>one of the most exhaustively studied substances in the human food supply
About a year ago, this single fact changed my mind about it being 'very bad' for you. If given a choice between a sugar drink (cola) and an aspartame flavored drink ('zero' cola), I will take the aspartame.
Sure, neither does your food. But you’re unlikely to convince anyone by moralizing about it, and you’ll probably just cause them to tune you out entirely. I say this as someone who drinks mostly plain water.
People online seem to have such a fascination with finding every possible thing wrong with American culture. Then they generalize across 330 million people, and completely ignore that the rest of the world has equally incomprehensible or destructive habits.
I guess we should be honored? Nobody bothers criticizing Europeans because Europe is largely irrelevant.
Well that's an awful lot to take from my comment. Is this some sort of "hit dogs holler" thing?
I'm American. I live in America. But I'm posting in a global forum, and I'm addressing something that's very specifically American. I wasn't even necessarily criticizing. Different places have different tastes. But the top soda brands are, Red Bull aside, all American in origin: https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-soda-brands/
I’ve never understood this reasoning, why is this a downside? You need water to live. Air has no scent and yet no one insists on only consuming air with scented candles.
Besides, if you really need a flavour, squirt a little citrus juice or something in there, your tastebuds don’t need to be bombarded 24/7.
Speaking as an American ex-Diet Coke addict who now mostly drinks water, I've found the off-the-shelf sweet drinks I do occasionally consume — fruit juices and ginger ale, mostly — taste better mixed roughly 4:1 with water, because less sweet.
When offered a drink, aside from the occasional (non-sweet) alcoholic beverage, I typically choose (flavorless) water.
> Air has no scent and yet no one insists on only consuming air with scented candles.
Well that's not true at all, given that millions of households use continuous plug-in air fresheners all day, every day. Multiple industries exist solely around scenting the air. Your analogy just doesn't hold up to reality.
Like many of the other commenters, I am compelled to let you know that your preference is immoral because it doesn't align with my views. You should stop doing a harmless thing that suits your taste.
Moreover, your thoughts are so toxic that we've shadowbanned you from the community. Your opinions are not welcome here. If you attempt to create a new account, you'll be banned again and we'll publicly shame you and report you to your employer. You don't deserve health care. Get off the internet and stop breathing.
(This is why we need p2p communication protocols over platforms and federation. The loud, unreasonable moderators and censors are in the minority. Most people can agree to disagree and appreciate diversity of thought.)
Once, I was given the choice between an apple and an orange, and chose a mango. This is evidence of my exceptional intellect and skill at thinking out of the box.
Often sodas (non sugary or not) complement foods better than water. For example I really dislike just drinking water when eating a pizza. If I'm thirsty I'd obviously drink water, cheaper, healthier and gets the job done the same way.
Perhaps, but it's also an acquired taste, and you can train yourself to enjoy foods with water, speaking from personal experience. Yogurt drinks go well with many foods as well, especially spice ones.
Because some people love different drinks? Water is good too but people enjoy drinking different things. I actually don't understand how so many people in this thread are completely blind to this and are like "Why don't you just enjoy the world like I do?"
I don't like the taste of water unless I'm super thirsty and I love the taste of coke zero/diet dr. pepper. It really is as simple as that and aspartame/ace k have been shown to be safe in the doses put into diet sodas.
One thing I didn't know prior to reading the article is that one of the major suppliers of aspartame is the same company that first commercialized MSG -- another compound that has been unfairly maligned and exhaustively studied as a result.
Despite decades of research and hundreds upon hundreds of studies, there's never been a definitive link shown between MSG and its claimed negative effects. In fact, I've seen studies where subjects responded to placebo at a higher rate than they did actual MSG.
Yet it's still very common to run into people that are absolutely convinced they have a sensitivity to MSG despite the fact that all evidence suggests that no such sensitivity actually exists.
Yep, it's also naturally occurring in all sorts of Asian food (due to soy or something) if I understood what I read correctly. That's why "no msg" Asian food tastes so awful.
Yet it's still very common to run into people that
are absolutely convinced they have a sensitivity to
MSG despite the fact that all evidence suggests that
no such sensitivity actually exists.
Here's a pattern I've seen in at least two people here in America. I suspect it's probably pretty widespread.
1. Subject is a person who does not eat Asian/Asian-American food very often
2. Subject eats some Asian/Asian-American food, full of many ingredients they don't typically consume
3. Food does not agree with subject in some way or another
4. Subject then decides it "must be the MSG" when of course it might be just be high sodium content that is common in takeout/delivery food, or any of the other ingredients they don't normally consume, or perhaps they just got some spoiled food or something
What is most upsetting is that I have trouble biochemically believing there could be anything at all on which to act. MSG = mono sodium glutamate meaning one sodium ion (thing in table salt) + gluatamic acid (1 of the 20 standard amino acids). Every protein in your body, plants, and animals will be ~5% glutamic acid. The instant MSG touches your tongue, it will immediately dissociate into sodium + glutamic acid and would be indistinguishable from another protein source.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but you make a good point. It is kind of like the joke about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. A lot of things sound unsafe with the right framing.
I had a person trying to tell me that aspartame is dangerous because it decomposed into aspartic acid, which is a toxin. Apparently an amino acid can be a toxin even when your body makes it and the proteins in your body contain about a kilogram of it.
There doesn't have to be a plausible mechanism for harm to decide that we avoid something. Things we consumed for millions of years can be considered mostly safe. New things should be seen as unsafe until proven otherwise.
The problem is that proving something safe is extremely difficult. Negative effects can take decades to show up. You can use models, and epidemiology, but true gold standard randomized controlled trials in humans are rarely possible.
Yes, that's the point. Because it is extremely difficult to prove something is safe, and it takes a long time for the effects to show up, we should be extremely cautious, and stick to things which proved themselves through the passage of time.
The logic mostly works, stuff that is very harmful, with early onset of disease has been filtered out that way. Stuff where harm is (statistically) less likely or appears very late can get past the filter. It could very well be that aspartame is in this latter group or may even be entirely harmless.. being extra cautious with new stuff is still rational.
No, that's just not true. There are goods that have been consumed for thousands of years that eventually cause cancer, but don't do anything in the immediacy.
All else being equal, I'd rather eat a food that has been eaten for millenia, than a random newly synthesized chemical. The priors are orders of magnitude apart.
