demonstrated what we would expect when we increase methanol levels without the protection of folic acids. Ok, does that mean it was a bad design? No, I wouldn't say that was the case becasue they had a control group that showed the differences, but it certainly doesn't provide any new evidence of problems in humans. They did try to show that it was the methanol and metabolites like MMA level that were the issue and this was exactly what we would have expected and that those came from the breakdown of aspartame into methanol and it's metabolites. So I think this was exactly what we I would expect; however, it is a stretch to say that we give large doses, beyond what humans would consume daily, to mice that have no remedy to fomate the MMA and say this is something that is a danger in humans when so many studies have confirmed it's safety.
My degree didnt teach me conspiracy theories, it taught me how to critically evaluate research, and one of the very first things you must do is look at who did this research, not just for scientific things but for anything, for a biography, for a historical account, for anything you must look at WHO has written it. So it's why it's quite funny when someone links a study on aspartame where all of the researchers work for "nutrasweet".. it's actually just quite funny ok? The fact that pharmaceutical companies and the FDA are corrupt is not a conspiracy theory, it's a fact which is taught in, I think, all mainstream courses which deal with them (medicine, healthcare etc). We learnt about a lot of things such as pushing unnecessary medicines for profit. Something you dont understand so you mock it as a conspiracy theory, but it's not it's a reality. I am working in research right now, not on aspartame, this is very boring to me, but I am working mainly on autism and focusing on the neurology and neuropsychology of that. You didnt understand the three groups in the study I linked (and it wasnt the most amazing study ever, it was a random one I chose after looking for 5 minutes as an example to help start people on the way of looking for their own studies). In this the first group was a normal/control group, the second group was a folate deficient group which did not take any aspartame (note, folate deficient by rat standards, this was done purposely to bring them to human levels of metabolism not in order to manipulate the experiment but to make them closer to humans as rats have a different metabolism to humans naturally), and the third group a folate deficient with aspartame group. If your criticism that the folate deficiency was the cause, then the second group would have shown neurological damage. It didnt. It showed them as being the same as the control. Only the aspartame group showed neurological damage. Animal models like this certainly DO translate to humans. No matter how much you try to deny it. Which is why animal models have been, are being, and will continue to be used. The dosage, once again, was specifically chosen because this is what the FDA has declared to be safe for human consumption. Not because it was a randomly chosen high dose used to manipulate results. The study I linked (which again is not the best study I could ever find but it's one I lazily found in 5 minutes because someone asked) is a sound study. I am very busy right now and I do not have the time to bring up 50 sound studies for strangers on the internet. But the one I chose is recent (2014), has great methods and a clear and significant result and if people want to read more (with an open mind to learn for themselves and decide for themselves) then it's easy to find many more on the topic using something like google scholar or pubmed or something like this. Now what I see throughout this thread is a lot of people who are so emotionally involved and attached to their own (wrong) point of view that they put their fingers in their ears and refuse to consider anything different, despite the fact that it seems their original point of view wasnt formed on anything very substantial in the first place. If they see a study (which they asked for) indicating aspartame is dangerous, the excuses come flying out "oh well animal models dont translate, oh well its a high dosage" etc. If they see a study done by researchers getting paid by NutraSweet (rofl) then it's "oh yeah see aspartame is so safe". People here are looking for something to confirm their opinion rather than actually looking for answers. Now for me personally, it's a boring topic, and I dont care what other people do, whether they eat aspartame or not. I dont eat it, I'm happy knowing that research indicates it causes neuron death, as well as my own personal experience with someone who did drink 8 cans of diet coke a day for years, I'm very happy not consuming aspartame. If other people want to eat it then it's their choice. If other people ask me what I think then I will tell them I dont think they should eat it.3 -
brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
For your reading pleasure:
http://seriecientifica.org/sites/default/files/scl_enc_butchko.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2013.EN-399/pdf
The first one you linked is by "scientists" from "Research and Development, The NutraSweet Company," Meaning there is a very strong research bias. Meaning I know that the study is worthless before even continuing to read beyond the first few lines. If you want to find a decent study on anything then try to find one where there is no research bias or conflict of interest in the people involved. (These people get paid by NutraSweet to produce research which says that NutraSweet products are safe, this is something you must be aware of when reading any kind of research).
The second one I dont have time to read through right now but I might get back to you later.
Discrediting science based on funds shows a lack of understand for how research is conducted. You need to understand the parameters of the study and evaluate the techniques... not the source of money. All studies must receive funding somehow. You really should watch the video I posted. Layne Norton is a very well respected scientist and has first hand knowledge. He even addresses your fund concerns.
And under the parameters of your study, it would never translate to humans.
one of the first things you learn when learning how to read and interpret papers is to look at who has written the paper and to see if there is an agenda there. One of the things I learnt in even the first year of my degree is how corrupt the FDA is and how corrupt a lot of research is, believe it or not. It is very bad to start reading papers about aspartame where all the researchers are working for and paid by nutrasweet haha. This is just really basic seriously, it's bad that you didnt know that and would just read anything without thinking about who is writing it and why. It is completely discredited due to a thing called conflict of interest/research bias. Even if you decided to reference that paper in an essay you would probably be marked down badly for choosing such a biased example.
I dont know where you got the idea that the parameters of the study I chose to link it would never translate to humans. This just seems like very wishful thinking because you want your opinion to be correct, probably because you dont want to look bad for having been promoting aspartame as safe for so long then having to go back on what you were saying. The parameters of the study were actually very good. The research methods were nice.
Even if the study was designed well, doesn't mean the dosage would apply. It would mean that the crazy upper limit should probably be reduced. The dosage does not apply in a standard human diet. Basic context and dosage.
