Aspartame????

Sigh, another one falls to the scaremongering


Is aspartame safe?

Yes. Aspartame has been tested for more than three decades, in more than 200 studies, with the same result: Aspartame is safe. In fact, the FDA Commissioner, upon approving aspartame, noted, “Few compounds have withstood such detailed testing and repeated, close scrutiny, and the process through which aspartame has gone should provide the public with additional confidence of its safety.”


Have other regulatory bodies reviewed aspartame's safety?

Yes. In addition to FDA, aspartame has been reviewed and determined to be safe by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization, the Scientific Committee on Food of the European Commission, and the regulatory bodies of over 100 countries.


Have independent health organizations reviewed the safety of aspartame?

Yes. The American Medical Association’s Council on Scientific Affairs, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Dietetic Association (ADA) have reviewed research on aspartame and found it to be safe. In fact, the ADA’s 2004 updated position paper states, “A comprehensive review of the safety of aspartame has recently been published. The review covers previous publications as well as new information that support the safety of aspartame as a food additive and negates claims of its association with a range of health problems...” Links to numerous other health organizations, which have confirmed the safety of aspartame, can be found at www.aspartame.org.

Can aspartame affect vision?

No. Although scientists know that huge amounts of methanol can affect vision, only small amounts of methanol are formed when aspartame and many fruits, vegetables and juices are digested. In fact, a glass of tomato juice provides about six times as much methanol as an equal amount of a beverage sweetened with aspartame. During the digestion of aspartame in the gastrointestinal tract, the released methanol is then easily further metabolized by normal body processes in the same way as when methanol is derived from other dietary sources. Numerous scientific studies have shown that the methanol from aspartame does not accumulate in the body and thus cannot reach harmful levels

Is there any truth to the negative information about aspartame on the Internet or in the media?

No. Allegations spread via the Internet and the media by a few individuals that aspartame may be associated with a myriad of ailments are not based on science. These have come to be called “urban myths.” Here is what the National Multiple Sclerosis Society had to say about such allegations:

“These stories claim that Aspartame is the cause of a variety of illnesses, including MS, lupus, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson disease, birth defects, Desert Storm syndrome, brain tumors, and seizures. However, please bear in mind the following:

The claims are not documented;
There is no evidence for “epidemics” of multiple sclerosis, lupus, and some of the other diseases as claimed in the articles;
There is no evidence that authors of the claims have any scientific, medical, or academic credentials; nor is there any evidence that they have done any scientific research to support their claims; and
No published, peer-reviewed scientific research exists that supports the claims being made in the articles.”
An October 2005 issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) carries an editorial concluding that aspartame has been “demonised unfairly” in sections of the press and on the Internet. The BMJ editorial states:

“Evidence does not support links between aspartame and cancer, hair loss, depression, dementia, behavioural disturbances, or any of the other conditions appearing in websites. Agencies such as the Food Standards Agency, European Food Standards Authority, and the Food and Drug Administration have a duty to monitor relations between foodstuffs and health and to commission research when reasonable doubt emerges…The Food Standards Agency takes public concerns very seriously and thus pressed the European Scientific Committee on Food to conduct a further review, encompassing over 500 reports, in 2002. It concluded from biochemical, clinical, and behavioural research that the acceptable daily intake of aspartame remained entirely safe-except for people with phenylketonuria.”

The safety of aspartame has been proven again and again, backed by more than three decades of research and over 200 scientific studies. Recently, several governments and expert committees carefully evaluated the Internet allegations and found them to be false, reconfirming the safety of aspartame. In addition, leading health authorities, such as the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, and the American Diabetes Association, agree that aspartame is safe.

Some people suffer from allergies to it, or side effects. Most don't however. It certainly doesnt cause the things you described.

Nocebo.

Aspartame has been a godsend to me. It's really helped lower my calories and make this whole journey so much easier for me! Never felt better!

Depends on how many gallons of diet soda you can down in a day.

It is, however, a migraine trigger for me.

My mum used to get terrible migraines from it and she doesn't even drink any type of soda. She didn't know what was causing it until she started doing a food diary and worked out it was aspartame giving her the migraines. It's amazing how many products it is in. She hasn't had a migraine for about 5 years now.

I avoid it like the plague! I'm glad your mum was able to track it down as the cause. I still get migraines, but only from circumstances I can't easily control.

Please do some research before jumping to conclusions. Preferably, research based on published, peer-reviewed, scientific articles with conclusions based on actual clinical studies. The FDA exists for a reason (this coming from someone who works in biotech and knows how hard it is to get anything past any regulatory body without years and years of intense scrutiny and testing and proving and re-proving your claims).

Here's some reading: http://tc.engr.wisc.edu/uer/uer98/author2/index.html

Basically, chemically, aspartame is processed by the body as a protein and frees a methyl group (as in, methanol, or wood alcohol, which can indeed cause blindness in large quantities as was observed during prohibition when people were trying to manufacture their own spirits and did so incorrectly). Anyway, long story short, putting two packets of nutra-sweet in your coffee or drinking a bottle of diet soda has no observable impact on blood methanol levels and as such does no observable damage to the optic nerve. In order for there to even be a chance for methanol-induced damage to the nerve to occur, you would have to drink something like 600 12-oz cans of soda in a relatively short time, short enough of a time to prevent the body from processing out the methanol via liver metabolism and renal function. But, if you drank that much diet soda even in the course of a day, you'll probably die of water toxicity or a ruptured bladder before you go blind from methanol poisoning.

So... SCIENCE!!!

Jillian Michaels suggests that artificial sweeteners affect your liver and the way in which your hormones work.

Hmm.. I wonder where Jillian Michaels got her biochemistry degree from, and what her thesis was?

. Jillian Michaels suggests that artificial sweeteners affect your liver and the way in which your hormones work.

Jillian can motivate to exercise with her dvd's very well. But she has NO business giving this type of false information. Please do not use Jillian for your nutritional advice.

Aspartame is made by growing ecoli in controlled environments then feeding it toxic waste. Aspartame is what they poop out. Seriously.

Don't put this in your body. The only people that are super in favor of its production belong to the aspartame industry. They are also responsible for the tests that make it seem as though it is totally safe.

One more interesting fact...the guy who was pushing it like there was no tomorrow back in the day was none other than...Donald Rumsfeld. I'm sure that guy would NEVER do anything to risk human life. Not THAT guy.

With everything you can find research to back up the positives and negatives... However, my new years resolution was to drink more water... well that is hard for me so I decided to buy Crystal Light packets to help... I am talking daily.. After my nutrition session I googled side effects and I have a ton of them! I am going off Crystal Light and see if any of my symptoms improve...

Please let us know if your symptoms improve. Jillian Michaels suggests that artificial sweeteners affect your liver and the way in which your hormones work.

Oh well, if Jillian Michaels said it it must be true :noway:

LOL, I was amending my post as you wrote this to say that Jillian is not a biochemist but she has consulted with scientists. Guess each person has to find out for themselves if a certain substance affects them.