Humans have consumed tobacco for a really long time. It is still not safe. Humans have consumed alcohol for a really long time, it is still not safe. Just because something is traditional does not make it safe or healthy in any way.
The filter is not perfect but it does eliminate the worst offenders. For example, if something has been consumed for a really long time, then by definition it doesn't cause the sudden death of the consumer.
It is not black or white. The worst offenders were filtered out. Tobacco is indeed harmful and we are in the process of removing it as we noticed its harm (on a scale of decades and centuries). For stuff where the effect is (statistically) small, the filter is not perfect. But it is not a fallacy any more than evolution or natural selection are.
People with phenylketonuria definitely have to avoid aspartame. Some people may have a mild version of phenylketonuria where aspartame causes problems but is tolerated but it might be advisable to avoid.
Given that phenylalanine is present in many foods in far greater levels than you get with an aspartame-sweetened food, I would expect people with even mild phenylketonuria to have a lot more issues than just when they consume a diet soda.
I fundamentally couldn't much care less about the supposed effects of one synthetic sweetener over another versus highly processed sugars, if it were't for the fact that as soon as I taste whatever synthetic sweetener it is, it tastes disgusting to me.
I just don't get how people are content to consume this stuff - they markedly change the taste, indelibly affecting the thing they're sweetening. Heck, even stevia adds its own distinct nastiness to whatever it flavours.
So, I stick with sugar, and just consume waay less of it than I used to. Though this somewhat limits the choice of soft drinks I can enjoy consuming when it comes to a treat.
We did a taste comparison of a few different brands of yogurt the other day. I could tell a difference between the brand with just sugar and the one with sugar and stevia, and the stevia was off putting. My wife couldn't tell a difference. Ultimately I liked the one that was sugar and maple syrup most, but it was a different type of yogurt entirely(cream top vs skyr).
> couldn't much care less about the supposed effects of one synthetic sweetener over another
From the article:
> (Incidentally, this same logic does not apply to other artificial sweeteners which mostly aren’t broken down at all.)
I would rather have something break down into fairly benign chemicals than have to deal with chemicals that don't break down and are not compatible with my body and are a borderline poison.
I would assume that there has to be an element of getting used to and your brain starting to expect the version that you tend to consume. I, for instance, have never drank the non-diet versions of sodas on purpose, even as a child, so when I occasionally buy the sugary versions on accident and try drinking them, they taste quite foul, and I could not imagine drinking them for enjoyment, only for thirst if they were the only thing available.
I don't hate the sugar based pop but I can only drink a small amount before they are way too sweet for me. The other thing that get me is the sticky mouth feel that lingers afterwards.
I believe there's an aspect of preference to it and in my case the preference was replaced over time.
As a kid to young adult I would drink non-diet soda for the caffeine boost but switched to diet as I got older and my metabolism slowed down.
At first diet soda didn't taste as good to me but was worth it for not gaining weight, but at this point after many years of having made the switch diet sodas taste better to me and drinking real sugar cola tastes significantly worse.
I always disliked diet sodas until I tried a keto diet for a couple months, which practically means fasting from sugar. Afterwards, the non-diet drinks taste way too sweet whilst the diet ones are fine. So it does seem like one can recalibrate themselves.
They are an acquired taste. That isn't a joke by the way. As you decrease the amount of sugared soft drinks you consume and switch entirely to diet, it won't be long before the ones with real sugar start to taste gross and the fake sugar tastes good. That's what happened with me anyway.
I get this solely based on the texture of my teeth after a sugary drink, but the US using HFCS instead of real sugar might contribute to that larger difference too.
I just don't get how people are content to consume this stuff
This may be pedantic or overly literal but: do some folks not understand that the same food substance may taste wildly different to different people?
I'm with you, by the way. Alternative sweeteners taste like absolute poison to me. Like I've accidentally sipped some industrial cleaning chemicals or something.
But I'm also one of those people that likes cilantro. To some people, it is incredibly nasty and it "tastes like soap." My impression is that some people think us cilantro-enjoyers actually enjoy the soapy taste as opposed to simply not experiencing the soapy taste at all.
The difference in experience is not because I enjoy the taste of soap. Cilantro just simply does not taste like soap to me! Based on all available anecdotal evidence that is why some people enjoy the taste of artificial sweeteners: it actually does taste like sugar (or close enough) to them and not like they are chugging cleaning fluids.
I can completely relate to both of you, as I’ve never even been able to finish diet sodas because they tasted so bad to me. Then one day I had a Dr. Pepper zero and actually enjoyed it. Now I can enjoy most Zero sodas.
Like most things, you can learn to enjoy artificial sweeteners. Whether or not that is a good thing probably depends on your current diet.
I find saccharine and stevia both ~bitter. I don't love aspartame, but it's tolerable in a pinch.
Edit: I went to look and guess I'm mistaken below on Sucralose in zero-branded sodas. It sounds like most of these do have aspartame. I guess I just assumed they were doing the same thing as zero-sugar energy drinks since I feel like they started coming to market in roughly the same time frame and used similar zero-sugar marketing.
Sucralose, which is AFAIK what you're getting in most modern zero-branded sodas and 0-20ish calorie energy drinks, is... ~good (to me). I keep liquid concentrate of it at home for coffee and will take a travel bottle with me if I know I'm going somewhere ~crunchy that insists on only raw sugar and stevia.
Same experience. Aspartame and every other artificial sweetener tasted disgusting to me. I’d find where it was hidden in all sorts of things because the taste stood out so much.
Found I could tolerate Sprite Zero. Drank enough of that when it was all that was available that it didn’t taste disgusting anymore, then tried some Coke Zero and it didn’t taste so bad anymore. From there pretty much everything was on the table.
Yeah, I get that, hence the 'to me'.. but the flavour is SO distinct, and nasty.
Where coriander is concerned I on occasion get that soapy taste, but like once a decade and it weirds me out, otherwise it just tastes like it should :)
Absolutely. I love it in some salsas, where I think the acidity of the other ingredients blunts the “soapiness”. OTOH, cilantro rice tastes like “soapy rice” to me. Mostly I’m fine if I don’t think about it, but if I do I really notice the taste.
I enjoy the taste of Diet Coke. Regular coke feels too sweet to me now. Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi is weird. I hate sugar alcohols. I dislike most foods with fake sugars. But Diet Coke for some reason is just addictive.