Have you look at any of the other hundreds of studies posted in this thread? Has your study been repeated by another source? Have you watched that video I posted?
Also, so you automatically remove any study that has funding from a source that might be questionable. So if it was funded by Atkins/Nusi, than almost all low carb studies would be invalid? Or studies on cholesterol funded by egg and dairy foundations are now invalid?
And I have no issue with being wrong. If someone can present a solid argument, I change. Why because that is how science works. I alter my perceptions based on newer available data because the methods used improve over time.
generally 90% of researchers either piss about doing the most useless and pointless studies, with the most awful methods, as long as they can get away with it, or they are getting paid to produce research showing whatever their employer wants it to show. I made that 90% up but you get what I'm saying. Just because these people have the label of "scientist" or "researcher" doesnt mean that they are very trustworthy or speaking from a position of good authority. The issue of funding is a real one. Do you really think a company is going to pay researchers to produce research which says their products are not safe? They pay them to produce research showing that it's safe. So no really, the best thing to do is to find independent researchers who are doing the study for the science of it, to answer the question, not to show the results their employer wants.2 -
brentfostwood904 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
For your reading pleasure:
http://seriecientifica.org/sites/default/files/scl_enc_butchko.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2013.EN-399/pdf
The first one you linked is by "scientists" from "Research and Development, The NutraSweet Company," Meaning there is a very strong research bias. Meaning I know that the study is worthless before even continuing to read beyond the first few lines. If you want to find a decent study on anything then try to find one where there is no research bias or conflict of interest in the people involved. (These people get paid by NutraSweet to produce research which says that NutraSweet products are safe, this is something you must be aware of when reading any kind of research).
The second one I dont have time to read through right now but I might get back to you later.
Discrediting science based on funds shows a lack of understand for how research is conducted. You need to understand the parameters of the study and evaluate the techniques... not the source of money. All studies must receive funding somehow. You really should watch the video I posted. Layne Norton is a very well respected scientist and has first hand knowledge. He even addresses your fund concerns.
And under the parameters of your study, it would never translate to humans.
one of the first things you learn when learning how to read and interpret papers is to look at who has written the paper and to see if there is an agenda there. One of the things I learnt in even the first year of my degree is how corrupt the FDA is and how corrupt a lot of research is, believe it or not. It is very bad to start reading papers about aspartame where all the researchers are working for and paid by nutrasweet haha. This is just really basic seriously, it's bad that you didnt know that and would just read anything without thinking about who is writing it and why. It is completely discredited due to a thing called conflict of interest/research bias. Even if you decided to reference that paper in an essay you would probably be marked down badly for choosing such a biased example.
I dont know where you got the idea that the parameters of the study I chose to link it would never translate to humans. This just seems like very wishful thinking because you want your opinion to be correct, probably because you dont want to look bad for having been promoting aspartame as safe for so long then having to go back on what you were saying. The parameters of the study were actually very good. The research methods were nice.
Not sure what degree taught you a conspiracy theory but that aside what do you like about the study methods? I found the thing that stood out for me is that they use folic deficient mice. One way to test for folic deficiency is elevation in methylmalonic acid levels, which is one of the suspected culprits here. What does a folic deficiency manifest in? Well among other things, neurological problems similar to what you see in this, cherry picked, study so in other words, the researchers demonstrated what we would expect when we increase methanol levels without the protection of folic acids. Ok, does that mean it was a bad design? No, I wouldn't say that was the case becasue they had a control group that showed the differences, but it certainly doesn't provide any new evidence of problems in humans. They did try to show that it was the methanol and metabolites like MMA level that were the issue and this was exactly what we would have expected and that those came from the breakdown of aspartame into methanol and it's metabolites. So I think this was exactly what we I would expect; however, it is a stretch to say that we give large doses, beyond what humans would consume daily, to mice that have no remedy to fomate the MMA and say this is something that is a danger in humans when so many studies have confirmed it's safety.
My degree didnt teach me conspiracy theories, it taught me how to critically evaluate research, and one of the very first things you must do is look at who did this research, not just for scientific things but for anything, for a biography, for a historical account, for anything you must look at WHO has written it. So it's why it's quite funny when someone links a study on aspartame where all of the researchers work for "nutrasweet".. it's actually just quite funny ok? The fact that pharmaceutical companies and the FDA are corrupt is not a conspiracy theory, it's a fact which is taught in, I think, all mainstream courses which deal with them (medicine, healthcare etc). We learnt about a lot of things such as pushing unnecessary medicines for profit. Something you dont understand so you mock it as a conspiracy theory, but it's not it's a reality. I am working in research right now, not on aspartame, this is very boring to me, but I am working mainly on autism and focusing on the neurology and neuropsychology of that. You didnt understand the three groups in the study I linked (and it wasnt the most amazing study ever, it was a random one I chose after looking for 5 minutes as an example to help start people on the way of looking for their own studies). In this the first group was a normal/control group, the second group was a folate deficient group which did not take any aspartame (note, folate deficient by rat standards, this was done purposely to bring them to human levels of metabolism not in order to manipulate the experiment but to make them closer to humans as rats have a different metabolism to humans naturally), and the third group a folate deficient with aspartame group. If your criticism that the folate deficiency was the cause, then the second group would have shown neurological damage. It didnt. It showed them as being the same as the control. Only the aspartame group showed neurological damage. Animal models like this certainly DO translate to humans. No matter how much you try to deny it. Which is why animal models have been, are being, and will continue to be used. The dosage, once again, was specifically chosen because this is what the FDA has declared to be safe for human consumption. Not because it was a randomly chosen high dose used to manipulate results. The study I linked (which again is not the best study I could ever find but it's one I lazily found in 5 minutes because someone asked) is a sound study. I am very busy right now and I do not have the time to bring up 50 sound studies for strangers on the internet. But the one I chose is recent (2014), has great methods and a clear and significant result and if people want to read more (with an open mind to learn for themselves and decide for themselves) then it's easy to find many more on the topic using something like google scholar or pubmed or something like this. Now what I see throughout this thread is a lot of people who are so emotionally involved and attached to their own (wrong) point of view that they put their fingers in their ears and refuse to consider anything different, despite the fact that it seems their original point of view wasnt formed on anything very substantial in the first place. If they see a study (which they asked for) indicating aspartame is dangerous, the excuses come flying out "oh well animal models dont translate, oh well its a high dosage" etc. If they see a study done by researchers getting paid by NutraSweet (rofl) then it's "oh yeah see aspartame is so safe". People here are looking for something to confirm their opinion rather than actually looking for answers. Now for me personally, it's a boring topic, and I dont care what other people do, whether they eat aspartame or not. I dont eat it, I'm happy knowing that research indicates it causes neuron death, as well as my own personal experience with someone who did drink 8 cans of diet coke a day for years, I'm very happy not consuming aspartame. If other people want to eat it then it's their choice. If other people ask me what I think then I will tell them I dont think they should eat it.
