The Side Effects of Aspartame

[Cord the Seeker]

For what it is worth, sucralose (splenda) is the only artificial sweetener deemed safe by the Centre for Science in the Public Interest.

I still don't eat it if I can avoid it. I studiously avoid all other artifical sweeteners.

 

[mel7776]

I started using Truvia in my coffee and tea instead of splenda. It has a nice sweet taste and it is natural, even though it adds sugar alcohol and "natural flavors" (msg) it is still much better then the artificial sweeteners on the market.

 

[Jeanette401]

Truvia is a form of Stevia... truth told, and apparently like any artificial sweetener, it has it's own risks. Both the FDA and the Center for science in the Public Interest are concerned with its effects in the reproductive system, cancer and metabolism. However, the diet soda industry has been busy 'refining' the natural product to make it safer and it's been approved for use by the FDA.

To quote the Center for Science in the Public Interest -

The bottom line: If you use stevia sparingly (once or twice a day in a cup of tea, for example), it isn’t a great threat to you. But if stevia were marketed widely and used in diet sodas, it would be consumed by millions of people. And that might pose a public health threat.

As far as the question of 'healthy in moderation' - I think people are more concerned with 'not unhealthy in moderation'. The human body is usually pretty effective in screening out 'moderate' quantities of toxins - so if it doesn't harm and tastes good, is moderation not okay? Even some level of saturated fat is perfectly fine, even though it's definitely not healthy in large quantities.

 

[LisaThinker]

recent epidemiological industry-sponsored studies?

See who sponsored those "recent epidemiological studies" before you give them any weight. There is a ton of scientific evidence showing the damage caused by aspartame. Also - it is a substance that accretes in the cells so it is not safe in small doses. A person could be unaffected for years then - blam - a tipping point is reached and the body reacts to the neurotoxic effects. Please educate yourselves if you don't know about this terrible substance.

 

[Jeanette401]

See who sponsored those "recent epidemiological studies" before you give them any weight. There is a ton of scientific evidence showing the damage caused by aspartame. Also - it is a substance that accretes in the cells so it is not safe in small doses. A person could be unaffected for years then - blam - a tipping point is reached and the body reacts to the neurotoxic effects. Please educate yourselves if you don't know about this terrible substance.

Do you have some links to support this? I've done searches on aspartame in the past, but so far I haven't found any solid research that supports the idea that it's dangerous even in small doses. Any additional information you could provide would be appreciated.

 

[slickg]

Well I personally get horrible headaches anytime I drink aspartame for some reason. I'm not quite sure why but it's like clockwork as I will get a headache about an hour after I would consume a can. All it did was steer me towards water. I am not too big of a fan of the aftertaste of diet pop anyways.

 

[Jeanette401]

Well I personally get horrible headaches anytime I drink aspartame for some reason. I'm not quite sure why but it's like clockwork as I will get a headache about an hour after I would consume a can. All it did was steer me towards water. I am not too big of a fan of the aftertaste of diet pop anyways.

I actually know someone who gets seizures triggered by almost any kind of artificial sweetener (some of the sugar alcohols haven't). And I've always been able to taste Splenda & Equal.

I just keep hearing about aspartame leading to brain damage and other horrible things and haven't found the studies to show it, so I'm wondering what they are.

 

[Blancita]

Who needs a study to tell you that fake chemicals, not created by God or nature, can somehow be healthy for us. Its really just a matter of plain old common sense. Stay natural and unprocessed whenever possible and you will no doubt be better off.

 

[Jeanette401]

Who needs a study to tell you that fake chemicals, not created by God or nature, can somehow be healthy for us. Its really just a matter of plain old common sense. Stay natural and unprocessed whenever possible and you will no doubt be better off.

I'm not saying that you're not better off avoiding them, I just keep hearing how aspartame is horrible, presumably way worse than sacharine or whatever else you'll find.

Meanwhile, I would probably choose aspartame over hemlock, despite the fact that hemlock is 100% natural

From a google search on aspartame and arsenic I found a snopes.com article though, it doesn't seem like aspartame is any worse than any other food additive, including a study from MIT which I'm assuming wasn't sponsored by the aspartame industry.