Same here, it’s super weird. I hate the artificial sweeteners of all kinds in almost everything except when it comes to soda, and Diet Coke especially somehow masks that nastiness for me and I’m totally addicted to it, maybe it’s the other ingredients in there that is able to overcome the artificial sweeteners. I wish it was not the case as I hate myself for not being able to resist Diet Coke.
I found that at least one of the big 3 artificial sweeteners tastes bad / bitter to everyone, but which one is not consistent. This is the reason a lot of foods now use a blend in an effort to "normalize" the aftertaste.
Since at least one of the artificial sweeteners gives me cramping if consumed more than once in a 48-hour period, blending just makes me reject all of them.
I don't actually mind how they taste, but post-consumption regret has driven my behavior here.
Xylitol, perhaps? It’s in sugar-free sweets. For me it is a potent laxative with side effects not unlike the ones I experience when I consume lactose, though I assume it’s coincidental. Bloating, nausea and worse.
My best friend in high school turned out to be one of the rare people who could taste phenylketones, even in extremely small quantities. We discovered this because our biology teacher had everyone in the class take a test, as part of what he was teaching that day. My friend knew he hated the artificial sweeteners at the time, but that's when we learned why he hated them.
Soon after I met the woman who later became my wife, I was introduced to her family, including her brother and sister, and her cousins. As soon as I found out her cousin Wayne ran the website nocilantro.com, I knew this was going to be a good family to be associated with. I've considered myself a subscriber to nocilantro.com ever since.
> they markedly changes the taste, indelibly affecting the thing it's sweetening. Heck, even stevia adds its own distinct nastiness to whatever it flavours.
This really depends on personal tastes and on which food is used.
I use aspartame-based sweeteners on milk products, and I can't distinguish it from sugar.
On the other hand, Stevia tastes terrible to me in any food/drink and quantity.
Isn't there some kind of genetic component to this? People with certain DNA find sweetner disgusting? [1]. I'm the same as you they taste awful, but to some it just tastes like sugar.
This is an easy one. I love Coke. Love it. But, it makes me feel like shit, gives me heartburn, etc. Diet Coke has a distinct taste from Coke, but it’s not bad to me. It doesn’t make me feel bad like I do if I drink too much regular Coke
I don't really care about the calories, but I developed type 1 diabetes which means I have to use insulin to offset carbs. Sugary soda drinks are not even remotely worth it - one can of Coke has as many carbs as a large slice of pizza or a bowl of rice or pasta. I typically drink unsweetened seltzer water as far as prepared beverages go, or black coffee, but I don't mind the flavor of artificially sweetened sodas. Now when I drink regular sugar soda, it tastes strange and horrible.
But if you want another data point about how other people feel about it... me and my relatives can't stand the taste of Coca Cola with sugar/syrup in it. Coke Zero tastes much better. It's aspartame.
Hm. How could I possibly have missed all gendered marketing for either of these products? Coke Zero tastes much more like normal Coke, Diet Coke tastes like its own different thing. I drank both, and associated neither with men or women.
I just don't get how people are content to consume this stuff
Food is not just about taste, you know. Even if it's sweets. The whole point of sweeteners is that they provide a nutritional upside (fewer calories, don't spike blood sugar).
and just consume waay less of it than I used to
I consume none of it - almost never. And the only way I will have sweets is with artificial sweeteners. I agree they don't taste as great, but they also don't have as many calories.
Different stroke for different folks. I drink Diet Coke, not because I'm on a diet, but because I grew to like the taste of it better. Regular sugar coke, and high fructose corn syrup coke, tastes cloyingly sweet to me.
It's an aquired taste. I forced myself to stick with diet/zero beverages and the digust dispears pretty fast. I don't know why one would want to do this if they're fine with water.
Taste is learned and can be unlearned. I actually like diet coke/Dr. pepper. I don't have many vices, so I allow myself this one. These aspartame studies always have tons of flaws versus the decades of study done on it before that say it's fine in moderation. Sugar is a known carcinogen and toxin, and has been known to be that for decades. It has no real nutritional value besides calories and is a slow poison to several organs.
It frankly just tastes weird. I can't understand why people want to eat it. Americans need to retrain their palette to not need a sweet deluge every day, and just enjoy heavy sugar items as an occasional treat.
And I say this as someone who cooks with MSG daily.
If you spend some time to lower your sugar intake, heavy sugar items will taste too sweet. The problem is all American foods contain sugar, so you have to actively seek out products without it.
Is MSG shown to be bad? Drink nothing but water, breath nothing but air, and don't eat any food with an ingredient list unless you assembled it yourself.
The history of the bad rap for MSG largely comes from racism (yay!) and then “studies” used to support this and to paint immigrant-run restaurants in a bad light.
Like almost any substance, a lot of MSG isn’t good for anyone. In the amounts typical for cooking, it’s fine.
The "MSG bad" crowd is so localized, Nongshim makes a special version of their Shin Ramyun with no MSG for the US and another one for everywhere else. Your guess which one tastes better.
When dieting, my family and I are restricting all kinds of stuff we eat, and drinking pretty much only water. On a diet we get really bored, and things like Diet Coke are extremely tempting. Not only does the bottle say it’s zero calories, but it also has caffeine and tastes so much more interesting than normal low-cal diet food or water. This is the appeal for us, we’re always trying to consume fewer calories and are looking for a way to have something that tastes less boring.
I switched to using a sodastream for getting my soda fix after being addicted to Diet Coke for years. I find it doesn't have the same effect on my appetite that DC and aspartame does.
Agreed. I got a sodastream initially because my addiction to Diet Coke was becoming rather expensive with 2022 prices, and I grew bored of the syrups very quickly and just started drinking fizzy water. Now I almost never bother with soda or flavors at all, aside from as an occasional treat when eating out.
When I still consumed sugary drinks I also found the artifically sweetened ones to taste "boring", but after switching I really don't notice it at at all. Once you become used to it it quickly becomes the new norm and you don't miss it.
Also the taste can vary wildly between sodas, for example coke zero tastes completely different than pepsi max. Both are sweetened with aspartam.
Coke Zero has that boring flavor for me. It’s not bad, but doesn’t stand out in flavor. Diet Coke has a different taste to it slightly more artificial but more like soda.
This is so much an acquired taste, people just are not patient enough.