My posts were after a cursory reading but I have no issue with what the research shows for what it was intended however, a glaring issue I still have is that it did not give the dosing protocols. Did they give the dosage all at once or did they give it over a period of time? The difference is nontrivial. As for translating rat to human, again, a lot of the gene expressions work the same but you cannot assume that they translate from one species to the other due to a lot of differences in metabolism. Do folate deficient albino mice really mimic human metabolism of methanol? I'm not sure how accurate that statement is but none of these things have been shown in human studies. BTW the OP is also a PhD researcher so he isn't someone who misses these things either.
Also, there were some anomalies not explained in some of the protein expressions. The authors didn't address these. Now, the study itself I liked for what it was. It showed that we can expect methanol toxicity in mice when we induce it and that aspartame in high doses can cause this toxicity.
I, as you are, am very disinterested and if the science changes I'll be sure to change my view as well, but this is thin gruel for the human experience. As well, you seemed far more attached, by your behavior on this thread, than you care to admit, and cherry picking a few studies and categorically rejecting all that contradict your view point as "tainted by money" is rather telling.7 -
brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
For your reading pleasure:
http://seriecientifica.org/sites/default/files/scl_enc_butchko.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2013.EN-399/pdf
The first one you linked is by "scientists" from "Research and Development, The NutraSweet Company," Meaning there is a very strong research bias. Meaning I know that the study is worthless before even continuing to read beyond the first few lines. If you want to find a decent study on anything then try to find one where there is no research bias or conflict of interest in the people involved. (These people get paid by NutraSweet to produce research which says that NutraSweet products are safe, this is something you must be aware of when reading any kind of research).
The second one I dont have time to read through right now but I might get back to you later.
Discrediting science based on funds shows a lack of understand for how research is conducted. You need to understand the parameters of the study and evaluate the techniques... not the source of money. All studies must receive funding somehow. You really should watch the video I posted. Layne Norton is a very well respected scientist and has first hand knowledge. He even addresses your fund concerns.
And under the parameters of your study, it would never translate to humans.
one of the first things you learn when learning how to read and interpret papers is to look at who has written the paper and to see if there is an agenda there. One of the things I learnt in even the first year of my degree is how corrupt the FDA is and how corrupt a lot of research is, believe it or not. It is very bad to start reading papers about aspartame where all the researchers are working for and paid by nutrasweet haha. This is just really basic seriously, it's bad that you didnt know that and would just read anything without thinking about who is writing it and why. It is completely discredited due to a thing called conflict of interest/research bias. Even if you decided to reference that paper in an essay you would probably be marked down badly for choosing such a biased example.
I dont know where you got the idea that the parameters of the study I chose to link it would never translate to humans. This just seems like very wishful thinking because you want your opinion to be correct, probably because you dont want to look bad for having been promoting aspartame as safe for so long then having to go back on what you were saying. The parameters of the study were actually very good. The research methods were nice.
Even if the study was designed well, doesn't mean the dosage would apply. It would mean that the crazy upper limit should probably be reduced. The dosage does not apply in a standard human diet. Basic context and dosage.
Have you look at any of the other hundreds of studies posted in this thread? Has your study been repeated by another source? Have you watched that video I posted?
Also, so you automatically remove any study that has funding from a source that might be questionable. So if it was funded by Atkins/Nusi, than almost all low carb studies would be invalid? Or studies on cholesterol funded by egg and dairy foundations are now invalid?
And I have no issue with being wrong. If someone can present a solid argument, I change. Why because that is how science works. I alter my perceptions based on newer available data because the methods used improve over time.
generally 90% of researchers either piss about doing the most useless and pointless studies, with the most awful methods, as long as they can get away with it, or they are getting paid to produce research showing whatever their employer wants it to show. I made that 90% up but you get what I'm saying. Just because these people have the label of "scientist" or "researcher" doesnt mean that they are very trustworthy or speaking from a position of good authority. The issue of funding is a real one. Do you really think a company is going to pay researchers to produce research which says their products are not safe? They pay them to produce research showing that it's safe. So no really, the best thing to do is to find independent researchers who are doing the study for the science of it, to answer the question, not to show the results their employer wants.