 

[mjgfish]

I drink about 12 500ml bottles of water with aspartame in daily. So this may seem very bad, isn't the bottles meant to be bad for you as well? Everything seems to have something bad about it if it's processed but I do think I better cut back on the aspartame a bit just in case.

 

[San2]

Who needs a study to tell you that fake chemicals, not created by God or nature, can somehow be healthy for us. Its really just a matter of plain old common sense. Stay natural and unprocessed whenever possible and you will no doubt be better off.

Because there is nothing in nature that is bad for you?? And nothing that was made chemically was ever good for anybody?

Just don't overdo it, that's what I think. You can't stay away from all the stuff that is supposedly bad for you anyway, half the time you don't even know it's there. If it's not sweeteners, it's something else.

And hey, what is supposedly healthy today might turn out to be dangerous tomorrow. At some point all these sweeteners were labeled as perfectly safe and harmless, even healthy because of the lower calories. And look at this thread now. Who knows what is going to be next.

So....as with pretty much everything, moderation seems to be the key here.

 

[Blancita]

Because there is nothing in nature that is bad for you?? And nothing that was made chemically was ever good for anybody?

Just don't overdo it, that's what I think. You can't stay away from all the stuff that is supposedly bad for you anyway, half the time you don't even know it's there. If it's not sweeteners, it's something else.

And hey, what is supposedly healthy today might turn out to be dangerous tomorrow. At some point all these sweeteners were labeled as perfectly safe and harmless, even healthy because of the lower calories. And look at this thread now. Who knows what is going to be next.

So....as with pretty much everything, moderation seems to be the key here.

Excuse me, but the odds are that a food that is wholly natural will be less likely to be harmful than a food composed entirely of fake chemicals. Yes, I eat processed foods but its wise to keep them to a minimum as much as possible. If there is a choice between natural (like sugar) and a bunch of chemicals that can be found to be harmful later, as you noted occurred with other sweeteners, then I personally feel its safer to choose the natural version. Do you have any idea what effect the chemicals we eat have on the body? Well neither do I but common sense tells us that the body may have trouble processing fake chemicals. But yeah, I doubt sugar will be found to be anything more than what we already know about it. Fake sweeteners? The jury is still out but those chemicals will catch up with us.

 

[San2]

And what do we know about sugar? If you have too much of it, it's bad for you, it makes you fat, ruins your teeth, gives you diabetes......hmmmm.....cancer from sweeteners or diabetes from sugar....*shrug*

Not saying eat all the sweeteners in the world or live completely on processed foods. Just find a healthy balance, that's all. You can't cut out everything that is, or could be, bad for you at some point. It's impossible.

And what's a 'fake' chemical?

 

[slickg]

Sugar definitely isn't too good for you either. It isn't bad in moderation though. I am in no means judging aspartame as it helps many people drink 0 calorie diet pop as opposed to 150+ calorie regular soda. Some people are highly addicted to pop and it's much better to get 0 calories than hundreds even thousands a day (I was totally there).

The only thing that I can personally judge aspartame on is how it makes my body feel...horrible. It's probably just the way I react to it but the headaches from it absolutely kill me to the point of nausea. If I have a regular sugar Coke then my body would feel fine (at least until I gained more weight from it but that's a whole 'nother storie) but if I had let's say a Coke Zero then I will feeling so horrible almost like I had the flu. That's just me though I know people that can chug it like there's no tomorrow. I personally can't go wrong with water or green tea with no sweetener.

 

[San2]

The only thing that I can personally judge aspartame on is how it makes my body feel...horrible. It's probably just the way I react to it but the headaches from it absolutely kill me to the point of nausea. If I have a regular sugar Coke then my body would feel fine (at least until I gained more weight from it but that's a whole 'nother storie) but if I had let's say a Coke Zero then I will feeling so horrible almost like I had the flu. That's just me though I know people that can chug it like there's no tomorrow. I personally can't go wrong with water or green tea with no sweetener.