I stopped eating dairy due to allergy when I was 20. And since, I've drank only vegetal "milk" substitutes. Of course by now (I'm 40) they all taste OK and I love my shakes. But if someone who drinks cows milk tries it, it tastes plantly and nothing like a milkshake.
Same thing happens with sweeteners. I stopped using redined sugar to sweeten my morning green tea. I use stevia leaves instead. It doesn't taste "better" or "worse" to me, it just tastes good and I know I dont need to worry. But my wife can taste the stevia flavour. She is just not used to it.
On the flipside, everytime I get into a Starbucks the smell of "cow" (as i jokingly label it) is very strong for me.
People who are quick to dismiss other flavours just havent had the necessity of adapting.
The WHO recently published a recommendation essentially condemning all non-sugar sweeteners. I've read through much of the 200 page report (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240046429), and what I found was really troubling: time and time again, the report takes a longitudinal study whose authors note "likely confounding", omits that information, and then includes the study's conclusions stripped of that context. In one case I saw, the WHO report implied that the authors had adequately controlled for confounding factors even though the authors had specifically called them out as a weakness.
Even more puzzling, the WHO announcement (https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-...) explicitly lists essentially every commonly known artificial sweetener, even though the evidence the report cites is extremely uneven and has very little to say about many of them. The studies on long term health effects, in particular, are almost entirely based on studies which examine soft drink consumption. Aside from the obvious, difficult-to-control biases is that approach (e.g. people who drink diet drinks are disproportionately people who are trying to lose weight, are diabetic, have been told to switch by their doctor, etc.), this means that virtually all of the data is primarily about aspartame, since that's the primary sweetener in most diet drinks.
The cherry on top is that the WHO announcement suggests that people try to shift to "naturally occurring sugars" despite the fact that multiple studies cited by the report specifically note that the health impact of fruit juice consumption is not distinguishable from any other sugar consumption.
That said, from my non-expert point of view, the one thing that does seem to be pretty consistent is evidence on gut biome effects. It kind of seems like there's some mechanism involving sweetness itself and gut biome interference, and I'm not sure what's going on there.
But the WHO report is disturbing. A meta-analysis is supposed to pull together large numbers of studies in order to smooth out biases and find broader trends, but what this report seems to have done instead is to launder biases that were reported with integrity. Taken together with the WHO recommendation, a large number of sporadic and often suspicious results have been put together into a wildly sweeping conclusion which does not look to me like it's at all scientifically justified.
The "naturally occurring sugars" part is very odd. There are only benefits to the other factors that come with eating natural fruits like getting more fibers, digesting/processing the sugar slower and vitamines. But this has nothing to do with the fact that 10g of sugar are 10g of sugar no matter how you consume them.
I can only guess that this was the thought behind this sentence, if not I'm a bit afraid that somebody with that lack of knowledge is "WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety".
It tells me that they funded a study in a way that was intended to separate themselves from the research to prevent influencing the outcome. What does it tell you?
You honestly believe that? If they touched the funding there's always influence. Having been part of medical studies, I can say there's always agendas and those involved in the studies will push the boundaries and fudge the data
Unsure. Never been able to narrow it down.... never needed to so far, unlike with say - propylene glycol which has hospitalized me several times.
(I react badly to most "alternative sugars", which might be related). But then I also have some problems with fructose.
At face value, it's far from clear how this molecule was discovered. Nothing about the structure indicates that it would taste sweet. Wikipedia offers this account:
> Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter, a chemist working for G.D. Searle & Company. Schlatter had synthesized aspartame as an intermediate step in generating a tetrapeptide of the hormone gastrin, for use in assessing an anti-ulcer drug candidate. He discovered its sweet taste when he licked his finger, which had become contaminated with aspartame, to lift up a piece of paper.
> It has been 17 years since chemist James M. Schlatter, who was tinkering with an anti-ulcer drug at the time, dipped his finger into a mixture of asparatic acid and phenylalanine and, for reasons that remain unclear, brought the result into contact with his tongue. Now, after a long legal and scientific struggle, the stuff that was on Schlatter's finger that fateful day in 1965 can be on your finger too, or dissolved in your coffee, or stirred into your yogurt, or sprinkled over your cinnamon toast.
There was a time when reporting the taste of a newly-synthesized organic molecule was not uncommon in the literature. It's possible that Schlatter was just doing something that was not unusual at the time.
An account of the discovery, written by one of the authors of the original research paper reporting the discovery (Mazur), and reportedly based on an affidavit gives this account:
> In December 1965 I was working with Dr. Mazur on the synthesis of the C-terminal tetrapeptide of gastrin. We were making intermediates and trying to purify them. In particular, on an occasion in December, 1965, I was recrystallizing aspartylphenylalanine methyl ester (aspartame) ... when the mixture bumped [spilled over while boiling] onto the outside of the flask. As a result, some of the powder got onto my fingers. At a slightly later stage, when licking my finger to pick up a piece of paper, I noticed a very strong, sweet taste. Initially, I thought that I mush have still had some sugar o. my hands from earlier in the day. However, I quickly realized this could not be so, since I had washed my hands in the meantime. I, therefore, traced the power on my hands back to the container into which I had placed the crystallized apsartyl-phenylalanine methyl ester. I felt that this ... was not likely to be toxic and I therefore tasted a little of it and found that it was the substance which I had previously tasted on my finger.
- Aspartame: Physiology and Biochemistry, edited by Stegink and Filer
I know that aspartame is an essential amino acid. I read the article. I am discussing a popular side-effect of it as a sweetener in its most well known form, Diet Coke.
This article does not address the cognitive aspect of aspartame.
What is the impact of 'faking out' the sugar processing components of our metabolism? Specifically is there anything bad associated with our brains thinking that we're getting sugar and some, perhaps incomplete, chain of reactions taking place to prepare the body for sugar processing, and then the sugar never showing up?
I haven't read any of the literature on it but I imagine that some of those metabolic components stay "flipped on" for longer than they would if they had real sugar exposure, because they never get what they are prepared to receive by our brains upon consumption.
Disclosure: my grandfather died of pancreatic cancer and was a heavy consumer of artificial sweeteners (daily, in tea).
It happens but it's like 1000 times less likely than in smokers. Any tissue can get cancerous, it's just that smoke multiplies that chance by like 1000x, maybe more.
For me this can be pretty easily observed eating a meal with water vs with diet soda. Especially if it's like a 'bad' meal with fast/fried food. There is definitely something that causes you to crave/eat more.