Interesting that you have such a view of the research community yet what is the credibility of the study you post? It's a rather interesting dance to get past hypocrisy in this case.
6 -
brentfostwood904 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
For your reading pleasure:
http://seriecientifica.org/sites/default/files/scl_enc_butchko.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2013.EN-399/pdf
The first one you linked is by "scientists" from "Research and Development, The NutraSweet Company," Meaning there is a very strong research bias. Meaning I know that the study is worthless before even continuing to read beyond the first few lines. If you want to find a decent study on anything then try to find one where there is no research bias or conflict of interest in the people involved. (These people get paid by NutraSweet to produce research which says that NutraSweet products are safe, this is something you must be aware of when reading any kind of research).
The second one I dont have time to read through right now but I might get back to you later.
Discrediting science based on funds shows a lack of understand for how research is conducted. You need to understand the parameters of the study and evaluate the techniques... not the source of money. All studies must receive funding somehow. You really should watch the video I posted. Layne Norton is a very well respected scientist and has first hand knowledge. He even addresses your fund concerns.
And under the parameters of your study, it would never translate to humans.
one of the first things you learn when learning how to read and interpret papers is to look at who has written the paper and to see if there is an agenda there. One of the things I learnt in even the first year of my degree is how corrupt the FDA is and how corrupt a lot of research is, believe it or not. It is very bad to start reading papers about aspartame where all the researchers are working for and paid by nutrasweet haha. This is just really basic seriously, it's bad that you didnt know that and would just read anything without thinking about who is writing it and why. It is completely discredited due to a thing called conflict of interest/research bias. Even if you decided to reference that paper in an essay you would probably be marked down badly for choosing such a biased example.
I dont know where you got the idea that the parameters of the study I chose to link it would never translate to humans. This just seems like very wishful thinking because you want your opinion to be correct, probably because you dont want to look bad for having been promoting aspartame as safe for so long then having to go back on what you were saying. The parameters of the study were actually very good. The research methods were nice.
Not sure what degree taught you a conspiracy theory but that aside what do you like about the study methods? I found the thing that stood out for me is that they use folic deficient mice. One way to test for folic deficiency is elevation in methylmalonic acid levels, which is one of the suspected culprits here. What does a folic deficiency manifest in? Well among other things, neurological problems similar to what you see in this, cherry picked, study so in other words, the researchers demonstrated what we would expect when we increase methanol levels without the protection of folic acids. Ok, does that mean it was a bad design? No, I wouldn't say that was the case becasue they had a control group that showed the differences, but it certainly doesn't provide any new evidence of problems in humans. They did try to show that it was the methanol and metabolites like MMA level that were the issue and this was exactly what we would have expected and that those came from the breakdown of aspartame into methanol and it's metabolites. So I think this was exactly what we I would expect; however, it is a stretch to say that we give large doses, beyond what humans would consume daily, to mice that have no remedy to fomate the MMA and say this is something that is a danger in humans when so many studies have confirmed it's safety.
My degree didnt teach me conspiracy theories, it taught me how to critically evaluate research, and one of the very first things you must do is look at who did this research, not just for scientific things but for anything, for a biography, for a historical account, for anything you must look at WHO has written it. So it's why it's quite funny when someone links a study on aspartame where all of the researchers work for "nutrasweet".. it's actually just quite funny ok? The fact that pharmaceutical companies and the FDA are corrupt is not a conspiracy theory, it's a fact which is taught in, I think, all mainstream courses which deal with them (medicine, healthcare etc). We learnt about a lot of things such as pushing unnecessary medicines for profit. Something you dont understand so you mock it as a conspiracy theory, but it's not it's a reality. I am working in research right now, not on aspartame, this is very boring to me, but I am working mainly on autism and focusing on the neurology and neuropsychology of that. You didnt understand the three groups in the study I linked (and it wasnt the most amazing study ever, it was a random one I chose after looking for 5 minutes as an example to help start people on the way of looking for their own studies). In this the first group was a normal/control group, the second group was a folate deficient group which did not take any aspartame (note, folate deficient by rat standards, this was done purposely to bring them to human levels of metabolism not in order to manipulate the experiment but to make them closer to humans as rats have a different metabolism to humans naturally), and the third group a folate deficient with aspartame group. If your criticism that the folate deficiency was the cause, then the second group would have shown neurological damage. It didnt. It showed them as being the same as the control. Only the aspartame group showed neurological damage. Animal models like this certainly DO translate to humans. No matter how much you try to deny it. Which is why animal models have been, are being, and will continue to be used. The dosage, once again, was specifically chosen because this is what the FDA has declared to be safe for human consumption. Not because it was a randomly chosen high dose used to manipulate results. The study I linked (which again is not the best study I could ever find but it's one I lazily found in 5 minutes because someone asked) is a sound study. I am very busy right now and I do not have the time to bring up 50 sound studies for strangers on the internet. But the one I chose is recent (2014), has great methods and a clear and significant result and if people want to read more (with an open mind to learn for themselves and decide for themselves) then it's easy to find many more on the topic using something like google scholar or pubmed or something like this. Now what I see throughout this thread is a lot of people who are so emotionally involved and attached to their own (wrong) point of view that they put their fingers in their ears and refuse to consider anything different, despite the fact that it seems their original point of view wasnt formed on anything very substantial in the first place. If they see a study (which they asked for) indicating aspartame is dangerous, the excuses come flying out "oh well animal models dont translate, oh well its a high dosage" etc. If they see a study done by researchers getting paid by NutraSweet (rofl) then it's "oh yeah see aspartame is so safe". People here are looking for something to confirm their opinion rather than actually looking for answers. Now for me personally, it's a boring topic, and I dont care what other people do, whether they eat aspartame or not. I dont eat it, I'm happy knowing that research indicates it causes neuron death, as well as my own personal experience with someone who did drink 8 cans of diet coke a day for years, I'm very happy not consuming aspartame. If other people want to eat it then it's their choice. If other people ask me what I think then I will tell them I dont think they should eat it.
