12 Aug 2012 22:22
Aspartame gets such bad press and is the subject of a very intensive misinformation campaign. The myths about this nonnutritive sweetener are so ingrained that I doubt I can change many minds with this post. Well, that's okay. Why should I care whether you avoid aspartame? There is certainly nothing wrong with that. But wallowing in ignorance is an invitation to being easily victimized by money-grabbing gurus.
They are very quick to tell you what is poisoning you, while they are also telling you how, for a fee, they can fix you. If there is one thing I cannot stand its cranks telling us how "they" are lying to us?while they lie to us.
I'm going to cover some basic information and then give you a link to a paper, on which I will expand with more detailed information.
Aspartame was invented in 1965 by James Schlatter, who was a chemist fro G.
D. Searle and Company, now a subsidiary of Pfizer. Schlatter was not trying to make a sweetener, but was instead working on an ulcer drug. While working with aspartame, it is said he accidentally got some on his fingers and when he licked his fingers to pick up a piece of pater he noticed a very sweet taste. He figured the sweet taste may have been from the aspartame, so he tasted some and wala, a highly successful and highly maligned sweetener was born.
Aspartame was reported as a sweetener in 1969 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. It is now distributed under several names, including Nutrasweet and Equal.
It was approved for use by the FDA in 1981.
Its about 200 times as sweet as table sugar (sucrose). However, it has a slightly bitter aftertaste.
Diet Coke is Readily Associated with Aspartame
Being one of the first to use it and the number one
selling diet soda in the world.
Aspartame is produced by combining two common amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid. I'd like to stress that these amino acids are COMMON. They are found in most of the protein foods we eat. The phenylalanine in aspartame is modified by the addition of a methyl group. Its chemical name is N-(L-?-Aspartyl)-L-phenylalanine, 1-methyl ester.
No. It must be broken down into it's constituent components. The primary breakdown products are the two aminos it is made from, phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Some free methanol is also released.
According to the FDA the ADI for aspartame is 50mgs per kilogram of body weight. So, if you weigh about 75kgs, that would take about 20 cans of diet soda. If you drink that much, you've go a diet soda habit, for sure.
Diet drinks which contain aspartame must bear the following health warning: "Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine."
This has led many to jump to the conclusion that phenylalanine is poisonous. Why else would they put a warning on about it on a label? Well, because it is dangerous to some people who have a very rare disease known as phenylketonuria.
Phenylketonuria, or PKU for short, is an inherited condition that affects about one in 15,000 people. It is usually diagnosed at birth by a heal prick test known as the Guthrie test. People with the condition lack the enzyme, phenylalanine hydroxylase, necessary to deal with the amino acid phenylalanine.
Normally, the phenylalanine hydroxylase enzyme acts to convert phenylalanine to tyrosine. Lacking this enzyme, those with PKU can build up high levels of phenylalanine in their. The elevated levels of phenylalanine can cause damage to the developing brain of a child, resulting in brain damage and mental impairment. Also, the fact that the amino is not converted to tyrosine causes a lack of tyrosine in the body. Tyrosine is needed to make melanin, which is the dark brown pigment in the body (skin, eyes). PKU babies will tend to have blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin.
Packets of Nutrasweet, Sweet-n-Low, and Sugar
are ubiquitous in restaurants across the U.S.
Image by Steve Snodgrass via flickr
PKU babies are normal at birth because the mother's body handles the phenylalanine. They start developing symptoms when they are fed and phenylalanine enters their system. The results, down the road, can be devastating. IQ's of less than thirty are common and they can have a lack of interet in other people, along with other cognitive and physical problems. Seizures can occur and they often suffer from bad eczema.
Once screened and detected, which usually occurs after 5 days or so, a baby with PKU must be put on a special low phenylalanine diet, which initially is a special formula made from beef serum. Later, high protein foods must be restricted, along with certain other phenylalanine containing foods, which includes anything containing aspartame. Levels of the amino are monitored and the special diet can often be discontinued in adolescence, unless high levels are detected again or symptoms are noticed. With proper diet, those with PKU can live normal lives.4
Phenylalanine poses no danger to anyone without PKU. However, in order to develop PKU, an individual must inherit the defect from both parents. Those who only inherit the defect frmo one parent are PKU carriers and known as PKU heterozygotes. These individuals have an impaired ability to metabolize phenyalanine but otherwise are normal. It is not recommended that PKU heterozygotes consume a special diet. However, there has been fear that aspartame could represent a particular danger to these individuals. Studies have not shown there to be any danger from aspartame for PKU heterozygotes, either short or long term.((bibcte hayes)).5
Most high protein foods contain much much more of the amino than a diet soda or other diet drink does. There is a particular concern among parents about the supposed harm of phenylalanine from aspartame in their children's diet. Keep in mind that since children are rapidly growing, they already take in a much higher proportion of phenylalanine than adults do. For all of us, there is a significantly higher amount of phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and methanol from the rest of our diet than there is from aspartame.