I actually have the same problem with sweeteners, not just aspartame. It's trial and error, some are okay, others make me feel horrible. I stay away from the ones I can't stomach, and keep the other ones in moderation. Simple.

 

[Blancita]

And what do we know about sugar? If you have too much of it, it's bad for you, it makes you fat, ruins your teeth, gives you diabetes......hmmmm.....cancer from sweeteners or diabetes from sugar....*shrug*

See below re diabetes from aspartame.

Not saying eat all the sweeteners in the world or live completely on processed foods. Just find a healthy balance, that's all. You can't cut out everything that is, or could be, bad for you at some point. It's impossible.[/B]

And what's a 'fake' chemical? How about you stop for a second and THINK, you may figure out what I am talking about when I equate artificial foods/flavors to chemicals, as I'm sure everyone who read my post understand what I meant.

Following the "parsing words" method I see. Yes, sugar in excess is not healthy. I never did say it was healthy, did I? Sugar, as an item that is not overprocessed where it is so different from its origin that it is unrecognizable, is fine in moderation. I've never had a problem from it and its use in moderation has never caused me any problems greater than being under 15 lbs overweight. So yeah, never caused obesity for me.. Maybe its time to give the soda and overprocessed FAKE foods a rest. Soda has many artificial ingredients and chemicals, even the full sugar kind. Again, an example of a "food" that should be avoided except in extreme moderation.

Anyone heard of STEVIA? That is a sweetener with no calories that is NATURAL and has been used in other societies for decades without incident.

With the unknowns and evidence presented in the following, I PERSONALLY would not risk using something so artificial and potentially harmful.



Aspartame's tainted history of approval and potentially toxic ingredients cast serious doubt on the safety of this sugar substitute. Furthermore, aspartame may actually increase your appetite (Farber 52).

While the FDA approval may signal the green light for safe consumption, 85 percent of all complaints registered with the FDA are for adverse reactions to aspartame, including five reported deaths. A closer look at the unscientific studies, suspicious approval methods, and its harmful ingredients, reveal the hidden dangers of this artificial sweetener. In reality, aspartame poses a public health threat.


Ailments Resulting From Aspartame

The components of aspartame can lead to a wide variety of ailments. Some of these problems occur gradually while others are immediate, acute reactions.

A few of the many disorders associated with aspartame include the following:

* Birth Defects

A study funded by Monsanto to study possible birth defects caused by consuming aspartame was cut off after preliminary data showed damaging information about aspartame. Additionally, in the book, While Waiting: A Prenatal Guidebook, it is stated that aspartame is suspected of causing brain damage in sensitive individuals. A fetus may be at risk for these effects. Some researchers have suggested that high doses of aspartame may be associated with problems ranging from dizziness and subtle brain changes to mental retardation.

* Cancer (Brain Cancer)

In 1981, an FDA statistician stated that the brain tumor data on aspartame was so "worrisome" that he could not recommend approval of NutraSweet.(14)

In a two-year study conducted by the manufacturer of aspartame, twelve of 320 rats fed a normal diet and aspartame developed brain tumors while none of the control rats developed tumors, and five of the twelve tumors were in rats given a low dose of aspartame.(15)

The approval of aspartame was a violation of the Delaney Amendment, which was supposed to prevent cancer-causing substances such as methanol (formaldehye) and DKP from entering our food supply. A late FDA toxicologist testified before the U.S. Congress that aspartame was capable of producing brain tumors. This made it illegal for the FDA to set an allowable daily intake at any level. He stated in his testimony that Searle's studies were "to a large extent unreliable" and that "at least one of those studies has established beyond any reasonable doubt that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals ... " He concluded his testimony by asking, "What is the reason for the apparent refusal by the FDA to invoke for this food additive the so-called Delaney Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act? ... And if the FDA itself elects to violate the law, who is left to protect the health of the public?"(16)


* Diabetes

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is actually recommending this chemical poison to persons with diabetes, but according to research conducted by a diabetes specialist, aspartame: 1) Leads to the precipitation of clinical diabetes. 2) Causes poorer diabetic control in diabetics on insulin or oral drugs. 3) Leads to the aggravation of diabetic complications such as retinopathy, cataracts, neuropathy and gastroparesis. 4) Causes convulsions.