Frankly, a lot of what you're saying doesn't add up to what you're claiming.
I'd love to know about all of these mainstream schools teaching that the FDA is corrupt and discrediting, prima fascie, studies, due to funding.8 -
Anybody that claims to know how to critically evaluate research, then dismisses it out of hand simply because of who funded it - but not analyzing the actual methodology - should have unequivocally failed his/her courses that supposedly taught him/her how to critically evaluate research.
IOW: one single raised flag != bad information.8 -
Anybody that claims to know how to critically evaluate research, then dismisses it out of hand simply because of who funded it - but not analyzing the actual methodology - should have unequivocally failed his/her courses that supposedly taught him/her how to critically evaluate research.
IOW: one single raised flag != bad information.
It certainly says we need to evaluate the evidence very critically as well as the methods used and the statistical test used to prove significance, which is really what we should always be doing anyway. One problem, of course, is that funding is often by interested parties and often is mandated. If you have to prove a product is safe then you are on the hook to fund it for approval so to dismiss out of hand would be rather counter-productive.
4 -
brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
For your reading pleasure:
http://seriecientifica.org/sites/default/files/scl_enc_butchko.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2013.EN-399/pdf
The first one you linked is by "scientists" from "Research and Development, The NutraSweet Company," Meaning there is a very strong research bias. Meaning I know that the study is worthless before even continuing to read beyond the first few lines. If you want to find a decent study on anything then try to find one where there is no research bias or conflict of interest in the people involved. (These people get paid by NutraSweet to produce research which says that NutraSweet products are safe, this is something you must be aware of when reading any kind of research).
The second one I dont have time to read through right now but I might get back to you later.
Discrediting science based on funds shows a lack of understand for how research is conducted. You need to understand the parameters of the study and evaluate the techniques... not the source of money. All studies must receive funding somehow. You really should watch the video I posted. Layne Norton is a very well respected scientist and has first hand knowledge. He even addresses your fund concerns.
And under the parameters of your study, it would never translate to humans.
one of the first things you learn when learning how to read and interpret papers is to look at who has written the paper and to see if there is an agenda there. One of the things I learnt in even the first year of my degree is how corrupt the FDA is and how corrupt a lot of research is, believe it or not. It is very bad to start reading papers about aspartame where all the researchers are working for and paid by nutrasweet haha. This is just really basic seriously, it's bad that you didnt know that and would just read anything without thinking about who is writing it and why. It is completely discredited due to a thing called conflict of interest/research bias. Even if you decided to reference that paper in an essay you would probably be marked down badly for choosing such a biased example.
I dont know where you got the idea that the parameters of the study I chose to link it would never translate to humans. This just seems like very wishful thinking because you want your opinion to be correct, probably because you dont want to look bad for having been promoting aspartame as safe for so long then having to go back on what you were saying. The parameters of the study were actually very good. The research methods were nice.
Even if the study was designed well, doesn't mean the dosage would apply. It would mean that the crazy upper limit should probably be reduced. The dosage does not apply in a standard human diet. Basic context and dosage.
Have you look at any of the other hundreds of studies posted in this thread? Has your study been repeated by another source? Have you watched that video I posted?
Also, so you automatically remove any study that has funding from a source that might be questionable. So if it was funded by Atkins/Nusi, than almost all low carb studies would be invalid? Or studies on cholesterol funded by egg and dairy foundations are now invalid?
And I have no issue with being wrong. If someone can present a solid argument, I change. Why because that is how science works. I alter my perceptions based on newer available data because the methods used improve over time.
generally 90% of researchers either piss about doing the most useless and pointless studies, with the most awful methods, as long as they can get away with it, or they are getting paid to produce research showing whatever their employer wants it to show. I made that 90% up but you get what I'm saying. Just because these people have the label of "scientist" or "researcher" doesnt mean that they are very trustworthy or speaking from a position of good authority. The issue of funding is a real one. Do you really think a company is going to pay researchers to produce research which says their products are not safe? They pay them to produce research showing that it's safe. So no really, the best thing to do is to find independent researchers who are doing the study for the science of it, to answer the question, not to show the results their employer wants.
Do you feel people should trust your opinions? Because the OP is a PhD who has a lot of insight, and the video I posted, ironically has the same message, from another PhD in this field. Even more ironic, Dr. Layne Norton discusses the funding issue in his video. Maybe it would be worth viewing, especially with how emotionally invested in suggesting how wrong everyone is.9 -
brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.10 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
9 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 11mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 11mM which is 11*13.5*32 = 4752mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4752-432=4320mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 4320mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 4320mg as a result?
That would go to a question of diet and this was one of the anomalies I was thinking of as I read more, although I didn't do the math it did show that the diet must have also contain some levels of methanol. I assumed the diet, other than aspartame would have been uniform across the 3 groups but diet and dosing protocols were not discussed as far as I could see.
ETA: hey does that mean the experimental group was drunk all day?
3 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 11mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 11mM which is 11*13.5*32 = 4752mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4752-432=4320mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 4320mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 4320mg as a result?
That would go to a question of diet and this was one of the anomalies I was thinking of as I read more, although I didn't do the math it did show that the diet must have also contain some levels of methanol. I assumed the diet, other than aspartame would have been uniform across the 3 groups but diet and dosing protocols were not discussed as far as I could see.