See Aspartame and the Internet, publised The Lancet in 1999. Here are some further details of the particulars, excluding the supposed dangers of phenylalanine, which we've covered:
As mentioned, aspartame breaks down into it's constituent amino acids and methanol (metyl alcohol). The methanol content is approximately 10% by weight in aspartame, but it is an abundant naturally occurring compound found in the foods, including fruits, you eat, and fruit juices. Many claim that the methanol in aspartame is converted to formaldehyde which is broken down to formic acid. The danger from these trace amounts are greatly exaggerated. What these fear-mongers don't tell you is that methanol is a very common breakdown product from food and drink, usually in much larger amounts.
A can of diet soda with aspartame will yield about 20mg of methanol. Compare that to 40mg from the same volume of fruit juice. Except tomato juice gives 4 to 5 times the amount, 120mg for the same volume. Or, how about 60 to 100mg from an alcoholic beverage.
That's nothing. I know. Well, how about some other examples?
*One egg: 300mg of methanol
*One glass of milk: about 500mg of methanol
*A big old hamburger: 900mg of methanol
You'd have to drink a lot of diet soda to derive as much methanol as you do from these other things. And yet, even if you over-indulge, these chemicals are quickly broken down and excreted.
Methanol, when ingested, is quickly oxidized to formic acid. Formic acid can be toxic to the body in large amounts. This can occur if the production of formic acid exceeds the oxidation of formic acid. It has been estimated that the amount of methanol needed to produce these toxic amounts of formic acid is 200 to 500mg per kilogram of body weight. This is a huge amount. Let's say you weigh only 130 pounds. You'd have to drink 240 to 600 liters of aspartame sweetened drinks at one time. Notice I stressed the at one time part. The methanol is continually oxidized to formic acid and the formic acid is continually oxidized, in very short order. If you stagger your consumption, the danger from formic acid toxicity is removed. This is not to suggest that you should drink such ridiculous amounts of diet drinks, of course. I am only illustrating the point. The equivalent of 24 liters of aspartame flavored drink for a 130lb person has been administered to individuals and there was nowhere near enough peak methanol concentration in the blood to be toxic. What's more, there was no detectable change in blood formic acid amount.
There has been no evidence of toxic effects found from the consumption of the equivalent of 17 cans of diet soda a day, for a 70kg adult. What's more, there is no increase in plasma concentrations of methanol, formic acid, or phenylalanine.
The results in infants receiving 100mg/kg aspartame resulted in peak blood methanol concentrations similar to those in adults, which suggest a similar rate of clearance.
Longer term tolerance studies of up to 27 weeks showed no evidence of methanol toxicity as measured by changes in opthamalogic status or changes related to methanol toxicity.
The dose of methanol from aspartame is very tiny. Hell, the seemingly huge doses from these other foods are easily handled by the body, let alone the small amount from aspartame.
Aspartame has been claimed to cause many diseases and health conditions. Multiple Sclerosis, lupus, Parkinsons, diabetes mellitus, Alzheimer's Disease, brain tumors. Coma! Vertigo, dizziness.
There is nothing to any of these claims. They are, in fact, quite ludicrous. The cancer claims, which of course, came from dosing rats with ridiculous amounts of the stuff, are silly, as well. The myth about cancer is not unique to aspartame. Artificial sweeteners in general are always being claimed to cause cancer yet none have been shown to. Even the cancer danger of saccharin has been overturned and saccharin containing products no longer need to carry a warning. The American Dietetic Association and the National Cancer Institute, and the American Cancer Society all concur that there is no correlation between artificial sweeteners and cancer.
I understand, of course, that you may be under the sway of a conspiracy theorist health guru who tells you that they all lie! Oh, well.
Aspartame and Seizures
The only common concern that may have a grain of truth is the claim that aspartame causes seizures. But this is not because it causes seizures out of the blue but that it can raise the threshold for seizures in those with epilepsy.