In a statement concerning the use of products containing aspartame by persons with diabetes and hypoglycemia, the researchers says:

"Unfortunately, many patients in my practice, and others seen in consultation, developed serious metabolic, neurologic and other complications that could be specifically attributed to using aspartame products. This was evidenced by the loss of diabetic control, the intensification of hypoglycemia, the occurrence of presumed 'insulin reactions' (including convulsions) that proved to be aspartame reactions, and the precipitation, aggravation or simulation of diabetic complications (especially impaired vision and neuropathy) while using these products ... Dramatic improvement of such features after avoiding aspartame, and the prompt predictable recurrence of these problems when the patient resumed aspartame products, knowingly or inadvertently."

Another researcher stated that excitotoxins such as those found in aspartame can precipitate diabetes in persons who are genetically susceptible to the disease.(5)

* Emotional Disorders

In a double blind study of the effects of aspartame on persons with mood disorders, findings showed a large increase in serious symptoms for persons taking aspartame. Since some of the symptoms were so serious, the Institutional Review Board had to stop the study. Three of the participants had said that they had been "poisoned" by aspartame. Researchers concluded that "individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener; its use in this population should be discouraged."(18) One researcher stated about aspartame, "I know it causes seizures. I'm convinced also that it definitely causes behavioral changes. I'm very angry that this substance is on the market. I personally question the reliability and validity of any studies funded by the NutraSweet Company."(19)

Additionally, there are numerous reported cases of low brain serotonin levels, depression and other emotional disorders that have been linked to aspartame and often are relieved by stopping the intake of aspartame.

* Epilepsy/Seizures


With the large and growing number of seizures caused by aspartame, it is sad to see that the Epilepsy Foundation is promoting the "safety" of aspartame. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 80 people who had suffered seizures after ingesting aspartame were surveyed. Community Nutrition Institute concluded the following about the survey:

"These 80 cases meet the FDA's own definition of an imminent hazard to the public health, which requires the FDA to expeditiously remove a product from the market."

Both the Air Force's magazine, Flying Safety, and the Navy's magazine, Navy Physiology, published articles warning about the many dangers of aspartame including the cumulative delirious effects of methanol and the greater likelihood of birth defects. The articles note that the ingestion of aspartame can make pilots more susceptible to seizures and vertigo. Twenty articles sounding warnings about ingesting aspartame while flying have also appeared in the National Business Aircraft Association Digest (NBAA Digest 1993), Aviation Medical Bulletin (1988), The Aviation Consumer (1988), Canadian General Aviation News (1990), Pacific Flyer (1988), General Aviation News (1989), Aviation Safety Digest (1989), and Plane & Pilot (1990) and a paper warning about aspartame was presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Aerospace Medical Association (Gaffney 1986).

Why don't we hear about these things?

The reason many people do not hear about serious reactions to aspartame is twofold: 1) Lack of awareness by the general population. Aspartame-caused diseases are not reported in the newspapers like plane crashes. This is because these incidents occur one at a time in thousands of different locations across the United States. 2) Most people do not associate their symptoms with the long-term use of aspartame. For the people who have killed a significant percentage of their brain cells and thereby caused a chronic illness, there is no way that they would normally associate such an illness with aspartame consumption.

 

[Blancita]

In addition:



Your Sweet Tooth and Obesity

Monday, August 18, 2008 - Byron J. Richards, CCN

Individuals are deluded to think that drinking beverages containing no-calorie sweeteners will help them lose weight or at least not gain weight. A new study continues to debunk this myth. Participants in the San Antonio Heart Study were evaluated at baseline and again seven years later. Consumption of artificially sweetened beverages increased body mass index (BMI) by 47%, compared to those who did not consume these beverages. The greater the intake, the worse the obesity-related problem.