Assuming they weren't just being outright fraudulent and the control rats were fed the same diet as the aspartame rats with the exception of aspartame itself then any methanol present from their diet would have been accounted for in the control which I dutifully background subtracted from my numbers based on the results they gave from that figure. The control group rats had ~432mg of methanol in their blood, the aspartame group had ~4320 so the difference is what I gave, 3888mg extra methanol in the aspartame group despite the fact they weren't even given that much weight of aspartame itself over the entire 90 days.4 -
By the way, lets do some more math. Assuming the toxicity was caused by the large amount of methanol in the rats blood (which is likely) and there was 3888mg more of it in the aspartame group rats blood for whatever reason what would that be for a human? Well doing a basic conversion of weight a rat weighs 0.21kg. A human weighs 80kg, 380 times heavier. So that means the equivalent dosage in a human would be 1.48 KILOGRAMS of methanol in their blood. Understand the average person is going to have like 5 kilos of blood so that would mean your blood was like 25% methanol.
Yeah if you drank enough methanol to have 1.5 kilos in your blood stream you wouldn't have brain damage, you'd be dead.8 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »By the way, lets do some more math. Assuming the toxicity was caused by the large amount of methanol in the rats blood (which is likely) and there was 3888mg more of it in the aspartame group rats blood for whatever reason what would that be for a human? Well doing a basic conversion of weight a rat weighs 0.21kg. A human weighs 80kg, 380 times heavier. So that means the equivalent dosage in a human would be 1.48 KILOGRAMS of methanol in their blood. Understand the average person is going to have like 5 kilos of blood so that would mean your blood was like 25% methanol.
Yeah if you drank enough methanol to have 1.5 kilos in your blood stream you wouldn't have brain damage, you'd be dead.
With small animals such as mice it would be easy to salt their diet with small amounts of methanol over 90 days. I always give the benefit of the doubt but this seems rather suspicious. I always like to check the reputation of the journal and this one seems to be fairly solid so I have to wonder why the peer review process didn't catch it unless it is a journal that has a subtle bias.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
Whoops, conversion error. I stated 1M would be 32g/L. So that means 1M would be 32mg/mL, not 1mM.. That means 1mM would be 0.032mg/mL.
So that explains it. The mg calculation was off by 1000. So its not 432mg and 4320mg its 0.432mg and 4.32mg.
So the aspartame group had 3.888 mg more methanol in their blood after having a total of 75.6mg of methanol from aspartame over the entire 90 days. That is still high, that is still the amount not converted to formaldhyde...but its much more reasonable. That said I really doubt you'd get to that high of a methanol blood content taking in at most assuming perfect conversion and update 0.84mg of methanol per day.
Think of it this way. If you drank alcohol on 1 day to get your blood alcohol up to 0.08 and you drank another beer the next day would your blood alcohol be 0.16? no, of course not...your liver processes most of the alcohol over the course of 24 hours...it doesn't stay in your blood intact.5 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
Whoops, conversion error. I stated 1M would be 32g/L. So that means 1M would be 32mg/mL, not 1mM.. That means 1mM would be 0.032mg/mL.
So that explains it. The mg calculation was off by 1000. So its not 432mg and 4320mg its 0.432mg and 4.32mg.
So the aspartame group had 3.888 mg more methanol in their blood after having a total of 75.6mg of methanol from aspartame over the entire 90 days. That is still high, that is still the amount not converted to formaldhyde...but its much more reasonable. That said I really doubt you'd get to that high of a methanol blood content taking in at most assuming perfect conversion and update 0.84mg of methanol per day.
Think of it this way. If you drank alcohol on 1 day to get your blood alcohol up to 0.08 and you drank another beer the next day would your blood alcohol be 0.16? no, of course not...your liver processes most of the alcohol over the course of 24 hours...it doesn't stay in your blood intact.
That makes a little more sense, I was really hoping for a big drunk mouse party though!
6 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »By the way, lets do some more math. Assuming the toxicity was caused by the large amount of methanol in the rats blood (which is likely) and there was 3888mg more of it in the aspartame group rats blood for whatever reason what would that be for a human? Well doing a basic conversion of weight a rat weighs 0.21kg. A human weighs 80kg, 380 times heavier. So that means the equivalent dosage in a human would be 1.48 KILOGRAMS of methanol in their blood. Understand the average person is going to have like 5 kilos of blood so that would mean your blood was like 25% methanol.
Yeah if you drank enough methanol to have 1.5 kilos in your blood stream you wouldn't have brain damage, you'd be dead.
This post made me realize what an insane amount that was so I double checked and caught a conversion error in my math that I explain above. So in the above example its 3.88mg and in a human it would be 1.5 grams in your blood stream which is much more reasonable.2 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
Whoops, conversion error. I stated 1M would be 32g/L. So that means 1M would be 32mg/mL, not 1mM.. That means 1mM would be 0.032mg/mL.
So that explains it. The mg calculation was off by 1000. So its not 432mg and 4320mg its 0.432mg and 4.32mg.
So the aspartame group had 3.888 mg more methanol in their blood after having a total of 75.6mg of methanol from aspartame over the entire 90 days. That is still high, that is still the amount not converted to formaldhyde...but its much more reasonable. That said I really doubt you'd get to that high of a methanol blood content taking in at most assuming perfect conversion and update 0.84mg of methanol per day.
Think of it this way. If you drank alcohol on 1 day to get your blood alcohol up to 0.08 and you drank another beer the next day would your blood alcohol be 0.16? no, of course not...your liver processes most of the alcohol over the course of 24 hours...it doesn't stay in your blood intact.