It seems likely to me that people get used to certain flavour profiles and the heavy use of sweeteners is going to prime people into desiring sweet foods and drinks. I don't know if the body then responds with hunger if it's promised sweet, highly calorific food/drink and then receives fake calories.
No, that is called reverse causality. The type of people likely to drink artificial sweeteners most are those that are overweight, obese, or have diabetes. There is no insulin response from artificial sweeteners. And as an amateur bodybuilder, I utilize a lot of artificial sweeteners daily to curb my cravings while eating rice, chicken, and turkey to help me cut.
Sweeteners won’t make someone overeating stop overeating. But they can be used to lower overall caloric energy intake and reduce cravings as a tool.
You provide two reviews, the article provides many more, along with 8 that they decided did not meet their standards, but they linked them anyway.
In comparing reviews of reviews of medical papers, I find myself more swayed by the article. Perhaps you'll have a different take on that part and can provide compelling evidence of why your studies should carry more weight or why the authors conclusion is flawed. I would definitely be interested in a more critical reading of that, since I'm somewhat neutral but may have some biases towards wanting aspartame to be both safe and effective.
I realy don't understand how they've gotten where they did in your first link. They claim that:
"Data from RCTs showed no consistent effects of nonnutritive sweeteners on other measures of body composition and reported no further secondary outcomes"
"NNS beverages were superior for weight loss and weight maintenance in a population consisting of regular users of NNS beverages who either maintained or discontinued consumption of these beverages and consumed water during a structured weight loss program. These results suggest that NNS beverages can be an effective tool for weight loss and maintenance within the context of a weight management program."
This study finds that water is superior to to NNS, but does not compare to sugar consumption, which means you can't really draw the broader conclusion that NNS are ineffective in general; they're just less effective than water alone.
OK this one is annoying because the abstract lumps water and diet beverages together, so we can't just read their conclusion. The full text is available, fortunately:
"All interventions groups showed statistically significant weight losses by 6 mo, but there were no differences between groups."
(In other words, both the diet beverage group and the water group lost about the same amount of weight.)
This study is a somewhat odd inclusion, because they're actually examining the reverse question (do sucrose sweetened drinks increase fat storage?), but anyway:
"Daily intake of SSSDs for 6 mo increases ectopic fat accumulation and lipids compared with milk, diet cola, and water. Thus, daily intake of SSSDs is likely to enhance the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases."
The full text is not available for free, but it shows a massive difference in fat storage between sugar and diet drinks (and a much larger difference, in fact, than between sugar drinks and water)
"The volunteers selected in this phase were randomly assigned to receive either capsules containing placebo during 24 weeks or crude stevioside 3.75 mg/kg/day (7 weeks), 7.5 mg/kg/day (11 weeks) and 15.0 mg/kg/day (6 weeks)."
Again. Including these trials with the others is simply bizarre.
"The aspartame group lost significantly more weight overall (P = 0.028) and regained significantly less weight during maintenance and follow-up (P = 0.046) than did the no-aspartame group."
(I recommend reading the whole abstract; this one is nuanced, but it still shows a significant benefit for the aspartame group).
I think a confounding variable for this is the caloric load. Drink 5 cans of coke and thats what, 1000 calories at least? You feel it impact the rest of your food intake. Meanwhile, diet drinks are zero calorie. Many older people I know who consume diet soda do it to the exclusion of actual water, which they can do since its zero calories and doesn’t impact their appetite for their other meals. For what its worth all of them are overweight.
My personal observation with sugary food (maybe applies to aspartame as well): I eat a healthy meal and feel full. If I then eat some dessert, I want more and feel less full. As if my brain says: Look, you found a rare source of sugar. Sugar is good for me. Eat more while you can.
I have some beef with the methodology for excluding analyses from the lit review. If authors being from “obscure institutions” is a problem, then so too should authors employed by companies that manufacture aspartame or funded by companies that manufacture aspartame. 2 of the 3 reviews that the author considers very high quality have this problem.
Not sure what their criterion is for "obscure institutions", but as a professor from a small, peripheral university that almost no one knows outside my own country, but who has managed to achieve an international reputation in my field (not nutrition-related); that does rub me the wrong way, to be honest.
There's already plenty of unconscious bias around (I've had experiences of people using my contributions and citing some followup paper from Google or Stanford rather than the paper where the contribution was actually made) without actively legitimizing it.
I love this article! It is not the first time I hear the bad reputation of aspartame is unfounded.
AFAIK, there was only one study which said aspartame was dangerous: they fed a rat with a HUGE amount of it (like way more than a human could consume, in proportion) and the rat got ill or died I don't remember. That "study" was obviously flawed yet the media kept talking about it everywhere.
At that point, it wouldn't surprise me if the sugar industry is behind this.
Though Donald Rumsfeld is mentioned once in the article, his part in the approval of aspartame should be more generally known. Aspartame is equally as toxic as Rumsfeld was.
"Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity, attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with Attorney James Turner back in 1996. The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and that it violated the Delaney Amendment, which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause cancer." [0]
> The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and that it violated the Delaney Amendment, which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause cancer.
Except, of course, that's contradicted by the subsequent epidemiological evidence and countless studies. And that's ignoring the complete lack of a plausible causal mechanism.
You can dislike Donald Rumsfeld, but that doesn't mean shit about aspartame.
Aspartame and pickled vegetables share the same carcinogen designation. If you are concerned about one then logically you must share the same concern about the other.
People aren't replacing their daily water intake with pickle brine or sauerkraut though. I’d imagine there are orders of magnitude differences in terms of dosage between your average pickle fan and diet coke drinker.
> According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the acceptable recommended intake for aspartame is up to 50mg per kg of body weight each day, equivalent to the amount in around 19 standard-sized cans of Diet Coke (other brands are available) for the average American woman.
> If you look on Wikipedia, you’ll see that aspartame is a methyl ester of the aspartic acid phenylalanine dipeptide, which isn’t, like, comforting.
The aversion most people have to anything sounding chemical is crazy.
Chemically speaking, this is a relatively simple molecule. „Dipeptide“ means it consists of two amino acids, which are ubiquitous and make up every protein. „Methyl ester“ is the product of a reaction between an acid, in this case the amino acid phenylalanine, and an alcohol, in this case methanol. Also very common throughout chemistry and biology.