Since aspartame is chemically related to the excitatory amino acids glutamine and aspartate, and since these aminos, in large amounts, can cause seizures and neurotoxic changes, the concern has been raised that aspartame can cause seizures in those with epilepsy. However, there has been no evidence that aspartame causes seizures or neurotoxic effects when consumed in recommended (read reasonable) amounts. Also, it has been speculated that aspartame could increase phenylalanine concentrations in the brain and therefore cause a deficiency of monoamine neurotransmitters, thus increasing seizure susceptibility. This has not been found to be true. Reports claiming that aspartame caused seizures are anecdotal and there is no evidence that aspartame actually caused any seizures.
The only study to show a potentially significant alteration in neurophysiological parameters was done on children with primary absence epilepsy (sometimes called petit mal seizures), with several hours of EEG monitoring.3 In a double-blind crossover design, 40mg aspartame was used one day and a sucrose sweetened drink the next, as a placebo control. Children were found to spend more time in a 3-HZ spike-wave EEG pattern than in the placebo control. The actual amount of time was not given. Furthermore, diet was not controlled for and the choice of sucrose as a control is not without problems, as sucrose may have a positive effect on this type of EEG abnormality, so that the placebo could have been more like an actual treatment.2
Despite the lack of credible evidence, aspartame is often included in the scare books and articles about the oh so dangerous EXCITOTOXINS, along with MSG, another big bad boogeyman.
There is no credible evidence that aspartame increases energy intake, changes the distribution of macronutrient intake in the diet, or results in an increase in subjective feelings of hunger. Aspartame seems to have no different affect on hunger and satiety than sugar, except that it results in a significant decrease in caloric intake. For further reading see the sources below.
That is a fair question. So far, I have concentrated on diet drinks, especially sodas, containing aspartame. Soda has it's own negative campaign and aspartame is one of the "ingredients" of this campaign, along with high fructose corn syrup, caramel coloring, and other components. Therefore, it made sense to me to mention diet drinks, and it is fair to say that diet drinks represent by far the largest source of aspartame in the diet. As we've seen, it would be very difficult to ingest enough aspartame from diet drinks to represent any danger to our health.
Still, there are thousands of products that contain aspartame. First, let's clear up some common confusion concerning the ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake). This amount is supposed to represent what you can safely take in day after day for a lifetime safely. It is not about what you can take in on a given day. In other words, just because you consume an amount larger than the ADI for aspartame (or anything else), on one day, does not mean you are going to drop dead. To put the ADI further into perspective, consider that, in terms of sweetness, 5omg/kg of aspartame is like a 60kg person consuming 1.3lbs (600 grams) of sugar (sucrose) in a day.
If your diet has a large proportion of aspartame containing "diet foods" you are still probably not in much danger, but it would be wise to reevaluate such a diet, because it is obviously not a balanced and healthy one. A large proportion of such products would also mean a small proportion of fresh vegetables, fruits, fish, and lean meats.
If you want to get down and dirty about aspartame in a book check out The Clinical Evaluation of a Food Additive: Assessment of Aspartame. You can get it used for a very low price since the many scare books from the popular press easily outsell such a comprehensive and scholarly text. Maybe you'd rather believe all the pseudoscience crap, though, as it is nice to think that if we can simply avoid some poisons we can avoid disease or other health conditions and live forever.
There is an email that has been in wide distributions since 1997 or 98 claiming that aspartame causes a wide variety of diseases and problems, such as discussed above, and I have no doubt that this is the origin of most people's beliefs about aspartame. The email even coined the term "aspartame disease". It is beyond my why people believe random emails written by unknown individuals and received without warning in their inbox. This person, Nancy Markle, has never been found and, undobtedly, does not exist. The claims in the email are so ridiculous that any person with a modicum of rationality should laugh at, rather than believe, the claims. But rational thought is not at a premium when it comes to scare mongering claims about the collusion of our government with big business.
References
1. Hayes, A. W. "Artificial Sweeteners: A Special Issue of the Journal Comments on Toxicology." Comments on Toxicology III (1989)
2. Schanz, Christian. The Clinical Evaluation of a Food Additive: Assessment of Aspartame. Boca Raton: CRC, 1996.
3. Camfield, P. R., Et Al. "Aspartame Exacerbates EEG Spike-wave Discharge in Children with Generalized Absence Epilepsy: A Double-blind Controlled Study." Neurology 42.5 (1992): 1000-3.
4. Jacoby, David B. Encyclopedia of Family Health. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1998.
5. Tulchinsky, Theodore H., and Elena Varavikova. The New Public Health. Amsterdam: Elsevier / Academic, 2009.
Source: http://www.gustrength.com/eric-troy%3Athe-aspartame-mythinformation-campaign
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