That makes a little more sense, I was really hoping for a big drunk mouse party though!
I was thinking that was a bit insane. When I think something is insane though I doubt it and I double check, I doubted my own results so I checked to make sure and caught the mistake. Funny how when something sounds incredulous it often isn't true.4 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
Whoops, conversion error. I stated 1M would be 32g/L. So that means 1M would be 32mg/mL, not 1mM.. That means 1mM would be 0.032mg/mL.
So that explains it. The mg calculation was off by 1000. So its not 432mg and 4320mg its 0.432mg and 4.32mg.
So the aspartame group had 3.888 mg more methanol in their blood after having a total of 75.6mg of methanol from aspartame over the entire 90 days. That is still high, that is still the amount not converted to formaldhyde...but its much more reasonable. That said I really doubt you'd get to that high of a methanol blood content taking in at most assuming perfect conversion and update 0.84mg of methanol per day.
Think of it this way. If you drank alcohol on 1 day to get your blood alcohol up to 0.08 and you drank another beer the next day would your blood alcohol be 0.16? no, of course not...your liver processes most of the alcohol over the course of 24 hours...it doesn't stay in your blood intact.
That makes a little more sense, I was really hoping for a big drunk mouse party though!
I was thinking that was a bit insane. When I think something is insane though I doubt it and I double check, I doubted my own results so I checked to make sure and caught the mistake. Funny how when something sounds incredulous it often isn't true.
I still want to see a couple more things from this study: one would be dosing protocols and two would be to see cognitive and behavioural measures but I think the second would be on the scope of this since it's not a biopsych study. Still, it would be interesting to see what the actual manifest effects of the oxidation stress was.0 -
I think the person who posted that study though is confusing two things. The study they point to is blaming the mehtanol component of aspartame. The online community claiming toxicity due to "excitation of neurons" is actually refering to the neurotoxicity associated with basic amino acids found in all proteins (including aspartate which is part of the metabolic breakdown of aspartame).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6108/
Yup thats right, your essential amino acids are excitotoxins <gasp>. So basically someone saw that aspartame metabolically breaks down to aspartate in addition to phenylalanine and methanol, they saw that aspartate is associated with neurotoxicity and they just jammed the two together and claimed that therefore aspartame is toxic. During these time they either actively ignored or were ignorant of the fact that aspartate is just one of the standard amino acids found in abundance in any protein source and that your typical protein source is going to have aspartate in far greater quantities than you would find in from what you get from aspartame in a diet coke. If injesting aspartate was neurotoxic sufficiently to damage your brain from drinking diet coke then a chicken breast would kill you.
And thats the problem with these woo pages. They actively search for some thread to point to potential toxicity and when they find it they hold it up as evidence without really thinking it through or worrying about the cognitive dissonance. That is what I *tried* to curb with my original post, by simply addressing that yes...this is what happens to aspartame in your body, yes this is the metabolic breakdown products, this is how much of them you would get from a diet coke and this is how much of the exact same thing you would get from a bit of chicken or a glass of O.J. The hope was to point out that if the supposed toxicity of aspartame is related to aspartate or methanol then why aren't other foods that have those in higher amounts even more toxic? Is that point just lost in translation here because it still applies?
These pages will in the same breath complain about how aspartame gets into your blood intact and makes it into your brain somehow while at the same time talking about excitory neurotoxicity which is associated with aspartate which of course is a metabolic breakdown product of aspartame, which of course means that the aspartame is being metabolized before it even enters our blood stream. And they will say both of these things at the same time and not realize they counter eachother.6 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
Whoops, conversion error. I stated 1M would be 32g/L. So that means 1M would be 32mg/mL, not 1mM.. That means 1mM would be 0.032mg/mL.
So that explains it. The mg calculation was off by 1000. So its not 432mg and 4320mg its 0.432mg and 4.32mg.
So the aspartame group had 3.888 mg more methanol in their blood after having a total of 75.6mg of methanol from aspartame over the entire 90 days. That is still high, that is still the amount not converted to formaldhyde...but its much more reasonable. That said I really doubt you'd get to that high of a methanol blood content taking in at most assuming perfect conversion and update 0.84mg of methanol per day.
Think of it this way. If you drank alcohol on 1 day to get your blood alcohol up to 0.08 and you drank another beer the next day would your blood alcohol be 0.16? no, of course not...your liver processes most of the alcohol over the course of 24 hours...it doesn't stay in your blood intact.
That makes a little more sense, I was really hoping for a big drunk mouse party though!
I was thinking that was a bit insane. When I think something is insane though I doubt it and I double check, I doubted my own results so I checked to make sure and caught the mistake. Funny how when something sounds incredulous it often isn't true.
I still want to see a couple more things from this study: one would be dosing protocols and two would be to see cognitive and behavioural measures but I think the second would be on the scope of this since it's not a biopsych study. Still, it would be interesting to see what the actual manifest effects of the oxidation stress was.
They said the aspartame was administered once per day orally at 40mg/kg I thought. Presumably as a solution.0 -
In terms of the methanol component let me use an analogy. Lets pretend that rather than aspartame orally the rats were just given methanol directly. Lets also treat methanol as just alcohol consumption which is fair because it is alcohol. So the rats were given alcohol once daily in one bulk amount. They were given a certain amount per day each day for 90 days.
After 90 days the amount of alcohol was measured in their blood and the amount was 8 times higher than the amount that they were given each day.