I find it a bit odd that this review only discusses the things it's metabolized into and not either of the things that seem more relevant (at this point: the effect of tasting it psychologically, and then whatever it is in your gut that does the metabolizing.
Like, great, I believe that if you inject those chemicals into me in the right spot I'll be fine. But didn't you skip a few steps?
Not that I care much either way. It sounds like it's safe, toxicologically and epidemiologically speaking. But there's still a difference between eating things that taste sweet and not doing it at all-- beyond the molecules that end up in your blood.
The effect aspartame has on the gut biome before it breaks down into the safer constituents is still a large gap. As we learn more and more about the importance of our gut biome as a living system parallel to the much more rigorously studied blood and lymphatic systems, I think deeper understanding of wholistic effects could emerge.
- Aspartame is linked to premature menarche in girls aged 9 and 10
- Aspartame, especially when used with another common sweetener is linked to genotocixity.
- Aspartame causes increases in behavioral disorders
- Aspartame causes neurodegeneration with long-term use
- Aspartame can induce contact dermatitis
> Safety studies have found the metabolic products of aspartame (aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol) to be more harmful to the body than the original substance itself...
> ...In humans, there have been reports of premature birth as well as allergic reactions and weight gain in the newborns. Studies involving girls aged 9–10 have shown that aspartame increases the risk of an early first menstruation (<11 years).
So for me... I have to think that there remains a high likelihood that aspartame is harmful, and this article draws wrong conclusions.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadAbout a year ago, this single fact changed my mind about it being 'very bad' for you. If given a choice between a sugar drink (cola) and an aspartame flavored drink ('zero' cola), I will take the aspartame.
I don't understand why this should even be choice. Why not drink water, and know that it's the best possible option?
People online seem to have such a fascination with finding every possible thing wrong with American culture. Then they generalize across 330 million people, and completely ignore that the rest of the world has equally incomprehensible or destructive habits.
I guess we should be honored? Nobody bothers criticizing Europeans because Europe is largely irrelevant.
I'm American. I live in America. But I'm posting in a global forum, and I'm addressing something that's very specifically American. I wasn't even necessarily criticizing. Different places have different tastes. But the top soda brands are, Red Bull aside, all American in origin: https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-soda-brands/
Besides, if you really need a flavour, squirt a little citrus juice or something in there, your tastebuds don’t need to be bombarded 24/7.
When I'm offered a drink, it's a very simple, go/no-go life decision. I don't prepare and carry fruit juices around in my pockets.
When offered a drink, aside from the occasional (non-sweet) alcoholic beverage, I typically choose (flavorless) water.
People eat for pleasure, and people drink for pleasure too. People like things to taste nice sometimes, get off their case.
The dose is what makes the difference here.
Well that's not true at all, given that millions of households use continuous plug-in air fresheners all day, every day. Multiple industries exist solely around scenting the air. Your analogy just doesn't hold up to reality.
(This is why we need p2p communication protocols over platforms and federation. The loud, unreasonable moderators and censors are in the minority. Most people can agree to disagree and appreciate diversity of thought.)
I think it's an American thing though. When I've been over there, everything was so sickeningly sweet.
What would the other choices be when you're talking about substitutes? Why would you expect the inclusion of items that are not substitutes?
It’s a debate about drinking sugar or artificial sweeteners when you want to enjoy a drink. Why is that fact lost in this discussion?
Despite decades of research and hundreds upon hundreds of studies, there's never been a definitive link shown between MSG and its claimed negative effects. In fact, I've seen studies where subjects responded to placebo at a higher rate than they did actual MSG.
Yet it's still very common to run into people that are absolutely convinced they have a sensitivity to MSG despite the fact that all evidence suggests that no such sensitivity actually exists.
1. Subject is a person who does not eat Asian/Asian-American food very often
2. Subject eats some Asian/Asian-American food, full of many ingredients they don't typically consume
3. Food does not agree with subject in some way or another
4. Subject then decides it "must be the MSG" when of course it might be just be high sodium content that is common in takeout/delivery food, or any of the other ingredients they don't normally consume, or perhaps they just got some spoiled food or something
Some people have a hard time understanding that this can be impossible.
Instead we have to take out best guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_S._Sweat#The_%22whiskey_s...
I just don't get how people are content to consume this stuff - they markedly change the taste, indelibly affecting the thing they're sweetening. Heck, even stevia adds its own distinct nastiness to whatever it flavours.
So, I stick with sugar, and just consume waay less of it than I used to. Though this somewhat limits the choice of soft drinks I can enjoy consuming when it comes to a treat.
From the article:
> (Incidentally, this same logic does not apply to other artificial sweeteners which mostly aren’t broken down at all.)
I would rather have something break down into fairly benign chemicals than have to deal with chemicals that don't break down and are not compatible with my body and are a borderline poison.
As a kid to young adult I would drink non-diet soda for the caffeine boost but switched to diet as I got older and my metabolism slowed down.
At first diet soda didn't taste as good to me but was worth it for not gaining weight, but at this point after many years of having made the switch diet sodas taste better to me and drinking real sugar cola tastes significantly worse.
Personally if given the choice between a regular coke and coke zero, I will choose the zero every time.
I'm with you, by the way. Alternative sweeteners taste like absolute poison to me. Like I've accidentally sipped some industrial cleaning chemicals or something.
But I'm also one of those people that likes cilantro. To some people, it is incredibly nasty and it "tastes like soap." My impression is that some people think us cilantro-enjoyers actually enjoy the soapy taste as opposed to simply not experiencing the soapy taste at all.
The difference in experience is not because I enjoy the taste of soap. Cilantro just simply does not taste like soap to me! Based on all available anecdotal evidence that is why some people enjoy the taste of artificial sweeteners: it actually does taste like sugar (or close enough) to them and not like they are chugging cleaning fluids.
(edit: softened wording, clarified)
Like most things, you can learn to enjoy artificial sweeteners. Whether or not that is a good thing probably depends on your current diet.
Edit: I went to look and guess I'm mistaken below on Sucralose in zero-branded sodas. It sounds like most of these do have aspartame. I guess I just assumed they were doing the same thing as zero-sugar energy drinks since I feel like they started coming to market in roughly the same time frame and used similar zero-sugar marketing.