The researchers concluded by saying “These findings raise the question whether artificial sweetener use might be fueling—rather than fighting—our escalating obesity epidemic.”

It’s obviously fueling the epidemic, along with the consumption of horrid sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup. In the case of artificial sweeteners, your taste buds are fooled and leptin receptors on them send a message to your brain that calories are coming – when in fact they are not. This causes you to overeat at future meals to “get caught up.”
Controlling your cravings for food, including your desire for ingestion of sweets, whether artificially sweetened or not, is essential if you are to keep on a consistent weight loss plan. Follow this link if you want more tips on controlling food cravings.

 

[San2]

I stopped and thought for more than a second, and just for the record, there is no such thing as a 'fake chemical'. I know what you mean, but that's not the point.

Apart from that, I think this is pointless.

I used to use piles of sugar in everything and drank sugary soda, that got me overweight. Now I am drinking water, use sweeteners in tea and sometimes drink low cal pop, and guess what? Weight loss. No sugar cravings, no . And if I ever get diabetes, who'll be able to tell if it's from the sugar or the sweeteners? None of the things you listed can be pinpointed down to the use of sweeteners, or aspartame specifically. Unless you can rule out ALL other influences you can say for sure that it is this ONE thing that is the cause of the cancer, deformation, etc. And since you can't rule out all other outside influence....well, you might get my point.

I thought I said 'everything in moderation'. But maybe that wasn't clear enough, not sure.

I think we pretty much live in different worlds, I should have known that from looking at the first post that I replied to. So let's just call it quits.....you've got your opinion, I've got mine. No need to waste any more time.

 

[Blancita]

I stopped and thought for more than a second, and just for the record, there is no such thing as a 'fake chemical'. I know what you mean, but that's not the point. Yes, in your book word parsing is the point. We must all use precise terms, and if we use something that everyone is following and gets, it is not ok with you. Well sorry, I cannot stand word parsing as teh point is not the word but the obvious intention behind it. Yes, chemicals are FAKE. I do hope you can figure out what is meant by that.

Apart from that, I think this is pointless.

I used to use piles of sugar in everything and drank sugary soda, that got me overweight. Yes, piles of sugar in everything and drinking endless sugary sodas will certainly cause weight gain. And cutting out all of those empty extra calories will certainly cause weight loss. Now I am drinking water, use sweeteners in tea and sometimes drink low cal pop, and guess what? Weight loss. No, the weight loss is from cutting calories, not from using a bit of sweetener in your tea or beverages. I will guarantee you that if you used a teaspoon of real sugar, have one or two sugary sodas per week, but otherwise follow your method of cutting out all the excess sugar, you will have the exact same weight loss results. You dont get fat off of one sugar in your tea or 2 sodas in a week. No sugar cravings, no . And if I ever get diabetes, who'll be able to tell if it's from the sugar or the sweeteners? None of the things you listed can be pinpointed down to the use of sweeteners, or aspartame specifically. Unless you can rule out ALL other influences you can say for sure that it is this ONE thing that is the cause of the cancer, deformation, etc. And since you can't rule out all other outside influence....well, you might get my point. Sometimes you have to use common sense and dont need an exact answer; when the science suggest certain negative consequences (such as death, read the studies I posted), and you know you're dealing in man-made (i.e. fake) chemicals that were not created by nature, you may want to take that leap that they may not be good for you rather than risking teh potential significant consequences.

I thought I said 'everything in moderation'. But maybe that wasn't clear enough, not sure.

I think we pretty much live in different worlds, I should have known that from looking at the first post that I replied to. So let's just call it quits.....you've got your opinion, I've got mine. No need to waste any more time.

Then refrain from parsing words with me. I did just state my opinion and then you hopped all over it.

 

[San2]

Then refrain from parsing words with me. I did just state my opinion and then you hopped all over it.

No worries, I will refrain from anything with you in future.

Just wondering, is parsing one of your favourite words? You seem to use it as an insult towards everybody who doesn't seem to meet your 'standards', or doesn't share your opinion.

Speaking of....I have one, you have one. I repeat my earlier, unanswered question....What is your problem?