If that is how blood alcohol content worked that would mean if you drank one beer in a sitting per day that on the 8th day you'd be drunk and not only that but if you continued to drink one beer a day you would be drunk 24/7 for the next 82 days.
That seems a bit odd to me. I'm going to look up the type of rats they used in the study, see if they have any impaired liver function or something. EDIT: nope, just the Wistar rats...so fairly normal. Are rats just crap at alcohol metabolism?4 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »brentfostwood904 wrote: »here is a nice study for people if you cant find them so easily yourself http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231714000640
According to the study the toxicity they claim is due to the methanol present in the metabolic breakdown products of aspartame. I have already addressed this numerous times within this thread as well as in my original post. Unless fruit juice at the levels we typically injest also causes brain damage in us that doesn't really make sense given the relative concentration of methanol found in a can of diet coke versus a glass of fruit juice.
If you don't accept that could you perhaps explain how the small amount of methanol in the metabolic breakdown drinks flavored with aspartame is neurotoxic while the relatively large amount present in say grape juice isn't? Or do you also avoid fruit juice or blame memory loss on O.J.
So the paper is claiming the toxicity is via methanol, specifically the methanol comes from the metabolic breakdown of aspartame and then the methanol itself is converted into formaldhyde which is what causes the damage. There is a particularly interesting figure in the paper:
The figure legend states: "Effect of aspartame (40 mg/kg bwt) on blood methanol level (mM) in rat."
It is interesting because it gives a hard number, a number we can then do math with. So lets do some math...yay! (nerd alert)
The figure shows the concentration of methanol in the control rat as being 1mM while it is 10mM in the rats given aspartame. Animals used in the experiment were Wistar strain male albino rats that weighted between 200 and 220g, so on average lets say 210 grams.
Aspartame was given at 40mg/kg of bodyweight daily for 90 days. So at 210 grams that means they were given 8.4mg per day or over the full 90 days they were given a grand total of 756mg.
Aspartame is metabolically broken down into phenylalanine, aspartate and methanol...something I pointed out in my original post but is stated in this paper as well and is the source of the toxic methanol. The molar weight ratio of the breakdown is 4:5:1 (can see math in my original post). That means that the 8.4mg of aspartame daily or 756mg total is converted into 0.84mg of methanol or 75.6mg of methanol if 100% of the aspartame is metabolically converted (which is a bit unlikely some will be excreted but lets go with 100%.
Methanol itself has a molecular weight of 32 grams per mol. That means a 1 molar solution (1M) would be 32g per liter and a 1milimolar solution (1mM) would be 32mg per mililiter.
Blood volume in a rat is about 64mL per kg (citation: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/rat-decision-tree-blood-sampling). That means for a 210 gram rat there is a total of 64*0.21 = 13.5mL of blood.
So, with some basic math, the control rat with a methanol blood concentration of 1mM has 13.5mL*32mg = 432mg of methanol in its blood while the aspartame rat had 10mM which is 10*13.5*32 = 4320mg in its blood.
That means the amount of methanol between control and aspartame rat increased by 4320-432=3888mg.
So here is my question. How?
Over the 90 days if 100% of the aspartame was metabolically broken down, 100% of the methanol created was transported into the blood, 100% of that methanol was not excreted and stayed within the blood and 100% of that stayed in the blood for the full 90 days building and building and building at most that would be the total amount of methanol they were given over 90 days which is 75.6mg...yet apparently the aspartame rats increased the amount in their blood by 3888mg? Not only that but the toxicity is caused by the CONVERSION of methanol to formaldhyde, which would mean its no longer methanol...so any methanol in the blood represents what has NOT had the toxic affect yet as when it is converted it would no longer be in the blood as methanol. Not to mention methanol would be processed and excreted by the liver so not all of it would remain in the blood.
But even if 100% of what was given ended up in the blood and stayed there intact for 90 days its still about 50 times less than the amount they measured being in the blood.
So how is it possible to feed a rat 756mg of aspartame over 90 days (which contains 75.6mg of methanol) and have its blood methanol increase by 3888mg as a result?
Whoops, conversion error. I stated 1M would be 32g/L. So that means 1M would be 32mg/mL, not 1mM.. That means 1mM would be 0.032mg/mL.
So that explains it. The mg calculation was off by 1000. So its not 432mg and 4320mg its 0.432mg and 4.32mg.
So the aspartame group had 3.888 mg more methanol in their blood after having a total of 75.6mg of methanol from aspartame over the entire 90 days. That is still high, that is still the amount not converted to formaldhyde...but its much more reasonable. That said I really doubt you'd get to that high of a methanol blood content taking in at most assuming perfect conversion and update 0.84mg of methanol per day.
Think of it this way. If you drank alcohol on 1 day to get your blood alcohol up to 0.08 and you drank another beer the next day would your blood alcohol be 0.16? no, of course not...your liver processes most of the alcohol over the course of 24 hours...it doesn't stay in your blood intact.
That makes a little more sense, I was really hoping for a big drunk mouse party though!
I was thinking that was a bit insane. When I think something is insane though I doubt it and I double check, I doubted my own results so I checked to make sure and caught the mistake. Funny how when something sounds incredulous it often isn't true.
I still want to see a couple more things from this study: one would be dosing protocols and two would be to see cognitive and behavioural measures but I think the second would be on the scope of this since it's not a biopsych study. Still, it would be interesting to see what the actual manifest effects of the oxidation stress was.
They said the aspartame was administered once per day orally at 40mg/kg I thought. Presumably as a solution.
Ahh, I missed that part! Thanks, and that would mean that it would presumably do much more damage than the way humans consume it since the cellular defenses to free radicals would be much more overwhelmed than by slow administration.0
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