Sucralose, which is AFAIK what you're getting in most modern zero-branded sodas and 0-20ish calorie energy drinks, is... ~good (to me). I keep liquid concentrate of it at home for coffee and will take a travel bottle with me if I know I'm going somewhere ~crunchy that insists on only raw sugar and stevia.
Found I could tolerate Sprite Zero. Drank enough of that when it was all that was available that it didn’t taste disgusting anymore, then tried some Coke Zero and it didn’t taste so bad anymore. From there pretty much everything was on the table.
Where coriander is concerned I on occasion get that soapy taste, but like once a decade and it weirds me out, otherwise it just tastes like it should :)
I don't actually mind how they taste, but post-consumption regret has driven my behavior here.
Soon after I met the woman who later became my wife, I was introduced to her family, including her brother and sister, and her cousins. As soon as I found out her cousin Wayne ran the website nocilantro.com, I knew this was going to be a good family to be associated with. I've considered myself a subscriber to nocilantro.com ever since.
Though I agree, aspartame, sucrose and stevia taste gross.
This really depends on personal tastes and on which food is used.
I use aspartame-based sweeteners on milk products, and I can't distinguish it from sugar.
On the other hand, Stevia tastes terrible to me in any food/drink and quantity.
[1] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/multiple-genes-manag...
But if you want another data point about how other people feel about it... me and my relatives can't stand the taste of Coca Cola with sugar/syrup in it. Coke Zero tastes much better. It's aspartame.
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/should-mens-products-fear-a-woman...
Coke Zero is an actual Diet version of Coke.
A compromise between health and taste.
You make a different compromise.
I understand.
No, but diet soda is literally just about taste. There's no nutritional value versus water.
And I say this as someone who cooks with MSG daily.
Yes this has all been said many times.
Like almost any substance, a lot of MSG isn’t good for anyone. In the amounts typical for cooking, it’s fine.
Plain carbonated water with ice and maybe a few drops of lemon or lime juice is "interesting" enough for me.
Also the taste can vary wildly between sodas, for example coke zero tastes completely different than pepsi max. Both are sweetened with aspartam.
I love Diet Dr. Pepper - not so big on regular Dr. Pepper.
I stopped eating dairy due to allergy when I was 20. And since, I've drank only vegetal "milk" substitutes. Of course by now (I'm 40) they all taste OK and I love my shakes. But if someone who drinks cows milk tries it, it tastes plantly and nothing like a milkshake.
Same thing happens with sweeteners. I stopped using redined sugar to sweeten my morning green tea. I use stevia leaves instead. It doesn't taste "better" or "worse" to me, it just tastes good and I know I dont need to worry. But my wife can taste the stevia flavour. She is just not used to it.
On the flipside, everytime I get into a Starbucks the smell of "cow" (as i jokingly label it) is very strong for me.
People who are quick to dismiss other flavours just havent had the necessity of adapting.
Even more puzzling, the WHO announcement (https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-...) explicitly lists essentially every commonly known artificial sweetener, even though the evidence the report cites is extremely uneven and has very little to say about many of them. The studies on long term health effects, in particular, are almost entirely based on studies which examine soft drink consumption. Aside from the obvious, difficult-to-control biases is that approach (e.g. people who drink diet drinks are disproportionately people who are trying to lose weight, are diabetic, have been told to switch by their doctor, etc.), this means that virtually all of the data is primarily about aspartame, since that's the primary sweetener in most diet drinks.
The cherry on top is that the WHO announcement suggests that people try to shift to "naturally occurring sugars" despite the fact that multiple studies cited by the report specifically note that the health impact of fruit juice consumption is not distinguishable from any other sugar consumption.
That said, from my non-expert point of view, the one thing that does seem to be pretty consistent is evidence on gut biome effects. It kind of seems like there's some mechanism involving sweetness itself and gut biome interference, and I'm not sure what's going on there.
But the WHO report is disturbing. A meta-analysis is supposed to pull together large numbers of studies in order to smooth out biases and find broader trends, but what this report seems to have done instead is to launder biases that were reported with integrity. Taken together with the WHO recommendation, a large number of sporadic and often suspicious results have been put together into a wildly sweeping conclusion which does not look to me like it's at all scientifically justified.
I can only guess that this was the thought behind this sentence, if not I'm a bit afraid that somebody with that lack of knowledge is "WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety".
In other words, what powerful entity wants us to think aspartame is bad? And why?
Until we know the answers to those questions, we cannot evaluate the significance of the statement.
Bottom line of the article above and (1): aspartame is not a health concern you should have.
(1) https://physiqonomics.com/aspartame/
Tells you everything about that all important often cited paper
But that doesn't mean no one else should have them.
> Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter, a chemist working for G.D. Searle & Company. Schlatter had synthesized aspartame as an intermediate step in generating a tetrapeptide of the hormone gastrin, for use in assessing an anti-ulcer drug candidate. He discovered its sweet taste when he licked his finger, which had become contaminated with aspartame, to lift up a piece of paper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame
But the Washington Post seems to disagree:
> It has been 17 years since chemist James M. Schlatter, who was tinkering with an anti-ulcer drug at the time, dipped his finger into a mixture of asparatic acid and phenylalanine and, for reasons that remain unclear, brought the result into contact with his tongue. Now, after a long legal and scientific struggle, the stuff that was on Schlatter's finger that fateful day in 1965 can be on your finger too, or dissolved in your coffee, or stirred into your yogurt, or sprinkled over your cinnamon toast.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1982/0...
There was a time when reporting the taste of a newly-synthesized organic molecule was not uncommon in the literature. It's possible that Schlatter was just doing something that was not unusual at the time.
An account of the discovery, written by one of the authors of the original research paper reporting the discovery (Mazur), and reportedly based on an affidavit gives this account:
> In December 1965 I was working with Dr. Mazur on the synthesis of the C-terminal tetrapeptide of gastrin. We were making intermediates and trying to purify them. In particular, on an occasion in December, 1965, I was recrystallizing aspartylphenylalanine methyl ester (aspartame) ... when the mixture bumped [spilled over while boiling] onto the outside of the flask. As a result, some of the powder got onto my fingers. At a slightly later stage, when licking my finger to pick up a piece of paper, I noticed a very strong, sweet taste. Initially, I thought that I mush have still had some sugar o. my hands from earlier in the day. However, I quickly realized this could not be so, since I had washed my hands in the meantime. I, therefore, traced the power on my hands back to the container into which I had placed the crystallized apsartyl-phenylalanine methyl ester. I felt that this ... was not likely to be toxic and I therefore tasted a little of it and found that it was the substance which I had previously tasted on my finger.
- Aspartame: Physiology and Biochemistry, edited by Stegink and Filer
What is the impact of 'faking out' the sugar processing components of our metabolism? Specifically is there anything bad associated with our brains thinking that we're getting sugar and some, perhaps incomplete, chain of reactions taking place to prepare the body for sugar processing, and then the sugar never showing up?
I haven't read any of the literature on it but I imagine that some of those metabolic components stay "flipped on" for longer than they would if they had real sugar exposure, because they never get what they are prepared to receive by our brains upon consumption.
Disclosure: my grandfather died of pancreatic cancer and was a heavy consumer of artificial sweeteners (daily, in tea).
For me this can be pretty easily observed eating a meal with water vs with diet soda. Especially if it's like a 'bad' meal with fast/fried food. There is definitely something that causes you to crave/eat more.
Sweeteners won’t make someone overeating stop overeating. But they can be used to lower overall caloric energy intake and reduce cravings as a tool.
What mechanism makes the cravings subside for you? Is it chemical or also like lifting a cigarette to your lips for nicotine?
In comparing reviews of reviews of medical papers, I find myself more swayed by the article. Perhaps you'll have a different take on that part and can provide compelling evidence of why your studies should carry more weight or why the authors conclusion is flawed. I would definitely be interested in a more critical reading of that, since I'm somewhat neutral but may have some biases towards wanting aspartame to be both safe and effective.
"Data from RCTs showed no consistent effects of nonnutritive sweeteners on other measures of body composition and reported no further secondary outcomes"
So let's look at the RCTs.
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26708700/
"NNS beverages were superior for weight loss and weight maintenance in a population consisting of regular users of NNS beverages who either maintained or discontinued consumption of these beverages and consumed water during a structured weight loss program. These results suggest that NNS beverages can be an effective tool for weight loss and maintenance within the context of a weight management program."
OK, so this found a significant benefit to NNS.
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26537940/
This study finds that water is superior to to NNS, but does not compare to sugar consumption, which means you can't really draw the broader conclusion that NNS are ineffective in general; they're just less effective than water alone.
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22301929/
OK this one is annoying because the abstract lumps water and diet beverages together, so we can't just read their conclusion. The full text is available, fortunately:
"All interventions groups showed statistically significant weight losses by 6 mo, but there were no differences between groups."
(In other words, both the diet beverage group and the water group lost about the same amount of weight.)
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22205311/
This study is a somewhat odd inclusion, because they're actually examining the reverse question (do sucrose sweetened drinks increase fat storage?), but anyway:
"Daily intake of SSSDs for 6 mo increases ectopic fat accumulation and lipids compared with milk, diet cola, and water. Thus, daily intake of SSSDs is likely to enhance the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases."
The full text is not available for free, but it shows a massive difference in fat storage between sugar and diet drinks (and a much larger difference, in fact, than between sugar drinks and water)
5. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14693305/
"Patients took capsules containing 500 mg stevioside powder or placebo 3 times daily for 2 years."
What on Earth? Why is this study included?
6. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16775813/
"The volunteers selected in this phase were randomly assigned to receive either capsules containing placebo during 24 weeks or crude stevioside 3.75 mg/kg/day (7 weeks), 7.5 mg/kg/day (11 weeks) and 15.0 mg/kg/day (6 weeks)."
Again. Including these trials with the others is simply bizarre.
7. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9022524/
"The aspartame group lost significantly more weight overall (P = 0.028) and regained significantly less weight during maintenance and follow-up (P = 0.046) than did the no-aspartame group."
(I recommend reading the whole abstract; this one is nuanced, but it still shows a significant benefit for the aspartame group).
So what is going on with the...
There's already plenty of unconscious bias around (I've had experiences of people using my contributions and citing some followup paper from Google or Stanford rather than the paper where the contribution was actually made) without actively legitimizing it.
AFAIK, there was only one study which said aspartame was dangerous: they fed a rat with a HUGE amount of it (like way more than a human could consume, in proportion) and the rat got ill or died I don't remember. That "study" was obviously flawed yet the media kept talking about it everywhere.
At that point, it wouldn't surprise me if the sugar industry is behind this.
"Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity, attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with Attorney James Turner back in 1996. The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and that it violated the Delaney Amendment, which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause cancer." [0]
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_8...
Except, of course, that's contradicted by the subsequent epidemiological evidence and countless studies. And that's ignoring the complete lack of a plausible causal mechanism.
You can dislike Donald Rumsfeld, but that doesn't mean shit about aspartame.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230630-aspartame-what-e...
> According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the acceptable recommended intake for aspartame is up to 50mg per kg of body weight each day, equivalent to the amount in around 19 standard-sized cans of Diet Coke (other brands are available) for the average American woman.
The aversion most people have to anything sounding chemical is crazy.
Chemically speaking, this is a relatively simple molecule. „Dipeptide“ means it consists of two amino acids, which are ubiquitous and make up every protein. „Methyl ester“ is the product of a reaction between an acid, in this case the amino acid phenylalanine, and an alcohol, in this case methanol. Also very common throughout chemistry and biology.
Like, great, I believe that if you inject those chemicals into me in the right spot I'll be fine. But didn't you skip a few steps?
Not that I care much either way. It sounds like it's safe, toxicologically and epidemiologically speaking. But there's still a difference between eating things that taste sweet and not doing it at all-- beyond the molecules that end up in your blood.
I found it convincing. My wife did not. She found this far more credible source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8227014/
To summarize:
- Aspartame is linked to premature menarche in girls aged 9 and 10
- Aspartame, especially when used with another common sweetener is linked to genotocixity.
- Aspartame causes increases in behavioral disorders
- Aspartame causes neurodegeneration with long-term use
- Aspartame can induce contact dermatitis
> Safety studies have found the metabolic products of aspartame (aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol) to be more harmful to the body than the original substance itself...
> ...In humans, there have been reports of premature birth as well as allergic reactions and weight gain in the newborns. Studies involving girls aged 9–10 have shown that aspartame increases the risk of an early first menstruation (<11 years).
So for me... I have to think that there remains a high likelihood that aspartame is harmful, and this article draws wrong conclusions.